Building permits jump in city
City of Houston building permits shot up 19 percent in July to $638.9 million as two large residential projects got underway.
The amount is an increase from the $535.9 million in building permits reported in July 2017, the Greater Houston Partnership said. The report is based on the city’s Public Works Department data.
Dallas-based Tradition Senior Living broke ground on The Tradition Woodway, a 23-story, high-rise for seniors at 6336 Woodway Drive. The value of the permit totaled $75.8 million.
Weingarten Realty’s initial permit value for The Driscoll, a 30-story residential high-rise in the River Oaks Shopping Center, totaled $26 million.
Also, the upcoming Rice University Music Hall next to the Shepherd School of Music’s Alice Pratt Brown Hall had a permit value of $61.6 million, the Greater Houston Partnership said.
Through July, city building permits totaled $3.5 billion in 2018. The amount is down 1.5 percent from $3.6 billion in permits in the first seven months of 2017.
Residential construction rose 37 percent to $1.7 billion through July, while nonresidential construction fell 22 percent to $1.8 billion during the period.
Uber victorious in investor lawsuit
Uber Technologies and its former chief executive officer, Travis Kalanick, defeated a lawsuit claiming the company swept illicit business practices under the rug that cost investors billions of dollars.
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. in Oakland, Calif., on Friday agreed with Uber’s and Kalanick’s bid to toss the classaction claims by a Texas city’s firefighter pension fund while allowing the fund to revise and refile the complaint.
The lawsuit “does not specifically tie any particular misrepresentation by defendants to a decline in Uber’s stock price,” Gilliam wrote in his ruling. Instead it “lumps together” scandals and asserts a “vague and attenuated connection” to the devaluation of Uber’s stock, he said.
The Irving-based fund alleged in its September 2017 complaint that the startup and its ex-CEO failed to reveal at least six instances of malfeasance while “successfully soliciting billions of dollars in private investment.” Kalanick was ousted as CEO in June 2017 after a series of allegations that the ride-hailing company had engaged in misconduct.
Colombia charges Chiquita Brands
BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian prosecutors have charged 13 Chiquita Brands International employees with aiding a rightwing death squad that murdered hundreds of people at the turn of the century.
In a statement issued on Friday, prosecutors said that they traced payments made by a local Chiquita affiliate to a paramilitary group that operated in Colombia’s volatile Uraba region from 1996 to 2004. Some of the money was allegedly used to buy hundreds of machine guns.
The company based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., said in 2007 it had been forced to pay protection money to paramilitary groups and guerrilla organizations operating near its Colombia banana farms and paid a $25 million fine as part of a U.S. court settlement.
The company has not responded to the new charges leveled by Colombian prosecutors.
Self-driving car in crash, Apple says
Apple disclosed in a filing with the California Department of Motor Vehicles that one of its autonomous test vehicles was involved in a crash.
This is the first time a collision involving an Apple autonomous vehicle has been reported by the California DMV. The car, a Lexus SUV in self-driving mode, was rear-ended by another vehicle when it was preparing to merge onto a highway in the Bay Area called the Lawrence Expressway, according to the report. Both vehicles sustained damage but no injuries were reported.
On the afternoon of Aug. 24, Apple’s car was traveling at less than 1 mph, while the car that rear-ended it, a Nissan Leaf, was moving at about 15 mph, according to the report, which was filed by Steve Kenner, who works on Apple’s driverless tech project.
The Lawrence Expressway is a multilane highway that runs north to south through Silicon Valley. It is notoriously congested, making merging into traffic particularly challenging.
Alcohol sales rise across Texas
Across Texas, thirsty patrons downed $615.6 million of beer, wine and mixed drinks in June, a 14 percent increase compared with figures from 2017, according to an Austin American-Statesman analysis of state data.
The top-selling venue statewide was Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros, where June bar tabs hit $2.3 million.
Alcohol sales were up by double digits in June in Austin. Austin bars, restaurants and hotels served $67.4 million worth of booze, up 13 percent from $59.5 million during the same month last year.