HoustonSERVICE.org

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Houston Mayor Annise Parker announced today the launch of a local volunteer program and an accompanying website.

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MORE: HoustonSERVICE.org website

Houston SERVICE was developed to address three areas of need in Houston: youth development, veterans' affairs, and CPR readiness. The organization is also launching www.HoustonSERVICE.org to provide details on the service plan, its initiatives, and other ways for Houstonians to become involved in volunteer activities.

"This grant enables the city of Houston to help both Houstonians with big hearts and organizations in great need of volunteers, especially those that focus on at-risk youth, veteran outreach and heart health," said Mayor Annise Parker. "I thank both Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Rockefeller Foundation for funding the city of Houston as a Cities of Service Leadership Grant recipient, and look forward to seeing the impact of Houston SERVICE."

After assessing Houston's existing service efforts in top-priority categories and collaborating closely with community partners, three volunteer impact initiatives were developed:

• After-School Zones: This initiative seeks to increase both the number of mentors engaged with the city's at-risk youth and the number of young people who are able to participate in academically rich after-school programming
• Houston Veterans Continuing Service: The veterans' initiative will offer peer-to-peer mentoring support to help 250-500 newly returning combat veterans reintegrate successfully into civilian life over two years
• Everyone Can be a Lifesaver: Recognizing heart disease and stroke as the nation's leading causes of death, this initiative will train citizens how to perform effective bystander CPR using compressions only. These volunteer trainers pledge to teach compression-only CPR to five others, which will impact the entire Houston population by having more residents ready to respond to instances of cardiac arrest.

Houston SERVICE is the product of a six-month assessment and consultation process that brought many diverse groups to the table, including non-profit organizations, schools, colleges, private sector partners, public agencies, faith-based groups and citizens.

(Copyright ©2011 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

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Commericial Real Estate In Houston

Commercial Real Estate in Houston

Houston commercial real estate activity is measured by including outright purchase of a property; owner to buyer, property leasing and property subleasing. Sublease space figures are generally not included in statistics that evaluate commercial space vacancy rates, but nevertheless can substantially impact the commercial real estate marketplace.

Houston’s commercial real estate includes office space, warehouse, manufacturing, distribution, research and development space. Although some five million square feet of additional industrial space has been added to Houston’s commercial real estate sector this past year (2009,) and an additional one million square feet is under construction or scheduled for construction so far this year, vacancy rates continue to rise, and many new projects are on hold.

This year could be a perfect time for companies now in a position to purchase or lease commercial space to take advantage of the many concessions sellers and landlords are willing to offer, particularly before demand eventually begins to equal supply. Tenants looking to sublease space are another source of supply that expanding companies can look to for discount rental agreements.

With nearly 1,000 office buildings in Houston offering concessions for leasing or subleasing office space, many young companies with limited budgets now have the opportunity to establish an office presence in prime locations they might ordinarily have been priced out of. Now is a particularly opportune time to negotiate a lease, since projections appear to be favorable for a strong revitalization of the Houston commercial marketplace towards year end. And don’t overlook the fact that in many cases landlords are competing with their own tenants who could be subleasing their space at substantially lower rates

Compliments of VIP Realty