Sakai Toyama is one of a band of residents who have maintained a beachside vigil for more than eight years, just to make sureconstruction on the base doesn't start while no one is looking.
Some very wealthy Russian buyers in the New York market have started partnering with developers before construction to make sure units in prime locations can be combined to create large, estate-size apartments, says Edward Mermelstein, a lawyer who works primarily with buyers from Russia and Eastern Europe.
To make sure there are no surprises post-construction, models of tall buildings and those surrounding it are sometimes tested inside mathematically accurate wind tunnels, meant to replicate conditions in the real world.