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Star's Festival of Books with UA will fete literacy
Published 03-15-2008
By Valerie Vinyard
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Imagine a free festival, full of authors, readings and most of all, books.
In one year, that will be a reality. The first Arizona Daily Star Tucson Festival of Books with The University of Arizona will take place March 13-15, 2009, at the UA.
The Tucson Festival of Books will promote a region-wide public celebration of reading and literacy.
"For several years, we've been aware of the L.A. Times Festival of Books and the impact it's had on the community." said Bill Viner, CEO of Pepper Viner Homes and one of the founders of the festival. "We wanted to bring that same type of event to our community.
"We're reaching very far to try to get the best authors we can for this inaugural event."
Viner's wife, Brenda, Bruce Beach and Frank Farias also helped found the event.
"I wanted to have a fun celebration for the whole community to engage in literacy," said Beach, CEO and chairman of Beach, Fleischman & Co. "We hope to raise the awareness of the literacy opportunities we have in this community."
"There's nothing like this in Arizona, nothing of this maqnitude," Viner said. "It crosses all age ranges."
Viner visualizes 15 to 18 different venues and stages at the event. Many of them will be at the UA mall and inside nearby buildings. A large food court will be centered on the mall.
Viner said the committee is hoping for 300 authors, vying for local, regional and national names.
"There are some very big names being tossed around/ said Viner, declining to name any authors yet.
"We've been talking about this for over a year/ Viner said. "The enthusiasm is terrific, people are excited about literacy and reading, and hopefully this will encourage people to read more. There's nothing like reading."
The group is planning to make the festival an annual event: "It's too big just to do it one time," Viner said.
Festival activities will include lectures, interviews and signings with local, regional and national authors; workshops for aspiring authors; poetry readings and contests; book reviews and panel discussions; kids author appearances, interactive stage presentations, storytelling and arts and crafts activities; and book
sales.
Proceeds will benefit local literacy groups and programs. Exhibitors will include booksellers, publishers and literacy and cultural organizations.
"We are thrilled to be among the lead organizers largely because reading is central to our mission," said John M. Humenik, publisher and editor of the Arizona Daily Star. "It's a logical fit for our newspaper, which celebrates daily the craft of communicating with words and images."
In addition to the Star and the UA, the Festival of Books Steering Committee includes Pepper Viner Homes; Beach, Fleischman & Co.; Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau; Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities; the Metropolitan Tucson Chamber of Commerce; Pima County Public Library; the Literacy Leadership Coalition/ Community Foundation of Southern Arizona; local author groups; children's literacy groups; Clear Channel; and Tucson Pima Arts Council.
Visit the website for Tucson Festival of Books
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Pepper Viner Wins Southern Arizona
New Home Builder of the Year Award
For Immediate Release
For further information,
call
Patricia Dunham, 520-745-9905
Pepper Viner Homes has been named the Builder of the Year by the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association. “While it may seem a bit of an oxymoron in a down market, this has been a good year for Pepper Viner Homes,” said Bill Viner, President. “We have been able to focus on our future and have implemented four initiatives that truly change the way we build homes and the way we do business.”
First, the builder opened the first community in Southern Arizona where every home qualified for both the new Energy Star rating and met the standards of EPAct 2005 as enacted by the US Department of Energy. The High Performance – High Design homes were introduced and are available at Pepper Viner’s Civano North Ridge community.
“To meet these standards, every home must be third-party verified and offer energy savings of at least 50% when compared to homes built to standard code. We chose to ‘go green’ because we wanted to offer our homebuyers on-going savings and because we felt it was the right thing to do for our environment. However, it paid off by giving us a better quality product and we think that significantly contributed to winning this award. Simply, each home must be tighter, quieter and better built,” Viner continued. “This will be the way we will build our homes as we go forward. All upcoming communities will meet these standards.”
Next, Pepper Viner instituted a national program, First Time Quality, and paid for each of its trade partners to complete the training. The course meets and exceeds the National Association of Home Builders certification requirements and is the work of Ed Caldeira, the past Director of Quality for NAHB. “This program empowers each trade partner and identifies problem areas and bottlenecks so they can be corrected,” Viner explained. “This was a substantial investment on our part but it is already paying off with a more efficient job site, and that creates actual dollar savings we can pass on to our buyer.”
The final two initiatives instituted by Pepper Viner Homes were to establish a new program of homebuyer surveys and to execute a new software program that makes complete information about each home available both in the office and in the field. “Traditionally, homebuyers are surveyed after they are given the keys. We realized that if a client was unhappy or dissatisfied, there wasn’t much we could do about it after the fact. We now survey at four benchmarks during the construction process. It gives the buyer a real voice during the building of the home and it gives us the opportunity to correct any problems while they are still minor problems,” Viner continued. “Finally, we tied everything together with new software that makes it possible for our staff to access the complete information they need quickly and easily.
“We know that this has been a hard year for new construction, but it also gave us the breathing space we needed to make real and lasting changes to prepare us for the future. We know that the things we have done make us stronger and we feel that played a major role in helping us win this award. Still, when recognition comes from your industry – the people most knowledgeable about what you do and how you do it – it is unmatched recognition. Every member of our staff has a part in this award. There is no way we could reach this pinnacle of success without the effort of every single person on our team,” Viner concluded.
The SAHBA Builder of the Year Award is based on a number of criteria, starting with professionalism, product quality and business ethics, but also including safety, community service and professional education, training and certification. Pepper Viner Homes won for the middle category, builders producing 100 to 449 units in the year. |
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Subdivision firm partly shifting to individual homes
AZ Daily Star - BUSINESS - Real Estate - Christie Smythe 1.22.2008
In many places across the country, it’s a rough time to be a home builder.
New-home sales are dropping nationwide, prices are being slashed, and the value of one of builders’ prime assets, land for subdivisions, may be slipping as demand cools.
Taking a turn away from all the doom and gloom, one local builder is trying a new business tactic.
Pepper Viner Homes Inc., based in Tucson, wants to take its building services out of subdivisions and go straight to individual property owners.
For a price somewhat above that of a home built in a subdivision, and somewhat below that of a true custom home, Pepper Viner will send a crew to a person’s own lot to build a Pepper Viner home, said Michael Whyde, executive vice president of Pepper Viner and a partner in the company.
Whyde said the idea sprung mainly from customer requests.
“People like our floor plans, but (some) don’t want to live in a more traditional community,” said Whyde, referring to the production-home subdivisions where his company usually builds.
As part of the new strategy, the builder has also retooled some of its floor plans to fit smaller lots in the city’s core, rather than just larger lots on the metro area’s outskirts.
While most of its homes in new subdivisions range from 2000 to 5000 square feet, Pepper Viner’s plans for more urban lots include square footage from 2000 to about 2800, Whyde said.
Meanwhile, the company is continuing its mainline business of selling homes in subdivisions.
Whyde said the new track was not intended as a response to a difficult market.
“I don’t think this has changed our business strategy,” Whyde said. “We’re just expanding our opportunities.”
But undeniably, home builders in Tucson are coping with a dramatic shift.
In 2007, residential building permits in the Tucson area dropped to 5098, slightly below the level in 1996, and a decline of 41 percent from 2006, according to December’s Southern Arizona Housing Market Letter from Bright Future Business Consultants.
Local new-home-market consultant Lucinda Smedley said Pepper Viner’s new tactic has been tried by other builders in the past, and it may help the builder cope with the market.
“I think it helps them to diversify their business and protect themselves a little bit more against the downturn,” she said.
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Pepper Viner Homes Introduces First Time Quality Program
It’s really a simple equation. “If the crews are winning, the trade is winning. If the trade is winning, Pepper Viner is winning. If the builder is winning, the homebuyer wins.” That’s how Rick Stephenson, Director of Construction, sums up the First Time Quality program.
“It’s working! We have about 30 different trades from every discipline of construction involved in the program,” Stephenson continued. “It’s total teamwork.” Pepper Viner introduced First Time Quality at a seminar for all the trade partners. The independent program is designed to insure a smooth running jobsite where every crew will find their home job-ready and callbacks will be reduced. After the introductory seminar, Pepper Viner then offered to reimburse the costs of any trade who took and passed the entire First Time Quality training.
There’s a domino effect on jobsites. If one crew is late, doesn’t finish their work or does something wrong, the next trade partner can’t get their work completed. “First Time Quality is a system that recognizes the wasted money and time. They also realize that these costs are part of every bid," Stephenson continued. “First Time Quality asks each trade partner to start with self-analysis of what they would change in their process. Then, it asks them to think about what costs they put in their bids because of other trades damaging their work or leaving a mess.”
“The system causes a paradigm shift in the way we all think. Trade partners are empowered to talk to each other, to share problems and solve them together. An alliance system is created,” Stephenson said. Quality First is implemented with a reporting system that creates a checklist that goes from the crews to their foreman to the building superintendent and, finally, is included in weekly reports.
“We are already seeing very positive results. This is an investment in our trade partners and in our work process that is going to pay for itself over and over again,” Stephenson concluded.
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Building Green…
Building Better!
Our first High Performance – High Design homes are sold and under construction. The cooperation from the key trades who are involved in framing, stuccoing, insulating and the mechanical systems at Civano North Ridge has been outstanding.
As these new homes take shape, we are proudest of the outstanding quality. To meet the new Energy Star standards and win EPAct 2005 certification, you simply have to build a great house.
To be certified, each High Performance – High Design home has to offer heating and cooling savings of at least 50% over a home built to standard code. And, to do that, we have to build a home that is tighter, quieter – better. “We can document the level of value to our homebuyers. The pride of ownership in these homes is going to be tremendous,” said Richard Barna, Construction Manager. “Satisfied homebuyers are the best thing a builder can have and we’re going to have them. They will have the security of knowing, in the face of rising prices, that their energy savings will go on and on.”
Going green has been a learning process from day one when we invited RESNET Energy Rater Eric Shoberg to take a look at our models and see if we could qualify for the new Energy Star rating. With his encouragement and help, we continued down the path to a new goal – EPAct 2005. It’s been an education. We’re using new materials, like the DuPont Tyvek housewrap, new trusses and a new mechanical system.
“As our first homes reach completion, it’s looking like all systems are a go,” Barna continued. “The mechanicals are quiet and steady with no blast furnace effect. Third-party testing shows compliance.” Collaboration is also continuing. “Our architect and structural engineer are involved and monitoring the building process. They’re also working on our next generation High Performance – High Design homes. Southwest Gas has been a big partner. They’re onsite often advising and testing,” Barna explained. There’s even been another visitor – staff from the National Association of Home Builders Research Lab has been on site taking a look at what Pepper Viner is doing as part of the Building America Program.
“Pepper Viner Homes has made a real commitment to building High Performance homes. We want to keep pushing the limits and finding better ways to build a better home. We’re looking at solar photovoltaic systems, a tankless back-up to our solar hot water heater and we’re testing a new Tyvek roof underlayment,” Barna concluded. “We are going to continue to offer our homebuyers more savings, more value and beautiful, livable homes.”
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Pepper Viner Home Believes in Giving Back to the Tucson Community
Pepper Viner Homes is a local builder and believes that part of their responsibility is to give back to the Tucson community. In 2007 Pepper Viner has supported many worthy causes including the Ronald McDonald House, Vail School District, Tucson Housing Trust Fund, Jewish Community Center, Steele Memorial Children’s Research Center and Chad’s Open for Autism. Whenever possible, Pepper Viner is hands-on in our charitable activities. For example, many of our employees turned out to build a playground for physically and mentally challenged children on the Tucson Medical Center campus. In September 2007, a number of our employees participated in the Leukemia/Lymphoma Walk in support of the son of an employee.
Some of the other charities supported by Pepper Viner in 2007 are:
Alzheimer’s Association
Arizona Theater Company
Boy Scouts of America, Catalina Council
City of Tucson – Rosa Parks Scholarship Fund
Community Food Bank
Jewish Family and Children’s Services
University of Arizona Department of Radiation Oncology
Tucson Children’s Museum
Tucson Hebrew Academy
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