The largest building permit issued in the city of Huntsville during the week of Dec. 24-28 went to Lee Builders, $1,900,000, for a building for Cove United Methodist Church at 366 Old U.S. 431.

Other permits valued at more than $20,000 Included:

Genesis Construction Co., $448,500, alterations to a building for BellSouth AT&T, 7600 Memorial Parkway.

Monday

Family Services Center will host free, first-time home buyer training at 600 St. Clair Ave., Building 3, from 5 to 9 p.m. This group course is offered in two consecutive sessions, beginning on the first Monday of each month, concluding on Tuesday. Call 551-1610 or visit www.fsc-hsv.org.

Speaking Easy Toastmasters meets in Decatur on the first and third Mondays of each month at Java Jay's Caf, 1736 Sixth Ave. (U.S. 31), at 5:30 p.m. Call 350-2823.

Tuesday

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We are building a team of professionals who share our values and commitment to a superior customer experience. If you'd like to manage your own time, build new relationships, and be in full control of your unlimited earning potential, we'd like you to join us. We're looking for enthusiastic, self-motivated, self-disciplined individuals with high ethical standards who can discern and deliver what's best for the client. In addition to experienced agents, newly-licensed and part-time agents are welcome and will receive hands-on training.

By 2011, the reshuffling of military personnel associated with the federal government's Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, will bring about 4,700 government jobs to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., just south of the Tennessee state line. The move will obviously benefit Huntsville, a city recently ranked by Forbes magazine as one of America's "Top Business Cities" and which boasts the fifth-highest concentration of computer software-related workers in the country. To be sure, Tennessee is lucky to have a fast-growing, technology-rich city like Huntsville near its border. And it is smart for Tennessee entities to cooperate and align with Huntsville as it has on initiatives including the highly successful Tennessee Valley Corridor.

Birmingham's Doster Construction Co. Inc. has completed the first phase on an $18.5 million addition and renovation project for the Surgery Center of Huntsville.

The 59,000-square-foot phase one expansion, which completed final inspections in December, will house post- and pre-operative areas, as well as a 23-hour patient room floor, kitchen and dining room, administration suite, boardroom, physician's lounge and patient waiting area. This expansion allows for a 19,000-square-foot phase two renovation, which will add eight operating rooms, four endoscopy procedure rooms and a new central sterile suite to the existing structure, a news release reported.

There will be no interruptions to the function of the Surgery Center during this renovation, the news release said.

My first BRAC couple you'd probably call traditional. Let's call them Matthew and Alice.

They moved to the area and bought a nice, nearly new home in the suburbs. To them, its key feature was a basement. Basements were important where they came from, and they wanted one here. It was where Matthew stored and used his weight-lifting equipment, for one thing.

Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville is expecting 4,000 defense jobs in the next three years — a boon from the Base Realignment and Closure plan approved by Congress in 2005.

While Sand Mountain is on the periphery of recruitment plans, Marshall County — particularly Guntersville, Grant and Arab — are in the mix to benefit from the influx of new jobs and people.

Located in Southeast Huntsville on Green Mountain, Inspiration on Green Mountain will be Huntsville's first NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) certified Green Development. The project will have grand mountain views and feature some of the last remaining bluff views of the valley below.

MAYSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — Leaders of a northwest Huntsville church surprised a packed public hearing when they withdrew their proposal to build transitional housing for about 50 state prisoners who would receive job training and spiritual counseling.

Hundreds of residents came to protest the plan by Victory World Outreach Ministries to house the inmates in the former Maysville Church of Christ building. The opposition convinced Victory World's senior pastor, Bobby Sledge, to find a different location for the program.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — Carlton Cove, the high-end retirement community in south Huntsville that filed for bankruptcy protection last year, is looking for a buyer.

The facility provides graduated levels of care ranging from independent living in homes and apartments to assisted living and skilled nursing care. It filed for Chapter 11 protection last year in the face of some $70 million in bond debt.