otion news

Louisiana Building Material Dealers Association presented the 1998 Ned Ball Award to Chester Morrison, Morrison Home Center, Houma, during its annual convention Jan. 8-l I in New Orleans.

Chuck Weckwerth, Hardware Wholesalers Inc., Pearl River, won the Supplier of the Year Award, and George Harrel, Natchitoches Lumber Yard, Natchitoches, received the President's Award.

Harrel was installed as the new association president, succeeding Don Bertrand. First vice president is Dudley Webre Jr., 2nd v.p. Aaron Scott, treasurer Gayle Caldwell, national dealer director George Kellett, and alternate national dealer director Jerry Smith.

Other directors: Trey Kiper, Bill Hogan, Marty Harrel, Nickie Blake, Jimmy Robertson, Nolan LeBlanc, Steve Ashy, Pierre Schwing Jr., Wallace Poole, Frank Fazzio, Ed Stagg, Alan Martin, Brent Hebert, Douglas Gregory and Robert Vice.

Mid-America Lumbermens Association will hold a leadership training seminar Feb. 18 at the Oklahoma State Capitol. The governor, speaker of the house and senate president pro tem were invited to address dealers about the legislative process.

A basic estimating seminar will be staged March 2-3 in Oklahoma City.

Mississippi Building Material Dealers Association has booked 45 exhibitors and counting for its annual convention and building products trade show Feb. l9-21 in Biloxi.

Florida Building Material Association is offering monthly reports of building permit activity in the state free to members.

Virginia Building Material Association will hold its annual convention April 2-5 in Williamsburg.

Lumberments Association of Texas has selected the theme "Mardi

Gras & All That Jazz" for its annual convention and buying market April l6-19 in San Antonio.

The Young Lumbermen's Committee will tour a logging site, I-joist mill, seedling orchard, plywood mill and experimental forest station near Alexandria, La., Feb. 19-21. Louisiana Building Material Dealers Association members also have been invited.

Carolinas-Tennessee Building Material Association held its annual convention Jan. 22-24 in Charlotte, N.C. Coverage will appear in next month's Building Products Digest.

Vinyl Siding Bumping Wood

Vinyl siding is projected to capture roughly half of the total siding market by 2001, largely at the expense of wood, according to a new Freedonia Group study.

In three years, vinyl's share of the siding market should grow from 41Vo (38 million squares) to over 49 million squares, while wood-based siding drops from 1996's 22Vo to l3%o in 2001. Reportedly, wood-based siding has higher maintenance requirements and installed costs, and alternatives have become better at mimicking wood's natural benefits.

As fiber cement siding and acrylic stucco panels find good acceptance, stucco, stone and related products will show particularly large gains. Metal panels, for industrial uses, and brick will increase steadily.

Despite a decline in single family housing starts and slowing growth in average house size, overall siding demand in the U.S. should ise l.7%o annually to nearly 100 million squares in the year 2001, powered by continuing growth in improvemenUreplacement and non-residential construction.

The highest gains in siding demand will be in the West. where the construction market is less saturated, the economy healthy and in-migration continuing.

The Sunbelt region of the South (especially the South Atlantic subregion), also experiencing steady population in-migration and expanding local economies, will also enjoy above-average siding demand growth.

Record Grant To Foundation

The lO-year-old Tropical Forest Foundation has been awarded a multiyear, nearly $l million grant by the International Tropical Timber Organization.

The grant-the largest TFF has ever received-will allow the group "to significantly broaden the demonstration project TFF pioneered in the Brazilian Amazon and apply it to a much larger, regional audience," says TFF program coordinator Geoffrey Blate. "All in all, this funding will help us train 96 tropical foresters and trainers in the application of forest management principles and lowimpact logging methods."

Enviro Groups Try Hand At Forestry Business

Two conservation groups have teamed up to buy about 4l square miles of timberland to manage as a commercial demonstration project.

The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Va., and Vermont Land Trust acquired 26,789 acres of timberland in Vermont and upstate New York, intent on proving that forestry can make money while protecting watersheds, wildlife, aesthetics, recreation values and logging and milling jobs.

"We have got to demonstrate that you can earn an economic rate of return on land while also protecting biodiversity," said Nature Conservancy president John Sawhill. "I really believe that if you don't manage forest holdings for both jobs and the environment. the environment is going to suffer in the long run."

The groups bought the 23 land parcels from Atlas Timberland Co. for $5.5 million, $5 million of which came from a grant from the $630 million Freeman Foundation.

Both the Nature Conservancy, the nation's 20th largest charitable organization with 828,000 members and 1,500 U.S. nature preserves, and the Vermont Land Trust hold conservation easements on more than a million acres apiece.