Hoop Dreams

All Brett Morrow really wanted was a place to teach his 12-year-old son how to shoot a basketball.

But in the process, he ended up finding a way to put a dent into a growing problem on the Gulf Coast: The amount of empty warehouses and industrial facilities that have multiplied exponentially during the recession.

Morrow, who runs a window sales and installation company, is well aware of the recession's impact on the building products industry. His company, Venice-based Absolute Window & Shutter, had 30 employees, 14 subcontracting teams and worked out of a 28,000-square-foot warehouse during the height of the boom in early 2006. The company was reaching about $1 million in revenues per month.