Instantiating, Positioning and animating Sprites

Hello,

The application in question is here:
mhayden.jahnews.com/workSample/BrickBuilder/ClassBasedSprite.html
You can right click and see the source.

My questions are as follows:
1.) How can I instantiate the bricks without taking such a big performance hit?
a.) currently, I’m instantiate the bricks that make a column one at a time. I tried doing this with a repeater which did work but I could not get the animation to work on each individual brick. The animation would only work across the entire column.
2.) How can I get the UIComponent that contains the brick columns to align itself to the vertical bottom 10 pixels above the box along the bottom with the slider?
a.) I'm currently adding a UIComponent to the stage dynamically and then keeping a reference to that UIComponenet, I am adding my bricks.
3.) How can I improve the animation?
a.) Most of my research has suggested the only way to animate a sprite is to use a Timer() or connect to the onEnterFrame event.

Any critique, help or comments would be greatly appreciated.