Business North Carolina articles from November 2005

Business North Carolina archives from November 2005

Silver threads.(Business North Carolina anniversary)
November 1, 2005... If you're a small business, it's good to be busy, but it's also stressful when you've got a lot to do with what little you have. That's the way it has been around here lately, putting out this magazine each month plus a host of special...

Trend.(Illustration)
November 1, 2005... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Latest Previous Previous % change month month year from last year EMPLOYMENT Total...

Stock watch.(Illustration)
November 1, 2005... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Highest price/earnings ratios P/E 9/30/05 52-week Company ratio (3) price range Tanger Factory 264.9 $27.81 $20.90-29.99 Outlet Centers SpectraSite ...

N.C. textiles need to knit new niches.(ECONOMIC OUTLOOK)(Interview)
November 1, 2005... For more than two decades, North Carolina's textile industry has struggled with increased competition from overseas. But Tar Heel mills can survive if they change their business models, says a report from Anderson Bauman Tourtellot Vos & Co., a...

Eastern.(REGIONAL REPORT)
November 1, 2005... WILMINGTON -- McKim & Creed, an engineering and surveying company, bought The Rose Group, a 30-employee Fayetteville competitor. The price was not disclosed. McKim & Creed has about 400 employees in 15 offices in the Southeast. HAMPSTEAD...

Working capital.(REGIONAL REPORT)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... Jobs: 494,462 YTD change: 33,402 Index: 102.9 Jobs: 769,782 YTD change: 35,345 Index: 100.9 Jobs: 866,594 YTD change: 23,805 Index: 106.1 Jobs: 1,006,806 YTD change: 37,632 Index: 104.4 ...

Triangle.(REGIONAL REPORT)
November 1, 2005... RALEIGH -- Aleris International, a Beachwood, Ohio-based aluminum recycler and metal-sheet maker, agreed to buy Alsco Holdings for $150 million. Alsco Holdings is the parent of Alsco Metals, which makes aluminum building products and employs...

Triad.(REGIONAL REPORT)
November 1, 2005... PILOT MOUNTAIN -- Belleville, Ontario-based Poli-Twine, which makes rope and twine, is renovating a former apparel plant here and plans to begin operations by February. It will spend $8 million on the plant, which will employ 80 at an average...

Charlotte.(BankAmerica Corp. appoints Alvaro G. de Molina)(Carolina Mills Inc. to close two factories)(Food Lion L.L.C. promotes Cathy Green)
November 1, 2005... MAIDEN -- Carolina Mills will close two factories, which together employed 189, by the end of the month. One plant here, which had 49 employees, made synthetic yarn for hosiery. A Gaston County plant in Ranlo made yarn for apparel and home...

Western.(Shenandoah Furniture to start making upholstered furniture)(American White-water moves its headquarters)(Cobia Boat Co. to build a 106,500-square-foot, $6.2 million factory )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... BOONE -- Tweetsie Railroad will remain here a while longer (Tar Heel Tattler, August). Leases on portions of its 200-acre site were set to expire at the end of 2006 but have been extended through 2007. General Manager Chris Robbins, nephew of...

Fayetteville wonders if no nukes is good news.(TAR HEEL TATTLER)
November 1, 2005... Marshall Pitts was a teenager in 1979 when a partial meltdown of a reactor core at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania leaked radiation. "I was old enough to hear the horror stories and what radiation can do to the human body,...

Greensboro airport misses its runaways.(TAR HEEL TATTLER)
November 1, 2005... Starting in 1993, when Continental Airlines launched discount flights--since discontinued--from there, Greensboro was heaven for passengers who said the devil with higher prices at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport. Charlotte officials...

Hickory's air service hasn't taken off yet.(TAR HEEL TATTLER)
November 1, 2005... Here's the story of two other Tar Heel airports in a nutshell: Kinston is getting the nut, and Hickory is getting the shell. Business travel makes the difference, and unless Hickory's numbers improve, Delta might fly away. The two cities...

Official says draw on martial dealing.(defense contract managment by Scott Dorney)
November 1, 2005... Lonely singles have eHarmony.com. Now North Carolina companies in search of more business have a Web site where they might find that federal-government contract they've always dreamed of. Matchforce.org is run by the Fayetteville-based North...

With all her success, she's Harley working.(motorcycle show management by Brenda Simpson )
November 1, 2005... Brenda Simpson drew thousands of people to her motorcycle show in Concord each of its first two years. It has been named one of the nation's 50 best bike shows by the annual Biker's Atlas. Her new show in Wilmington is scheduled to open in the...

Sonic was the tonic for this fixer-upper.(Scott Ray management)
November 1, 2005... After Hurricane Hugo blew into South Carolina in 1989, Scott Ray hitched a trailer to his truck and left Chapel Hill for Myrtle Beach. He loaded up damaged, stackable washers and dryers junked by contractors renovating waterlogged apartments....

Business group provides support for ex-pro jocks.(SPORTS SECTION)
November 1, 2005... Toby Kearney thought he had left professional sports behind in 1994 when he retired rather than accept a trade from East Coast Hockey League's South Carolina Stingrays to its Hampton Roads, Va., Admirals. Though he had been selected in the...

Bank tellers: talk is cheap--even if prices aren't--about possible deals affecting the state's largest financial institutions.(FEATURE)
November 1, 2005... Bank of America Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis once summed up his philosophy of banking in two words: Size matters. But as the Charlotte-based financial giant gobbled up bank after bank and rumors ran rampant about what would be its next meal, a...

An evening with Carolina Business Review.(2005 TRIANGLE CEO SUMMIT)
November 1, 2005... Welcome to Carolina Business Review's 15th anniversary celebration--the 2005 Triangle CEO Summit. Our sincere thanks for joining us. While much of the promotion and buildup around this event is being branded as 'our' celebration, it truly is...

Fortunes of war: privatizing the conflict in Iraq creates opportunity--and controversy--for North Carolina companies.(Cover Story)
November 1, 2005... At 6 o'clock on a spring Saturday evening in Shelbyville, high-school kids in Hondas and Toyotas would be circling Hardee's and McDonald's on Madison Street, the main drag. But this palm-lined street half a world away bears no resemblance to...

Annual gain: in the growth business that is a tobacco farm, the crop sets the calendar for most of the year.(PICTURE THIS)(Calendar)
November 1, 2005... A tobacco farm is quiet in winter. The old crop is gone, and, for a while, a farmer's attention lags. Then New Year's triggers something. His thoughts stray to seed and soil, the new crop and ways to do it better. Snow might weigh on the...

Captains hooked: how Ernal Foster's ideas about blue-water sportfishing caught on and created an industry on the Outer Banks.(BOOK EXCERPT)
November 1, 2005... In Hatteras Blues, published this fall, Tom Carlson chronicles a family business--and the birth of charter fishing on the Outer Banks. The author taught creative nonfiction and American literature for 32 years at the University of Memphis. ...

'05 meetings & conventions guide: a look at the Carolinas' best sites and services for your retreat, conference, seminar or corporate meeting.(SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION)(Advertisement)
November 1, 2005... It's the perfect time of the year to mix business with pleasure: Head to the coast and stay with us at the Blockade Runner Beach Resort. Here you will enjoy our lobby lounge, spacious meeting rooms, high-speed wireless Internet,...

Training edge: community colleges help employers.(SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION)(Advertisement)
November 1, 2005... When Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker Dell selected Winston-Salem as the site of its latest U.S. assembly plant, much of the talk centered on the $280 million in state and local incentives it took to secure the factory. That's only...

Bricks & mortar.(Charlotte's First Baptist Church opened)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... They prayed beneath its Byzantine dome when Charlotte's First Baptist Church opened its doors in 1909. A new spirit began to move in 1976 when the city bought the sanctuary and turned it into Spirit Square, an intimate setting for concerts and...

Openers.
November 1, 2005... Business North Carolina has always prided itself on taking a broad view of what constitutes business and, therefore, what it is we should be covering. Like most folks, we like to get out of the office--ours and others--and when we do, we often...

Dream machines: and with a valet out of a nightmare ready to park this million-dollar trio of cars, you can bet the owners wish they had another kind of key-man insurance.(etc. Stuff)(prices of Porsche Turbo S cabriolet, Lamborghini Murcielago, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2005... Who wouldn't like getting paid to slide into rides with sticker prices that not only shock but stun most mortals? Let's start with the five-speed. leather-loaded Porsche Turbo S cabriolet on the left. It lists for a relatively modest $148.660...

Stuff food & drink.(famous restaurants)
November 1, 2005... His biweekly column in the Triad business tabloid identifies him as "a local critic who, in order to avoid special treatment, prefers to write anonymously." We'll call him The Tongue That Dares Not Speak Its Name. In three decades toiling for...

Stuff shelter.(housing prices)
November 1, 2005... If you're willing to spend $9 million for a house, you can afford to go to extremes. So it's no surprise that the two most expensive houses on the North Carolina real-estate market recently are about as far apart as possible and still be in the...

Boss tweed: what happens when the woolly bullies ruling fall fashion mix it up with fabrics not afraid to show their soft side.
November 1, 2005... All prices approximate. Her Ralph Lauren wool-blend jacket ($250) and skirt ($140) and Liz Claiborne scarf ($30) from Belk. Opposite: His Hickey Freeman bamboo fiber and wool sports coal ($1,150), Robert Talbott cotton shirt ($210) and Zanella...

Ship shapes.(Ward Setzer, yacht designer's works)(Biography)
November 1, 2005... For Ward Setzer, working for Jack Hargrave was like a summer at Parris Island, the Marine Corps boot camp. Setzer, one of the country's best-known yacht designers, had graduated from N.C. State less than a year before he signed on with the...

The old man and the tee: designer Donald Ross' masterpiece got the better of the world's best players during the 2005 U.S. Open.
November 1, 2005... The greatest players in the world assembled on a 98-year-old golf course in Pinehurst the third week in June. They came to the U.S. Open Championship armed with drivers 45 inches long and club heads 400 cubic centimeters in size. They wielded...

The predator: even when he wasn't bagging banks, Hugh McColl was hunting.
November 1, 2005... The painting hangs behind the desk in his office on the 51st floor of the 60-story Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte. It shows three cowboys, guns blazing, frantically mounting their horses on a dusty street in a town in the Old...