ColoradoBiz articles from April 2005

ColoradoBiz archives from April 2005

Dell, Andy & Michael Van Gilder: Van Gilder Insurance.(LEADERS: special advertising section)
April 1, 2005... In 1905, Van Gilder Insurance was founded as a family-owned company. Today, as the company celebrates its 100-year anniversary, it is the largest privately held broker in the Rocky Mountain Region offering a unique breadth of services to a...

Simpson-Reich debate rekindles joy in politics.(On Colorado)
April 1, 2005... REPORTERS--AND EDITORS--ARE PRIVILEGED people. Not because they make much money, but because they are treated to experiences that the average Joe doesn't experience. Like interviewing former Wyoming U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson and former...

No sadness over Blue laws.(Readers respond)
April 1, 2005... Opening car dealers and liquor stores on Sunday (Jeff Rundles, "Am I Blue? Only on Sundays," March) merely creates more overhead for the retailers, who are going to sell very close to the same amount of cars and liquor whether open six days or...

Fiscal crisis calls for compromise.(Readers respond)
April 1, 2005... Robert Schwab did a great job in covering the facts concerning the impending fiscal crisis that Colorado is headed for ("Owens shows a responsive side," January) unless changes are made to both the revenue limitations under the Taxpayer Bill of...

Praise for Horan & McConaty.(Readers respond)
April 1, 2005... Why was I not surprised to see the great coverage given to Mr. John Horan and family in your February issue (Mike Taylor, "Family business restored")? Over the past few months I have lost both of my parents and used the services of the Shalom...

No fan of United.(Readers respond)
April 1, 2005... I am not surprised that United is still struggling (Nora Caley, "Barely United," February). You would think after 9/11, that United would want to put its best foot forward. I have found that nothing has changed. We recently flew United from...

Successful, or significant? The question can be put to just about any human endeavor.(On Management)
April 1, 2005... "MR. BIG, YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED A LOT IN your life and with your business. No question, you are financially successful. But ask yourself: Are you financially significant? Would you like to be financially significant? What would that mean to...

Workers' comp reforms under attack.(Guest column)
April 1, 2005... ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BUILDING BLOCKS of a positive state tax and regulatory climate is preserving our workers' compensation system, yet, today, Colorado's workers' comp system faces erosion in the current session of the Colorado General...

Instinct for sports cards: Denver firm decks out NASCAR, other heroes.(Attitude at Altitude)(Creative Instinct Inc. )
April 1, 2005... "Every NASCAR trading card on the market comes through my office," said Gavin Levy, the founder and creative director of Creative Instinct Inc. "I know more about it than the biggest NASCAR fan does." A Denver-based graphic design firm...

Coming soon.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
April 1, 2005... April 2005 7 Thursday, CoreNet Rocky Mountain Symposium & Luncheon hosted by the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Corporate Real Estate Network, 7:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Westin Tabor Center. For more information call (303) 223-6238. ...

Focus on the family names president.(Playmakers)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based, nonprofit membership organization, has named current Chief Operating Officer JAMES D. DALY to succeed President and Chief Executive Officer DON HODEL, who has retired. Focus on the Family founder...

Focus on the family names president.(Playmakers)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Adam Aircraft, an Engle-wood aircraft manufacturer, has named GEN. WESLEY K. CLARK, a former presidential candidate, to its board of directors. During 34 years of service in the Army, Clark rose to the rank of four-star general as NATO's...

Focus on the family names president.(Playmakers)
April 1, 2005... Littleton-based Champps Entertainment Inc. has named MICHAEL P. O'DONNELL the company's new chief executive officer, president and chairman. Most recently, O'Donnell led Sbarro Inc., also a franchise-restaurant chain, as CEO. Champps currently...

Focus on the family names president.(Jeff Campos named president)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... JEFF CAMPOS, a former partner in the Denver office of New York Life Insurance, has been named the new president of the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. MARTHA RUBI, owner of a Spanish-language yellow pages, is this year's new chair of the...

Focus on the family names president.(Playmakers)(appointment)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Level 3 Communications Inc. has named ADMIRAL JAMES O. ELLIS JR., U.S. Navy (Ret.), and DR. ALBERT C. YATES, former president of Colorado State University, to the company's board of directors. Ellis is former commander of the United States...

Focus on the family names president.(Playmakers)(awards)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... RYAN GILL, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has received two awards supporting his research and teaching in genomics totaling $1.15 million over the next five years. The...

Instapoll.
April 1, 2005... cobizmag.com 61% OF RESPONDENTS SAID THEIR COMPANY PLANNED TO SPEND MORE ON TECHNOLOGY IN 2005 THAN IT DID IN 2004. RESULTS OBTAINED FROM JAN. 26 THROUGH FEB. 26. 73% OF RESPONDENTS SAID THE ABSENCE OF NHL HOCKEY THIS SEASON HAD NO...

Biotech.(Insiders' Biz)(intellectual property)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Boulder-based Glucon, a developer of blood glucose monitoring technology for home and clinical use, announced it has been granted a U.S. patent for using photoacoustic waves originating in a blood vessel to calculate the concentration of...

Biotech.(Insiders' Biz)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Boulder-based Sirna Therapeutics Inc. announced it is moving its headquarters to San Francisco's new China Basin Landing at Mission Bay this month. The 71-employee Sirna is involved in nucleic-acid technology for therapeutic and diagnostic...

Acquisition.(Insiders' Biz)(mergers and acquisition)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Sanborn, a Colorado Springs-based provider of geographic information systems (GIS) and photogrammetry, announced it has acquired Space Imaging's commercial and civilian value-added solutions business unit. Thornton-based Space Imaging, which...

Technology.(Insiders' Biz)(magazine rankings)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... For the fourth straight year, Fortune magazine named Louisville-based StorageTek No. 1 in the computer peripheral category of the publication's annual ranking of America's Most Admired Companies. Thirteen other Colorado companies also were...

Finance.(Insiders' Biz)(United General Financial Services Inc. acquired)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Denver-based United General Financial Services Inc. and its subsidiary companies have been acquired by First American Title Insurance Co. of Santa Ana, Calif. The purchase price was not disclosed. United General has been one of the nation's...

Colorado coal: boom yields four straight record years and $80,000 miners.
April 1, 2005... Just above the Family Dollar Store's illuminated sign on the west edge of Craig, you can see the lights of draglines at the Trapper Mine working high above town--their massive booms rotating back and forth in a perpetual dance. The metaphor is...

Where in the world was Gregg Moss: sidelined a year by illness, TV journalist is back.(Cover Story)
April 1, 2005... Gregg Moss has enjoyed a business journalist's career any reporter would envy. In 1993, Moss met President Clinton when the Denver Business Journal--Moss was associate publisher--won the national Small Business Media Advocate of the Year Award....

No small task providing health insurance and health care.(SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION)(Advertisement)
April 1, 2005... THE UNITED STATES SPENDS $1.65 TRILLION annually on health care, almost 14 percent of its gross domestic product. As health-care costs continue to rise with no end in sight, providers look for ways to deliver quality and affordable care to...

Initial lightbulp.(Tech Startup of the Month)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... In 2002, a friend introduced software consultant Greg Reinacker to weblogs--a.k.a. blogs, online journals that have grown increasingly popular. Reinacker dove into blogs headfirst. "Like everyone did at the time, I downloaded a blog tool and...

In a nutshell.(Tech Startup of the Month)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... There are about 8 million RSS feeds coursing through cyberspace, everything from "kids' blogs to the Wall Street Journal," said Reinacker, and that number is growing by the day. NewsGator offers a better way of keeping on top of this deluge of...

The market.(Tech Startup of the Month)(Weblogs)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Beyond the 8 million RSS feeds now being published, there is a community of 8 million bloggers (and a reader audience four times that size), as the publishing world tries to commercialize both concepts. The market could widen further as...

Financing.(Tech Startup of the Month)(Mobius Venture Capital)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Mobius Venture Capital funded a Series A round in June 2004 and a Series B round in November 2004. Numbers were not disclosed.

Convention contention Denver vies for spot among nation's top meeting places: British author Martin Amis once wrote that among the great cities of England there is, after all, London. And after London, Amis asked, what is there? Manchester? Birmingham? Liverpool?
April 1, 2005... Denver faces the same kind of question when it's asked if it can rank among the top convention cities in the nation. The $309 million expansion and opening of the new Colorado Convention Center invites that question. The municipal bond-funded...

Northern prospectors.(Who owns Colorado)
April 1, 2005... Jordon Perlmutter and his family are sitting on a real-estate fault line. Their 240-acre Larkridge Retail Center, an outdoor mall along Interstate 25 and E-470, is rising from the ground, pushed by the pressure of population growth in Berthoud,...

Yellow-page newcomers take on Dex.(Small biz)
April 1, 2005... A pair of Utah entrepreneurs who arrived in Denver a little over a year ago have turned an idea for a community yellow pages into a $1 million, 30-employee company. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Rob Crawley and Mike Sego didn't even have a...

MouCo Cheese.(Colorado Cool Stuff)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... After working at New Belgium Brewery during the micro-beer boom, the husband-and-wife team of Robert Poland and Birgit Halbreiter went into the cheese business in 2001, heeding the advice of Halbreiter's father, a master cheesemaker in Germany....

Nutballz.(Colorado Cool Stuff)
April 1, 2005... Nutballz was born in 2003 from Head Nut (and retired pro snowboarder) Kyla Duffy's own dietary problems. After Duffy couldn't find any tasty snacks that were gluten-free and low in sugar, she came up with her own in Nutballz, all-natural energy...

Backyard Safari Bug Vacuum and Habitat.(Colorado Cool Stuff)
April 1, 2005... In 1995, stockbroker Mike Searls invented an allowance kit to teach his kids about money. "Lo and behold, it became a company," he said. In the ensuing 10 years, that company--Summit Financial Products--has shipped millions of banks, gadgets...

Apron Memories.(Colorado Cool Stuff)
April 1, 2005... After her kids left the nest in 1999, homemaker Ellyn Anne Geisel decided to do "something different." Her project started as Apron Chronicles, a traveling museum exhibit about the history of "the icon of the homemaker," she said. It has since...

Dick Monfort: cattleman's cuts leave Rockies leaner, younger.(Executive edge)
April 1, 2005... Dick Monfort says running a large, family-owned cattle business in Greeley meant long days, tough decisions and holding out on buyout offers in the late 1970s. "Our family was faced with an awful cattle market," recalls Monfort, who joined...

Springtime in NFL land.(Sports Biz)
April 1, 2005... AH, APRIL. BROWNEA ARIZA BLOOMING AT THE BOTANIC Gardens, the welcome trickle of fresh mountain springs, the seasonal direct-mail assault from TruGreen. And here in the world of sports, amid the pageantry of opening day at Coors Field,...

A parade of lead balloons.(Rundles Wrap-up)
April 1, 2005... AS I LOOK BACK ON A LONG TIME OF SCRIBBLING like this, it occurs to me that among my many interests is retail, and more specifically retail development. When I saw a newspaper headline about a month ago concerning the merger of retail...