Philadelphia Business Journal articles from July 1992

Philadelphia Business Journal archives from July 1992

Upper Bucks hospital renovates to improve design of facilities. (Grand View Hospital) (Bucks County Economic Report)
July 27, 1992... About four year ago, the board of directors of Grand View Hospital decided the time had come to develop a master plan for the 250-bed facility in Upper Bucks County. During the previous two decades, the Sellersville hospital had grown...

Paying the price of pollution. (impact of pollution control on Philadelphia's economy) (Legacy of Poison, part 1)
July 27, 1992... For the United States, the environmental issue of the 21st century will probably have much less to do with curbing polluters and much more to do with coping with the legacy of poison that has been left after the polluters moved out of town....

Lifecall maker wants to get up an offering. (Response USA Inc.)
July 27, 1992... Response USA Inc. had fallen, and it's trying to get up. Known until five months ago as Lifecall America Inc., Response USA became famous from an advertising campaign promoting its major product -- a personal emergency response system that a...

From Bucks Co., they aspire to greater political glories. (Bucks County, Pennsylvania; Craig Lewis; James Greenwood) (Bucks County Economic Report)
July 27, 1992... Bucks County's two state senators are from different political parties and are sometimes on different sides of issues. But they have one thing in common this year: Both are trying to move up to higher office in the November elections....

New Jerseyan got business spin while he was living down under. (Dave Marcmann, president of Drum-Mates Inc.)
July 27, 1992... Dave Marcmann is a New Jerseyan who got his entrepreneurial idea far away -- in Australia. Marcmann, the president of Drum-Mates Inc. in Medford, learned the business in Adelaide, a quaint city in South Australia, and it doesn't take long...

Quarterly reports for local banks show an upturn. (Delaware Valley area) (Industry Overview)
July 27, 1992... Mirroring a national trend, the financial condition of the Delaware Valley's major regional banking companies showed continued improvement in the second quarter. Driven by better spreads between the cost of funds and loan yields, earnings of...

Into his second decade as Betz Laboratories' CEO. (John F. McCaughan)
July 27, 1992... John F. McCaughan thought about leaving Betz Laboratories Inc. only once in his 31-year career at the Trevose specialty chemical company. That was two weeks after he joined Betz's Canadian division in 1960. A Montreal native, McCaughan had...

Home health-care providers draft suit over reimbursements. (Medicaid)
July 27, 1992... Pennsylvania home health-care providers, long disturbed by state Medicaid reimbursement rates among the lowest nationwide, are threatening to go to court if they are unable to work out a remedy with the state. "Medicaid reimbursement...

Noisy office nuisance evolves into profitable software firm. (GMIS Inc.)
July 27, 1992... Patients walking into Dr. Elmer Gabrieli's Buffalo, N.Y., office during the 1970s, seeking blood tests or such, had to walk around a bulky machine rumbling through punch cards. Its whacka-whacking was unsettling to the patients, the...

Bristol Twp. fighting illegal dumping. (Bristol, Pennsylvania) (Legacy of Poison, part 1)
July 27, 1992... It's bad enough that Bristol Township is the home of one of the most toxic Superfund sites in Pennsylvania. Even worse is a situation where dangerous, unknown dumping is becoming common on lawns, back yards, city parks and empty ballfields....

The fallout from belching chemicals into the sky. (Legacy of Poison, part 1)
July 27, 1992... First came the stink. Then the nausea and sore throats. There went education. That's the scenario described by St. George's Elementary School Principal Jane Rowles when the Aldan Rubber Co. plant starts cooking next to her building in the...

Oxford Valley is focal point for scattered retail growth. (Bucks County Economic Report)
July 27, 1992... New roads, open land, shifting population. You know what that means -- shopping centers. The creators of King of Prussia, Cherry Hill and other major regional shopping hubs now bring you Oxford Valley, live and in living color. Like King...

Mission possible: planning for the next boom time. (Bucks County Economic Report)
July 27, 1992... The planning gurus of the Delaware Valley have conjured a vision of Bucks County featuring more people, more jobs and also more transportation and housing headaches. Bucks will be the second fastest-growing county in the state for the...

Peddler's Village to celebrate 30th year with new attraction. (Bucks County Economic Report)
July 27, 1992... The unofficial mayor of Peddler's Village, Earl Jamison, plans to open a new carousel museum in the tourist center later this year, its 30th anniversary. Peddler's Village, a conglomeration of tourist-oriented businesses in the central Bucks...

County analyzing revenues produced by new hotel tax. (Bucks County Economic Report)
July 27, 1992... * Tourism promotions will be funded through the levy. An initial revenue report on Bucks County's hotel tax indicates the levy, which went into effect on March 1, will bring in at least $26,000 a month. But that estimate -- derived from a...

Tyco Toys' Grey leads list of the highest-paid CEOs. (Tyco Toys Inc. CEO Richard E. Grey)
July 20, 1992... Richard E. Grey may be in the toy business, but he hasn't just been playing around for the last 6 1/2 years. The 57-year-old chief executive officer of Tyco Toys Inc. has transformed the Mount Laurel, N.J., company from a sleepy maker of...

Blue Cross moves to ax 8 hospitals; inks pact with HUP. (Independence Blue Cross; Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania)
July 20, 1992... Independence Blue Cross has taken the offensive in its ongoing contract talks by filing notices to cut off eight area hospitals. Blue Cross contracts with area hospitals expired June 30, but the old contracts remain in force while...

New CEO named at Old York Road bank. (Bank and Trust Company of Old York Road CEO Stephen P. Szemes)
July 20, 1992... Mark Hankin, embattled chairman and chief executive officer of the Bank and Trust Company of Old York Road, is stepping aside to make way for a new CEO with a turnaround mission. "I have a non-paying position at the bank," Hankin, a land...

Growing trend: farming out back-office operations. (office management services)
July 20, 1992... The Philadelphia office of accounting firm Grant Thornton has joined the ranks of American companies that have contracted out a portion of their office operations to a private contractor. While municipal and union officials debate the...

Township law would regulate small-business hazardous waste; storage, disposal and transportation would be covered. (Bristol, Pennsylvania)(includes related article)
July 20, 1992... Companies with toxic outputs too small for federal and state regulations on hazardous waste soon may have to worry about local standards if one Bucks municipality's proposed new ordinance sets a pattern. Taken separately, the waste generated...

Unisys' unassuming Unruh strives for turnaround. (Unisys Corp. CEO James Unruh) (Computers) (Company Profile)
July 20, 1992... When a company loses $1.78 billion over the last two years, there are a lot of bad days for the chief executive. But for James Unruh, last July 23 was a pretty bad one. That was when he had to announce another massive restructuring of Unisys...

CEOs of the Delaware Valley: profiling the people who run the area's largest publicly held corporations. (Section Two ) (Directory)
July 20, 1992... Charles E. Swope president and chairman of the board First National Bank of West Chester 9 N. High St. West Chester, Pa. 19380 Age: 61 Education: Washington & Lee University School of Law, doctorate, 1960; Bucknell University, bachelor's,...

Gibson: from behind the wheel to under the arena spotlights. (SMG Co. President Thomas R. Gibson)
July 20, 1992... Thomas R. Gibson is getting a lot of calls these days from friends. All are congratulating him on his new job. And a lot want tickets. That's because the 49-year-old suburban Philadelphian is moving by the end of the month from head of...

PCs are (for sale) everywhere; store formats galore. (Computers)
July 20, 1992... Computers have become every bit as ubiquitous as futurists predicted a decade ago -- with a hitch. The personal computer isn't in every American home the way television is, but it has found its way into nearly every type of store imaginable....

Point-of-sale companies pioneering applications. (Computers)
July 20, 1992... A raft of new products has brightened prospects for several Delaware Valley companies that make and distribute point-of-sale systems to retailers. * An anti-theft system that is an integral part of the packaging or product during...

Small firms looking to robotics.
July 20, 1992... Sparks fly and auto bodies jolt. Computer-driven robot arms whirl. A huge assembly cavern rings with noise. Technicians in white coats smile. Most people's image of what the use of robotics in manufacturing is all about involves big...

Rendell pays the price for a pay-later attitude. (Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell)
July 13, 1992... Flash back to 1975, when then-Mayor Frank Rizzo struck a deal with city unions: election-eve contracts of higher pay and more benefits, including better pensions. Or to 1981, when the Green administration favored an escalating payment plan...

Bell Atlantic employee cashes in on his fax idea. (Al Carr's FeatureFax, a network-based facsimile transmission service)
July 13, 1992... Like other entrepreneurs, Al Carr had thought up a new idea, studied the market and competition, found equipment vendors and convinced an investor to put up the money to back the project. Unlike most entrepreneurs, that investor was also...

Prognosis for the health-care field: money woes; HC4 is 'pretty much in limbo.' (Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council) (Industry Overview)
July 13, 1992... The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, the state's vehicle for measuring the quality and costs of health-care providers, once again finds itself in critical condition. Earlier this year, Gov. Robert P. Casey suggested giving...

Med schools are out $33 million. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) (Prognosis for the Health-Care Field: Money Woes)
July 13, 1992... Tuition hikes, postponed raises, layoffs, facility closings, construction delays and program stoppages are all among the remedies five Philadelphia medical schools are taking to compensate for the loss of a combined $33.3 million in state...

O'Brien subsidiary seeking Chap. 11 protection. (O'Brien Environmental Energy Inc.'s O'Brien Cogeneration Incorporated One)
July 13, 1992... O'Brien Environmental Energy Inc. has placed one of its plant development subsidiaries in Chapter 11 proceedings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Philadelphia. An unusual move for a publicly traded corporation, the subsidiary's bankruptcy...

Non-union workers take over water heater manufacturer. (Bradford-White Corp.)
July 13, 1992... One of the best-known names locally in water heaters, Bradford-White, is now owned by its non-union employees after an Employee Stock Ownership Trust purchased some of the assets from an Australian company for $12 million. The re-emergence...

Realen's Gateway parks itself at 15th and Vine. (Realen Properties' parking garage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) (Real Estate Month)
July 13, 1992... The parking garage is only the first phase of the ambitious project, which seeks to commercially develop a site on Center City's northwest fringe. The penny-a-day parking promotion has ended. The long lines of cars have disappeared. And for...

Sewer work, for-sale signs linger on languishing Lombard Street. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) (Real Estate Month) (Industry Overview)
July 13, 1992... Sewer replacement work along Lombard Street, slowly inching westward after beginning in the 300 block a couple of years ago, has depressed housing prices and made them a more difficult sell. It is a hindrance that has come amid a real estate...

Orleans turnaround plan: growth via diverse assets. (F.P.A. Corp., formerly Orleans Construction Co.) (Real Estate Month) (Company Profile)
July 13, 1992... The developer has big hopes for its publicly held unit. It plans acquisitions in New Jersey only when adjacent to presently held parcels. And it sees its range of products as a plus as it seeks to regain market dominance. It hasn't been an...

Liberty landmarks are big draw for out-of-towners. (Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
July 6, 1992... Pat Deltz, her daughter and son-in-law were in town for a couple of days. Pat's husband was attending a convention in Baltimore and she had always wanted to see historic Philadelphia. Her daughter lives in Virginia, so they got together and...

Wait goes on for Marriott to get started. (hotel firm needs more loans for new construction in Philadephia, Pennsylvania)
July 6, 1992... Marriott had said it would start building its massive hotel next to the Philadelphia convention center in May. Then June. Then July. Now, the latest projected groundbreaking date is Aug. 1, according to Roger Conner, a company spokesman....

Once they're here will they be able to get around? (transportation availability for visitors on opening of Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia)
July 6, 1992... Philadelphia's people movers are getting ready for the anticipated influx of folks expected to flock here when the convention center opens in about a year. The question is, will their efforts be too little or too late? "We're expecting...

Study says insurance choices were influenced by 'framing.' (differences in wording of car insurance policy options in Pennsylvania and New Jersey)
July 6, 1992... When asked, most New Jerseyans gave up some rights to sue. Their Pennsylvania counterparts didn't. Did the results stem from the wording of the question? When Pennsylvania and New Jersey sought to put the brakes on soaring automobile...

Big city music venue planned. (Heart to Heart Cafe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
July 6, 1992... A new performing arts center, dubbed the Heart to Heart Cafe, is expected to begin construction soon in a former men's clothing warehouse at the northeast corner of Third and Callowhill streets. Electric Factory Concerts is renovating two...