St. Louis Business Journal articles from February 1996

St. Louis Business Journal archives from February 1996

Developer floats $270 million mall plan: Saks, Neiman outlets may dress up Eureka site. (Teplitz Development Co.; Saks and Co.; Neiman Marcus Co.; Eureka, Missouri)
February 12, 1996... A Peoria, Ill., developer wants to see how a $270 million "megamall" plays in Eureka. Jack Teplitz, president of Teplitz Development Co., envisions building a 2 million-square-foot regional mall filled with manufacturer outlets and discount...

Sunnen bores in on overseas markets: Jim Berthold looks for successor in-house. (Sunnen Products Co.)
February 12, 1996... Jim Berthold is retooling Sunnen Products to put more emphasis on international sales and to create a management succession plan. The reorganization will allow several of the company's most talented executives to vie for Berthold's job as head...

A stitch in time: Cobblestone mends leather at 6 stores. (Cobblestone Quality Shoe Repair)(Company Profile)
February 12, 1996... Cobblestone Quality Shoe Repair 8855 Ladue Road (and five other locations) Business Activity: Cobblestone Quality Shoe Repair is a franchise shoe repair operation with six locations in the metropolitan St. Louis area. All but one of the owners...

Data Research Associates Inc. (proxy report excerpts)(Company Profile)
February 12, 1996... MichaeI J. Mellinger Chairman, president and chief executive officer The primary business of Data Research Associates Inc. is automation systems integration for libraries and other information providers. The company offers proprietary...

Laclede Steel loses $10 million. (Laclede Steel Co.)
February 19, 1996... 50 to lose jobs at steel mill in Alton Laclede Steel Co. is casting off 50 employees at its Alton steel mill and posting a $10 million loss as part of its most recent restructuring. The loss also is spurring the company to modify agreements...

Hoffner gets his Bearings, sells Engineered Sales Inc. (Warren Hoffner III; Cleveland, OH-based Bearings Inc.)
February 19, 1996... Entrepreneur Warren "Bud" Hoffner III has sold his family's company, Engineered Sales Inc., for nearly $14 million in stock to Cleveland-based Bearings Inc. Engineered Sales is a distributor of components for hydraulics and pneumatics. It has...

Earth City lands $10 million Georgia-Pacific warehouse. (Earth City's Corporate Park area; Georgia-Pacific Corp.)
February 19, 1996... Georgia-Pacific Corp.'s shrinking number of distribution centers means an enlargement of its St. Louis operations. The Atlanta-based company plans to build a $10 million, 235,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center in Earth City's...

Downtown St. Louis plans aggressive role in development. (Downtown St. Louis Inc.)
February 19, 1996... Downtown St. Louis Inc. plans to take a more aggressive leadership role in economic development issues in the city's central business corridor. "We have come up with a new direction for the organization. That seemed appropriate in a year when...

Northwest office market ripe for new construction. (St. Louis County, Missouri)(Industry Overview)
February 19, 1996... Plans for a new office building in northwest St. Louis County are coming - so predict real estate managers in the West Port, Earth City and Riverport area. They just don't know where or how soon. But consider: Office vacancy rates there...

Express Personnel: Barber family puts people in their place. (Express Personnel Services Inc.)(Emerging Companies)(Company Profile)
February 19, 1996... Express Personnel Services 11710 Administration Drive Suite No. 9 Maryland Heights, Mo. 63146 Business Activity: Express Personnel Services is a temporary and permanent placement service that added an executive recruitment division at the...

Alexian Brothers Hospital. (Proxy Report Excerpts)(Company Profile)
February 19, 1996... Deno Fabbre President and chief executive Founded in 1869, Alexian Brothers Hospital of St. Louis is a 203-bed acute care hospital with a medical staff of more than 200 physicians representing about 30 specialty fields. Located on South...

Kiel Partners skating on thin ice: debts far exceed projections in 'worst-case' scenario. (Kiel Center Partners)
February 26, 1996... Kiel Center, touted as a facility that would end the financial problems of the St. Louis Blues, has become a drain on the hockey team and the partnership of civic leaders that own the team and the arena. Kiel Center Partners' annual debt...

KMOX given ultimatum: double profits. (radio station KMOX-AM)
February 26, 1996... Imagine the new boss in a corporate takeover arrives and promises the leading local radio station autonomy - with one string attached: double the profits. That's the proposition facing Rod Zimmerman, general manager of KMOX-AM and KLOU-FM....

Guys gobbles up Eagle snacks distribution unit. (Guys Foods Inc.; Eagle Brand Sales Inc.)
February 26, 1996... A suburban Kansas City snack food operator is hiring the management team from the St. Louis Eagle Snacks distributor. Guys Foods, part of Family Snacks Inc. in Liberty, Mo., is making a serious run at expanding its existing snack food...

Minority contractors can't get big jobs: lack of capital, training cited as reasons why.
February 26, 1996... Samuel Hutchinson can get all the nickel-and-dime construction projects he wants. Big-ticket projects, however, remain elusive for Hutchinson's Interface Construction Corp. and other minority-owned construction companies based in the St....

Bi-State asks Danforth, others for help on budget. (Bi-State Development Agency; former Senator John Danforth)
February 26, 1996... Bi-State Development Agency is bringing in some big guns - including former U.S. Sen. John Danforth - to find other ways to fund the agency's $112.8 million operating budget. Facing up to $3.7 million in federal funding cuts, the Bi-State...

A-B taps Tarlton, Alberici, Fru-Con in brewery upgrade. (Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.; Tarlton Construction Co.; J.S. Alberici Construction Company Inc.; Fru-Con Construction Corp.)(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... Visitors to Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc.'s St. Louis campus these days may get more than a lesson in the brewing process. On their brewery tour, they're also seeing firsthand the brewery's $500 million expansion of its Pestalozzi Street...

Task force disputes schools' forecast of $208 million deficit. (St. Louis, Missouri public school district)
February 26, 1996... A Civic Progress report scheduled to be completed soon is expected to project little or no financial deficit for the St. Louis public school district, should the court-ordered school desegregation program come to an end. The report would...

McCarthy hungers for high-tech.(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... Karl Kloster's appetite for health-care construction projects has waned. Instead of loading up on big-ticket hospital projects, Kloster, president of McCarthy's Midwest division, is munching on chips and wafers. That's computer chips...

Sverdrup's Riverport plan: shops, services, restaurants. (Sverdrup Investments Inc.)(Structures: Construction, Architecture, Engineering)
February 26, 1996... Riverport planners are aggressively pursuing a master planning initiative to add retail shops, entertainment venues and business services to the office/entertainment complex in Maryland Heights. Kyle King, director of development for...

Retail developers wary of new shopping centers.(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... As retailers assess the damage from a disappointing 1995 and the long-expected shakeout of underperforming stores continues, retail developers in St. Louis are taking a wait-and-see approach. The watchword: caution. "Developers are going...

Mark Twain counts on new services for retail customers. (Mark Twain Bancshares Inc.)
February 26, 1996... Mark Twain Bancshares Inc., long considered an area leader in loans to small- and mid-sized businesses, has launched a spate of new retail banking services. The bank has more than tripled the size of its automated teller network in two...

Industrial projects boom; office activity slow, steady. (St. Louis, Missouri)(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... Industrial construction will continue to boom this year while the market for office space continues its steady recovery, area developers say. Last year, 1.8 million square feet of new industrial space was constructed in St. Louis County....

Supercomputer maker inks deal with Chesterfield firm. (contract between Cray Research Inc. and Cowsert Corp.)
February 26, 1996... Supercomputer maker Cray Research Inc. has signed a deal to use Chesterfield-based Cowsert Corp.'s backup computer software. Under the agreement, Cray Research will offer Cowsert's XPress Backup service on the Cray CS6400 enterprise server....

Panel votes to kill Research Park tax break. (Missouri Research Park)
February 26, 1996... A bill that seeks to eliminate the property tax exemption for companies at the Missouri Research Park was unanimously passed by a House committee Wednesday. The bill was proposed by Rep. Harriet Tatum-Brown, R-Wentzville. She said there...

Outpatient care, prevention shrink hospital construction. (St. Louis, Missouri)(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... With managed health care driving increased emphasis on prevention an outpatient services, hospital construction has fallen dramatically in the past few years. Still, there is more than $117 million in construction projects under way at...

MEMC Electronic expansion boosts plant capacity, size. (MEMC Electronic Materials Inc.)(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... St. Charles County expects about $750 million in new development this year. Two-thirds of that amount will be In commercial and industrial investments, and $250 million will be for about 2,500 new homes, according to the St. Charles County...

LaserSight's vision to come from St. Louis. (LaserSight Inc.)
February 26, 1996... LaserSight Inc., a publicly traded company formerly located in Orlando, Fla., has relocated to the West Port area. The move, made late last year, is a result of a reorganization and the fallout of a management restructuring. Daily...

Governments build new courts, jails into budgets.(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... Armed with billion-dollar budgets and steep capital-improvement needs, federal, state and local governments are loosening their purse strings to build new judicial centers, courthouses and government facilities. In St. Louis, no other...

College construction benefits architects, engineers, builders.(Structures: Construction, Architecture and Engineering)
February 26, 1996... Architecture, engineering and construction finns are benefiting from a mini-boom in new school projects. The Lawrence Group, Michael Swim & Associates and Alberici have taken on the A million renovation of Xavier Hall at St. Louis...

The direct approach: by mail, phone, Sterling gets idea across. (Sterling Direct Inc.)
February 26, 1996... Business Activity. Sterling Direct is a direct marketing and print production finn with 60% of its business being direct mail. Sterling works in partnerships with printing companies, document service companies and the Postal Service to produce...

Cassity latest St. Louis funeral home to be bought. (Cassity Heritage Funeral Homes to be acquired by Service Corporation International)
February 26, 1996... Cassity Heritage Funeral Homes, a St. Louis-based chain, is being bought by Houston-based Service Corp. International, the world's largest funeral and cemetery company. Cassity Heritage, with five funeral homes in the metropolitan area and...