St. Louis Business Journal articles from July 1996

St. Louis Business Journal archives from July 1996

PHP doctors to divvy up $35 million. (United HealthCare Corp.'s payment to Physicians Health Plan of Greater St. Louis Inc. stakeholders)
July 1, 1996... United HealthCare Corp. is paying out $35 million to area doctors who hold the remaining 1 percent stake in Physicians Health Plan of Greater St. Louis Inc. About 2,000 area doctors control a 1 percent share in the managed care company. The...

Southwestern Bell lets apartment owners' fingers do the walking. (use of apartment owners and managers as sales agents)
July 1, 1996... Southwestern Bell is reaching out and touching St. Louis apartment owners and managers to protect the company's dominance in the local telephone service market. Under a five-state initiative called SmartMoves, Southwestern Bell is paying...

Brooks Fiber, bulging at seams, wants new office. (Brooks Fiber Properties Inc.'s planned office building in Town and Country, MO)
July 1, 1996... Growing by leaps and bounds, Brooks Fiber Properties Inc. plans to build a multi-million-dollar office building in Town and Country. James C. Allen, chief executive officer of the telecommunications services company, confirmed the company wants...

LaBarge-Clayco venture answers call of PCS market. (LaBarge Inc. and Clayco Construction Co.'s formation of LaBarge Clayco Wireless LLC; personal communications services)
July 1, 1996... The personal communications services market is calling, and two St. Louis-based companies are answering. LaBarge Inc. and Clayco Construction Co. formed a joint venture company, LaBarge Clayco Wireless LLC, in early May, to provide one-stop...

Dial U.S. answers the bell; AT&T gears for real fight. (competition in Missouri's local telephone services market)
July 1, 1996... Long-distance giant AT&T won't get into local markets without a fight - despite legislation designed to remove obstacles. Ameritech already has asked state regulators in its five-state service area to mediate the discussions, which company...

Utterbacks stand to reap savings with partnership. (establishment of the Fairmount St. Investments LP by the Utterback family)
July 1, 1996... No effect on Bank of Alton operations A proposed change in the ownership structure of the Bank of Alton could mean significant estate tax savings for the family of the majority shareholder and former chairman of the bank. The family has...

Ameritech, Bell face cellular challenge from AT&T, Sprint.
July 1, 1996... Choices. That's what St. Louis-area wireless telephone customers are about to get. Not only will cellular users be able to choose the types of services they want, they will be able to choose which company to use. AT&T and Sprint are poised...

Tidy business. (waste management firm Plant Maintenance Services)
July 1, 1996... Plant Maintenance Services expects to clean up $3 million in revenue Plant Maintenance Services 2650 Plaza Drive Highland, Ill. 62249 Business Activity: Plant Maintenance Services is a maintenance cleaning and waste materials handling company...

Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. (Proxy Report Excerpts)(Company Profile)
July 1, 1996... August A. Busch III Chairman, president and chief executive officer Anheuser-Busch Co. is the world's largest brewer and one of the largest theme park operators in the United States. The company is also the second-largest U.S. manufacturers of...

Bread prices rise as cost of flour hits record high.
July 8, 1996... Fazio's increases bread prices 7% With flour prices on the rise, area bakers face the choice of raising their prices or eating the difference. A combination of unusually and high demand has driven flour prices to an all-time high. In the...

KETC pre-empting federal funding with Internet, retail. (KETC-TV, Channel 9)
July 8, 1996... KETC-TV, Channel 9 hopes cyberspace and shopping malls will do for it what the federal government no longer is willing to do - provide about 10 percent of the budget of the public television station. Beginning July 10, KETC will offer dial-up...

Farb projects $1 million revenue for electronics hobby turned alarm firm. (Robert Farb, founder and president of Westco Security Systems Inc.)(Emerging Companies)(Company Profile)
July 8, 1996... Westco Security Systems Inc. 106 Four Seasons Center Chesterfield, Mo. 63017 Business Activity: Westco Security Systems specializes in the design and installation of burglar and fire alarm systems for homes and businesses. Within the last year...

Airport battle lands D.C. lawyer $1.8 million. (Eliot Cutler, lawyer at Cutler and Stanfield)
July 15, 1996... Money well-spent, says Bridgeton mayor The city of Bridgeton has paid $1.78 million to a Washington, D.C., law firm to fight its battle against the westward expansion of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The top legal gun is Eliot...

Hunter, Hamilton duel over future of CWE Bank. (President of Central West End Bank Board Jewel Hunter; President and CEO Kathleen Hamilton; Central West End Bank)
July 15, 1996... A dispute over the future of the Central West End Bank has caused a deep rift among the board of directors of the tiny neighborhood savings bank and has left some shareholders fuming. Four of the seven board members have voted in favor of a...

Neighbors sour on banks' $4 million Pride investment. (The Pride Organization Inc.)
July 15, 1996... Two years ago, Floyd E. Harris was a real estate novice who had a well-documented history of not being able to fulfill contracts or pay his bills. But that did not stop St. Louis area banks from launching Harris' real estate career and...

Ooh, baby: births quadruple at Missouri Baptist. (Missouri Baptist Medical Center)
July 15, 1996... There's a baby boom going on at Missouri Baptist Medical Center. A projected 2,500 newborns will be delivered at Missouri Baptist by the end of this year, more than four times as many as the 569 babies delivered at the hospital in 1994, the...

Hull and Oates score $5 million for expansion. (LAB Home Health owners Brett Hull and Adam Oates)
July 15, 1996... Backed by a Philadelphia-based venture capital firm, LAB Home Health Inc. is poised to start gobbling up its competition. LAB Home Health, one of the area's larger home health providers, closed a deal last week with CD Ventures that will fuel...

Monsanto considers selling chemical division, analysts say. (Monsanto Co.)
July 22, 1996... Monsanto Co.'s advertising slogan used to be, "Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible." Maybe not. Recent reports by analysts who follow the company say it is considering a future with fewer or no chemicals. According to the...

Channel 5 snares 57% of political advertising dollars.
July 22, 1996... TV's political dollars St. Louis television stations have netted $1.39 million in political advertising from the beginning of the year through July 8. More money is arriving for the Aug. 6 Primary election. Here's how it splits so...

$15 million will spruce up shiny Chromalloy Plaza.
July 22, 1996... A Goldman Sachs-backed limited partnership plans to employ a gut-and-glut strategy in Clayton's downtown office market. On July 3, the limited partnership paid $11.5 million for Chromalloy Plaza, an 18-story building at 120 S. Central Ave.,...

Top dog: Kennelwood chases pampered pets for $4.5 million. (Kennelwood Village)(Small Business: Emerging Companies)(Company Profile)
July 22, 1996... Business Activity: Kennelwood Village has taken the care of dogs to a new level with the introduction of its Doggie Day Camp. The concept, similar to day camp for children, was introduced last year and complements boarding, grooming, PlaySchool,...

United's $45 million hit tied to GenCare/PHP woes. (United HealthCare Corp.)
July 29, 1996... Health-care contracts with some of St. Louis' largest employers are putting a $45 million dent in the pocket book of United HealthCare Corp. United's financial problems in St. Louis are indicative of a national trend being experienced by...

New lease on life: failed retail shopping centers rejuvenated as office space. (Town and Country Commons shopping center)
July 29, 1996... When the Town and Country Commons shopping center opened its doors more than 10 years ago, its future for success was already being questioned by real estate prognosticators. In essence, they were right. The shopping center's inward-looking...

$24 million Gravois-Dillon Plaza signals growth trend.
July 29, 1996... If shopping centers signal growth, then Jefferson County is hot. The latest coup for the county is the construction and planned fall opening of a Sears Hardware store, the first anchor in Gravois-Dillon Plaza, a 350,000-square-foot shopping...

Possible swap adds flavor to Monsanto chemical talk. (Monsanto Co.)
July 29, 1996... Add Smith Barney Shearson to a list of investment houses speculating Monsanto Co. might shed portions of its chemical operations. In a June 14 report on Hercules Inc., another chemical firm, Smith Barney chemical analyst Jaine Mehring outlined...

Realtors get wired: Gundaker, Re/Max among those posting 'for sale' signs on-line. (Gundaker Realtors/Better Homes and Gardens; Re/Max Preferred Group)
July 29, 1996... Within the last year, real estate companies, agents and their listings have exploded on the Internet. Gundaker Realtors/Better Homes & Gardens has a web site. So does an assortment of Coldwell Banker-Ira E. Berry Inc. agents, The Henry Company...

LaBarge says $200 million in sales is no pipe dream. (Craig LaBarge of LaBarge Inc.)
July 29, 1996... Craig LaBarge wants his company to reach the $200 million mark in sales by the end of the decade. With revenue at about $75 million for the fiscal year that just ended, that will require an annual growth rate of about 30 percent. But that...

Duke leads parade of REITS into Midwest. (Duke Realty Investments, Inc.; real estate investment trusts)
July 29, 1996... The real estate investment business in the Midwest is taking off as more publicly traded firms gobble up property. Until recently, the Midwest was an untapped location for the operation of real estate investment trusts, known as REITs, but...

Brinkmann defies logic, grows in troubled industry. (R.G. Brinkmann Construction Co. continues to grow despite recession in retail industry)
July 29, 1996... R.G. Brinkmann Construction Co. continues to grow while its biggest customer base - the retail industry - is downsizing. Brinkmann more than tripled in size during the past three years - from $20 million in 1993 to $65 million in 1995. The...

Home Savings scores big with Project Home Run. (Home Savings of America cuts real estate holdings)
July 29, 1996... Think financial institutions and what generally comes to mind is lots of offices, conveniently located close to customers. But Home Savings of America, one of the nation's largest savings bank and residential mortgage lenders, is changing that...

By the numbers: Weiss, Yess count on 30% growth in revenue in '96. (Weiss, Yess and Co.)
July 29, 1996... Weiss, Yess and Co. 111 West Port Plaza Suite 517 Maryland Heights, 63146 Business Activity: As Olympic athletes achieve lifelong goals in Atlanta, two CPAs in St. Louis are fulfilling their dreams. Art Weiss and Greg Yess had been...

Development west creates 'sleeper market' in north. (St. Louis-area development; redevelopment activity)
July 29, 1996... As development of the St. Louis metro area migrates westward along the major interstate corridors, land scouts are making sure good raw ground isn't being left behind. "We've had a growing shortage of large industrial sites, particularly from...

'Go north' the cry to find wide open office space. (St. Louis County)
July 29, 1996... Aside from downtown, companies looking for large blocks of office space have only two options - look in north St. Louis County or look to build. "If you're talking about large blocks of contiguous space, those are the only two options," said...

McDonnell Douglas Corp. (proxy report excerpts)
July 29, 1996... Harry C. Stonecipher President and chief executive officer McDonnell Douglas is the world's leading producer of military aircraft and the third-largest commercial aircraft manufacturer. As one of the top makers of helicopters, missiles, sensing...