San Francisco Business Times articles from April 1997

San Francisco Business Times archives from April 1997

Sears Point starts its engines. (Sears Point Raceway to spend $40 million for improving the Sonoma raceway)
April 4, 1997... Raceway mogul revs up for $40 million overhaul Five months after taking control of Sears Point Raceway, North Carolina racing mogul Bruton Smith is popping the clutch on a major overhaul of the Sonoma road-racing circuit. The plan, projected...

PacBell packs punch: phone company counters jabs from AT&T, MCI. (Pacific Bell)
April 4, 1997... Pacific Bell is putting on the gloves and swinging back at AT&T and MCI. In the last 30 days, the San Francisco-based phone company has reversed a sit-back-and-take-it posture by filing complaints with the California Public Utilities...

HMO gets emergency transfusion: $3 million loan good for what ails CMA health plan. (health maintenance organization; California Medical Association)
April 4, 1997... Faced with the impending collapse of its 2-year-old health plan, the California Medical Association has borrowed $3 million from one of its subsidiaries to keep the troubled plan afloat. Borrowed from Audio-Digest Foundation, the association's...

How Swede it is: retailer hits East Bay. (furniture giant Ikea)
April 4, 1997... Swedish furniture giant Ikea is negotiating with the cities of Emeryville and Oakland to bring one of its enormous showroom stores as an anchor tenant for the South Bayfront retail development. Ikea has been working with city officials for...

East Bay exec homes give South Bay run for its money. (residential real estate developments in Silicon Valley, CA)
April 4, 1997... Bargain-hunting Silicon Valley executives are giving new meaning to the term affordable housing in the East Bay. For the last decade, rank-and-file workers have braved nerve-grinding commutes from technology industry employment hubs in San...

State error puts welfare HMO plans on critical list. (California Dept. of Health Services' mistake affects welfare and Medi-Cal recipients)
April 4, 1997... A screw-up by the state Department of Health Services threatens the survival of managed-care programs that have enrolled hundreds of thousands of welfare and Medi-Cal recipients, according to San Francisco public health officials and HMO...

New big wheel takes lead in used-car race. (Driver's Mart Worldwide)
April 4, 1997... Driver's Mart Worldwide, one of the nation's big three used-car superstore developers, is cruising Northern California for eight possible auto emporiums. The Grand Rapids, Mich. company, run by former Amway executive Thomas Eggleston, has 40...

Silicon Valley gold rush puts mansion market in the chips.
April 4, 1997... Barbara Tyler is on her car phone with a fellow Coldwell Banker real estate agent, discussing tomorrow's appointments with two prospective home buyers. "Sam, I'll bring the first buyer around at 1 o'clock. He's a Silicon Valley executive but...

Clorox rolls out ads to put shine on new auto products.
April 4, 1997... Clorox Co. is launching a hip, multimillion dollar advertising campaign to add luster to its newly acquired Armor All line of automotive products. The media blitz kicks off in late April with a series of national television and radio spots...

Agents ready to ride the wave of cresting housing market. (San Francisco Bay Area)
April 4, 1997... Lifted by a buoyant economy, Bay Area real estate agents are soaring higher than they have in nearly a decade. A torrent of pent-up demand is sweeping through the region's housing market, with demand threatening to outrace supply and touch off...

St. Luke's Hospital faces one-two punch from union, city. (San Francisco, CA)
April 4, 1997... Financially troubled St. Luke's Hospital is facing double trouble in its attempt to find a long-term strategic partner: a one-day strike threat by SEIU Local 250 and an implied threat by the City and County of San Francisco to walk away from...

Executive profile: Laura Knoop King. (Christie's International PLC regional director, San Francisco and Pacific Northwest)
April 4, 1997... Name: Laura Knoop King. Title: Regional director, San Francisco and Pacific Northwest. Company: Christie's, the auction house. Also, chairman of the Black & White Ball, the San Francisco Symphony's biennial fundraiser. Education: B.A. in...

Rival unions buddy up for Kaiser Permanente strike.(Health Care)
April 4, 1997... Kaiser Permanente and the always-rowdy California Nurses Association may be heading back to the bargaining table April 9 with a federal mediator, but the CNA continues to prepare for a series of one-day strikes against Kaiser scheduled to begin...

Rising housing market gives agents a chance to shine. (San Francisco Bay Area)
April 4, 1997... Twelve months of strong home sales have allowed Bay Area residential real estate agents to put themselves on much firmer financial footing. Coldwell Banker retained its top spot on the Business Times' List of the largest residential real estate...

Take a deep breath and play banker. (stress management company Essi Systems Inc.)(Small Business Growth Strategies)
April 4, 1997... Essi Systems Inc. is no ordinary stress management company. "We go beyond deep breathing and broccoli," quipped owner Esther Orioli. "Our mission is to transform workplace stress into optimal performance." San Francisco-based Essi provides...

Bigger in Texas: new buyout fund hits $2.3 billion. (Texas-Pacific Group)
April 4, 1997... Following on the success of a $720 million fund raised in 1994, Texas-Pacific Group of San Francisco and Fort Worth, Texas, has closed on $2.3 billion of a $2.5 billion buyout fund. The company did not disclose the returns of its first effort,...

In a red-hot economy, any job won't do. (employment in the San Francisco Bay Area)(Editorial)
April 4, 1997... Economist Joe Nation had a nagging suspicion that high-quality Bay Area jobs lost during the last recession had not been replaced. After crunching the numbers, he felt gratified to learn he was wrong. The Bay Area Council released Nation's...

Free Silicon Valley's high-technology slaves. (employees' right to leave a company)(Column)
April 4, 1997... Jan. 22, 1997, may be the date we will remember as the day when our rhetoric of employability came home to roost. Even the staunchest supporters of employability may need to rethink the notion. The occasion? Eleven Informix employees left...

Hospitals: a public past, a private future. (hospitals shed their public status)(includes related articles)
April 11, 1997... 'The small, independent community hospital can't survive on its own' The brilliant red, blue and yellow signs dotting light poles and sign posts throughout Castro Valley make a simple plea: Yes on A: Save Eden Hospital. But the reality is...

Technology's power surges, but oil rises to the top. (stock market analysis)(1997 Top 200 Greater Bay Area Public Companies)
April 11, 1997... Chevron Corp. remains the Greater Bay Area 200's premier corporate titan, by a margin of more than $5 billion. The industrial giant saw robust growth of 18.4 percent for the year, after five years of business reorganization that saw declines or...

Critics of transfers would rather fight than switch. (for-profit conversions of hospitals)
April 11, 1997... The transfer of public assets into private systems is drawing increasing scrutiny from legislators. The question is who will regulate the swallowing up of public hospitals by the private giants. Nationally, the American Hospital Association is...

Strategic partners: join forces for leads and profit. (Scott Simonich forms BWC Mortgage Services with Bank of Walnut Creek)
April 11, 1997... After two years as a mortgage lender at Bank of Walnut Creek and five years with an independent mortgage brokerage, Scott Simonich was ready to strike out on his own. But instead of going completely solo, he launched BWC Mortgage Services in a...

IBM issues challenge to Oracle; Big Blue mounts drive to dominate network computing.
April 18, 1997... IBM is gearing up to battle Oracle Corp. for dominance in the emerging network computing market, bulking up its San Francisco-based Western software operations and shifting key executives to the Bay Area. Mark Ferrer, 37, considered a rising...

Ron Cowan rallies; Harbor Bay developer settles with lender, gets ready to turn dirt. (Harbor Bay Business and Research Park)
April 18, 1997... Ending two years of bankruptcy, foreclosure and litigation, real estate developer Ron Cowan has reached a settlement with his lender that allows him to restart development of Harbor Bay Business and Research Park in Alameda. On March 31,...

Fairmont's prince returns with six hotel properties. (Fairmont Hotel Management Co.)
April 18, 1997... San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel Management Co. is adding six new properties to its stable, the largest purchase since Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal took control of the company three years ago. The Saudi billionaire, who owns 50 percent of the...

AT&T sells 44 Montgomery, bags $111M. (43-story office tower at Montgomery St.)
April 18, 1997... Another S.F. tower passes test with Ohio teachers pension fund State Teacher's Retirement System of Ohio is taking its second bite out of downtown San Francisco. The Columbus, Ohio-based pension fund is negotiating a deal to purchase the...

Shock treatment: waving good-bye to corporate America for your own venture? Be prepared for culture shock.(Special Report: Fast Track Quarterly)
April 18, 1997... Cubicle dwellers dreaming of jettisoning corporate drudgery to launch their own fast-track companies may quickly derail if they don't prepare for the culture shock of running their own show. Those who have done it say operating your own shop...

Still pitching: seat sales slow for Giants' new ballpark, but team execs are not worried - yet. (San Francisco Giants)
April 18, 1997... Just seven months before bulldozers are expected to break ground for the San Francisco Giants new China Basin ballpark, sales of "charter seats are rounding third - albeit sluggishly. Roughly 9,000 of the 13,700 seat licenses have been sold,...

Beefy burger kings. (Sydran Services Inc.)(Special Report: Fast Track Quarterly)(Company Profile)
April 18, 1997... Sydran soars toward $200 million by adding casual dining to its menu of fast-food franchises While PepsiCo is dumping its $12 billion restaurant operations, and McDonald's Corp. is launching a burger-industry price war, San Ramon's Sydran...

Half's measures: Robert Half harnesses outsourcing trend to prove that even big businesses can grow quickly. (Robert Half International Inc.)(Special Report: Fast Track Quarterly)(Company Profile)
April 18, 1997... Robert Half International is racking up huge profits riding one of the 1990s' most durable business trends: outsourcing. Focusing on high-margin business in specialty areas such as accounting, administration and information technology, the...

More than copycats: Xerox spin-off Documentum finds niche helping companies manage their paper electronically.(Special Report: Fast Track Quarterly)(Company Profile)
April 18, 1997... The challenge for Documentum Inc. is keeping its momentum. Spun out of Xerox in 1990, the Pleasanton-based company hit the fast track in 1996, with revenues growing 78 percent to $45.3 million. Profits tripled to $4.5 million, and the company...

Giving its image a complete makeover: Pixxon turns off color separation, turns on computer graphics. (Pixxon Imaging Studios)(Special Report: Fast Track Quarterly)(Company Profile)
April 18, 1997... When Jim Klos and his partner Gene Van Slett went looking for a way to describe Pixxon, their San Francisco-based creative imaging studio, they looked to the heavens. The result: a series of trade ads and posters titled "Play God." The most...

Vanstar takes inventory of computer market's troubles. (Vanstar Corp.)
April 18, 1997... Pleasanton's Vanstar Corp. is undertaking a major cost cutting campaign and inventory shift to position itself for an anticipated shortfall in its core personal computer equipment sales business. Vanstar, which sells and services computers and...

Dressing high-tech office in a new outfit. (Resource and Design Inc.)(Special Report: Fast Track Quarterly)(Company Profile)
April 18, 1997... Resource and Design finds that office furniture in the 1990s is about more than desks and file cabinets Resource and Design Inc. faces a challenge many fast-growing small companies will recognize: how to continue giving customers the personal...

Executive profile: Leonard Liu. (Walker Interactive Systems Inc. president and CEO)
April 18, 1997... Name: Leonard Liu. Title: Chairman, President and CEO. Company: Walker Interactive Systems Inc., the San Francisco-based financial and administration software company. Background: President, Acer Group Worldwide; chief operating officer,...

Sometimes one business spurs another. (DesignTemps)(Small Business Growth Strategies)(Company Profile)
April 18, 1997... Sally Nunn Newson launched her second business by piggybacking on her first. Newson had been running Nunn & Associates, her San Diego advertising agency, for almost 10 years when she noticed an unmistakable trend. A lot of her larger clients...

Booming state needs more places to call home.
April 18, 1997... The big news on the economic scene in California is steady and in some areas, explosive - growth and new job creation. The Wilson administration recently reported that the new job rate for the state was running about 1,100 daily. For a while,...