Business Courier Serving Cincinnati - Northern Kentucky articles from August 2000

Business Courier Serving Cincinnati - Northern Kentucky archives from August 2000

Junior inks endorsement deal.
August 4, 2000... Provident signs Griffeys to seven-year contract Ken Griffey Jr. has teamed with his father to sign a seven-year contract to pitch Provident Financial Group Inc., the center fielder's first local endorsement deal since returning to...

City rolls dice on Carthage housing plan.
August 4, 2000... A FORMER COMMERCIAL SITE IN CINCINNATI'S industrial heart is about to be transformed into an experimental neighborhood. The most expensive CitiRama in Cincinnati's history will feature 64 new single-family homes that will look like...

Japan nonstop tops China on local wish list.
August 4, 2000... Delta service could mean boost for area economy Delta Air Lines Inc.'s push to get nonstop flights from Cincinnati to China would be a boon for the Tri-State economy, but it's the prospect of a nonstop flight to Japan that has locals...

Dems hit trail with rolling campaign aid.
August 4, 2000... It's not the message, but the medium that matters to us. Especially when that medium is a giant rolling television screen linked to two wireless cameras, a high-tech editing suite and a concert-quality sound system. "We can break...

Louisvi11e Kroger offers music lessons for kids.
August 4, 2000... Parents shop while Junior gets culture Come September, a Kroger Co. store in suburban Louisville will add an innovation that promises to be music to the ears of busy shoppers--literally. Parents of musically inclined children will be...

CORRECTIONS.
August 4, 2000... In the July 28 list, "Largest Raises of TriState Public Company Executives," John Voelker's 1999 total compensation was reported incorrectly. The total should be $154,287. The July 28 Public File incorrectly stated Chemed's Corp.'s...

Issues clear in county race.
August 4, 2000... Candidates diverge on stadium, transit plans In their first debate of the 2000 campaign season, Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus squared off July 28 against Democratic challenger and Cincinnati City Councilman Todd Portune....

Club wrestling with 'men only' policy.
August 4, 2000... ADMITTING WOMEN WOULDN'T BREAK the 147-year-old Cincinnati Athletic Club, but the remodeling bill might. Keith Koerner says he's not against women joining the nation's oldest all-male athletic club. As general manager of the Cincinnati...

S&P downgrades outlook on AFC.
August 4, 2000... Standard & Poor's, the New York credit rating agency, has revised its outlook on Carl Lindner's American Financial Group Inc., saying the company's weak second-quarter results will not improve soon because of stiff competition. In an Aug. 2...

Lodgian snubs Yung, sells 10 hotels.
August 4, 2000... Lodgian Inc., the Atlanta-based hotel chain that Northern Kentucky hotelier William Yung has been trying to acquire for several months, has announced the sale of 10 hotels for $132 million in cash, increased its loss estimates for last year's...

Manor Care opens Kenwood facility.
August 4, 2000... Manor Care Inc., a Toledo-based long-term care company, opened an assisted living facility in Kenwood Aug. 1. The facility, called Arden Courts, is designed specifically for people in the early to middle stages of Alzheimer's disease. The...

Gov.Connect helping wire public agencies.
August 4, 2000... Blue Ash firm links governments to citizens GovConnect.com executives know that dealing with the government is seldom easy, even when your task is to make things easier for the government itself. There's red tape, budgets and politics,...

Doctor group opens N. Ky. surgery center.
August 4, 2000... Patient First's gastroenterologists to use facility Northern Kentucky's largest independent physician group will open its first outpatient surgery center in Crestview Hills in mid-August. Though the majority of the 56 physicians at...

Floturn diversifying with New York metal shop buy.
August 4, 2000... Fairfield company makes drums for laser printers Bob Glutting looked closely at more than 100 different machining houses before deciding to acquire a $9 million metal shop in Shortsville, N.Y. "It's not our goal or strategy to buy for...

Bengals to debut pregame show on Channel 12.
August 4, 2000... The Cincinnati Bengals will unveil their first-ever pregame television show, "Bengals Weekly," on September 3, one week before the team's regular-season opener against the Cleveland Browns. Team officials are in the final stages of signing...

CB Richard Ellis angles to manage ballpark facilities.
August 4, 2000... A groundbreaking may be two years away but CB Richard Ellis already is looking score new business at the newly christen Great American Ball Park. The local office of the Los Angeles-based real estate brokerage has offered services in the...

Peoples to double Crestview Hills headquarters.
August 4, 2000... Preparing for future growth, Peoples Bank of Northern Kentucky has acquired two plots of land for new branch offices and will soon finalize plans to double the size of its headquarters in Crestview Hills. President and CEO John Finnan said...

Out-of-town banks getting chunk of local SBA loans.
August 4, 2000... Area institutions are on track to record some $68 million, in Small Business Administration-backed loans in the current fiscal year, which will be second only to last year. Local lenders have generated $51.1 million in loans from Oct. 1 to June...

Batesville Casket ready to serve baby boomers.
August 4, 2000... Sales were doing just fine in the mid-'90s for the Batesville Casket Co., the nation's largest casket manufacturer based in Batesville, Ind. But president Dave Hirt thought sales could be better. So after some intensive consumer research,...

Supplier strives to meet competition from Web.
August 4, 2000... Mark Faessler remembers me early days of Progress Supply Inc. When a contractor walked in the company's first warehouse on York Street in the West End and asked for a part the small inventory didn't have in stock, one of the company's...

P&G promises return to growth.
August 4, 2000... Newly appointed Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley, in his first earnings conference call with analysts, outlined his plan for returning the consumer products giant to double-digit earnings growth. "Our focus near-term is operational," Lafley...

Ohio Casualty losses mount.
August 4, 2000... Ohio Casualty Corp. lost $8.2 million during the second quarter, due to variety of factors including higher loss rates and inadequate pricing. The Fairfield-based insurer said its attempts to rein in expenses are beginning to pay off, as are...

Interlott posts improved numbers.
August 4, 2000... Helped by new contracts with the Pennsylvania and Maryland state lotteries, Interlott Technologies Inc. sales and profits skyrocketed during the second quarter. Revenue more than doubled from $5 million last year to $14 million. Profits came in...

Charge against AK Steel rejected.
August 4, 2000... The National Labor Relations Board, Region 8, rejected an unfair labor practice charge against AK Steel filed by the United Steelworkers of America last October. The charge was filed regarding the Middletown company's lockout of USWA Local 169...

Provident creates e-billing alliance.
August 4, 2000... Cincinnati-based Provident Bank has joined fortes with Derivion to allow for electronic billing internally and for its customers. Atlanta based Derivion is an application service provider who delivers comprehensive e-billing. Provident said it...

Cenestin added by three HMOs.
August 4, 2000... Health maintenance organizations in Michigan, Wisconsin and California have begun offering Cenestin, the estrogen replacement drug made by Pleasant Ridge-based Duramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. The three HMO include a combined 500,000 enrollees....

Broadwing rolls out new products.
August 4, 2000... Two divisions of Broadwing Inc. announced the rollout of new products. Broadwing Communications said it has begun offering small and mid-sized businesses shared Web hosting services. ZoomTown.com, the company's Internet service provider, said...

Bed Bath & Beyond.
August 4, 2000... Piglet couldn't go to market. Bed Bath & Beyond stayed home. Julia Child couldn't make roast beef. And a bunch of Rookwood Pavilion retailers cried wee, wee, wee as developers wished they'd stayed home. The would-be grand openings of...

Chief Financial Officer Steven Rolls.
August 4, 2000... After two days of extraordinarily heavy trading and a more than 19 percent drop in stock price, Convergys officials appeared stirred, but not shaken. Chief Financial Officer Steven Rolls set his public relations machine in motion,...

Hamilton County Republican.
August 4, 2000... It was a Hamilton County Republican's behind-the-scenes dream come true. Rob Fredericks, administrative aide to Hamilton County Commissioner John Dowlin, spent this past week in Philadelphia keeping the riffraff away from the Bush family...

IAMS offers free consulting to selected small manufacturers.
August 4, 2000... The Institute of Advanced Manufacturing Sciences will launch a new program offering five hours of free engineering and technical consulting to selected local manufacturers with less than 100 employees, according to Sue Leitner, communications...

Neyer may redevelop building purchased from Christ Hospital.
August 4, 2000... Al Neyer Inc. has secured a $1.5 million contract to purchase a 12,000-square-foot Christ Hospital-owned building on Pfeiffer Road in Blue Ash, near Watson Bros. Brewhouse. Ken Schon, director of office development with ANT, said his firm will...

COURTING EMPLOYEES.
August 4, 2000... Digineer has created an atmosphere that gives employees a good reason to stay. Jeff Amfahr considers lunchtime basketball games as imperative as 401(k) plans when it comes to retaining employees. That's why the chief technology officer...

WebFeat taking the mystery out of e-commerce.
August 4, 2000... Web site design firm focuses on education WebFeat Inc. founder and president Michelle Selnick believes that size doesn't matter. She is proud of her small but growing company and its focus on small to mid-size clients. Mariemont-based...

Communication, not control, best way to lead.
August 4, 2000... Old-style management won't work anymore A few days ago, I was coaching one of my clients on developing some new ideas to inspire his team. Joe has spent the last year building his dream team, and he's very interested in making sure he keeps...

If you promise the world, you had better deliver.
August 4, 2000... Your reputation will depend on results Sales lesson #1: Promise the world -- we'll figure out how to do it later. In today's competitive market we are faced with an even higher frustration level from our salespeople. People are...

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE.
August 4, 2000... ACCOUNTING Beth Fish has been named human resource manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers. ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING CDS Associates Inc. has hired the following: Kathleen Bollmer, as graduate engineer in the site section; Michael...

Technology ups popularity of private equity investing.
August 4, 2000... Sharing of information online is making investments more open So you want to get in on a ground-floor opportunity. Before the IPO. Before the line of willing investors gets too long. Before the stock price gets too steep and the shine wears...

Today's market success depends on new ideas.
August 4, 2000... The past five years have been wonderful for many investors. There are many ways to achieve investment results. Here are some things we think are a guide for investing success. We feel that these philosophies will work well in the foreseeable...

LCA volume up, earnings down amid price war.
August 4, 2000... Low prices will spur shakeout, analysts say In the last year, LCA-Vision Inc. went from being one of two laser vision correction companies in Greater Cincinnati to sharing the market with six different firms. Montgomery Road, home to...

Macke/Meder sifting sites for Fidelity's expansion.
August 4, 2000... Quenching what seems to be a perpetual thirst for expansion in the Tri-State, Fidelity Investments Inc. of Boston is looking to grow again. Earlier this spring, Fidelity signed a lease at RiverCenter I in Covington for 17,000 square feet to...

Huff diversifies with new apartment services unit.
August 4, 2000... Huff Inc. of Fort Mitchell recently unveiled a new division, Huff Rental Solutions, targeting corporate relocation clients who aren't looking to buy their own piece of terra firma. "This type of service is currently an unmet need in the...

West Side builder brings touch of Boston to Dent.
August 4, 2000... Question: When will the architectural ambience of Dent become confused with the colonial design exhibited by centuries-old buildings in Boston? Answer: Never. But that hasn't stopped a local developer from launching the second phase of a...

DEAL OF THE WEEK.
August 4, 2000... THIS WEEK'S DEAL: CCR's Sundermann, Schuermann at Duke sell Whiting site for $7.2M DEAL OF THE WEEK examines a recent noteworthy lease or sale of local commercial property and/or a residential sale; the transaction must exceed $1 million...

Digital solutions may not always be best choice.
August 4, 2000... IF the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.--Abraham Maslow Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the famous MIT Media Lab, wrote the prescient book, "Being Digital" in 1995; that's somewhere between 35 and...

STARTING UP SMART.
August 4, 2000... BusinessHere.com hired seasoned tech executives to take dot-com to next level For an Internet start-up looking to raise venture capital, the first question often asked by potential investors is, "How good is your management team?" ...

Amazon to ride shotgun in merged Webvan.
August 4, 2000... Strategic partnerships haven't been discussed If the proposed merger between online grocers Webvan Group Inc. and HomeGrocer.com Inc. gets the green light from shareholders, Amazon.com Inc. will own a 6 percent stake in California-based...

EGovNet raises $3.2M, plans venture round.
August 4, 2000... A Columbus-based company that provides Internet services to government and regulatory agencies has closed a $3.2 million round of financing and plans to embark on a $25 million venture capital round in September. Founded a year ago,...

Savvy companies know e-business isn't just a fad.
August 4, 2000... KT Workstyle uses Net to promote products Do you still think doing business over the Internet is a passing fad? Do you think that e-business is something that your company can worry about tomorrow? Well, you had better think again! Savvy...

Dayton entrepreneurs find a home in i-Zone.
August 4, 2000... Nine Dayton groups make up tech initiative The first official meeting of Dayton's i-Zone initiative attracted the largest crowd of local entrepreneurs to date, continuing the early interest generated in the i-Zone. While the first...

Auto company sponsors site for repair shops.
August 4, 2000... A $250 million technology provider for the automotive aftermarket industry is steering onto the Internet for future business, in a move that company executives predict will help repair shops make more exact estimates. Austin, Texas-based...

Vigilant start-ups can avoid patent law pitfalls.
August 4, 2000... Ruling set up criteria for business-method patents You've come up with a terrific concept for marketing your products or services over the Internet and have worked diligently to bring that concept to reality. You've spent thousands of...

What's for Free launches site, faces legal fight.
August 4, 2000... Salary, property claims swirl around executives A young Scottsdale, Ariz., Internet company, What's For Free Technologies Inc., recently launched its Web site, but what visitors to the site see on screen is just the tip of the iceberg. ...

Wearable computers wed tech and fashion.
August 4, 2000... Portable CPUs may be moving into mainstream When mechanics building prototype aircraft in The Boeing Co.'s Joint Strike Fighter program wanted to consult with the project's engineers, it was no easy task: The mechanics were stationed in...

Internet is no longer a 'playground for nerds'.
August 4, 2000... Keys to e-business: building brand, loyalty, traffic The notion of "cybergeek" has changed. The image shift from pocket-protected programmer to savvy information connoisseur was chronicled in a June 1998 article in Bu Business Week....

Investing in 'Smart TV' still proves to be risky business.
August 4, 2000... More affordable devices will increase audience After several failed attempts at interactive TV, investors remain skittish about the potential of making TV smarter. That explains why liberate Technologies Inc., the Oracle spin-off that...

Sprint targets Warren County.
August 4, 2000... Small business owners in Warren County can start selling goods and services online with a few clicks of a mouse, thanks to a new service being offered by Sprint. The eCommerce Business Builder allows merchants with no programming...

Symbol buys Telxon.
August 4, 2000... Blue Ash-based Telxon Corp. was bought by rival hand-held computer maker Symbol Technologies Inc. for $465 million in stock. The deal followed 18 months of legal wrangling over fraud accusations and an ongoing investigation by the Securities...

LCA opens new facility.
August 4, 2000... Cincinnati-based LCA-Vision Inc., a provider of laser vision-correction services, will open its 27th facility this August in Rockville, Md. Company officials also announced plans to establish six more centers by year end.

Convergys lands contracts.
August 4, 2000... Cincinnati-based Convergys Corp. has signed a five-year billing and customer care contract with Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless provider, which claims 25 million customers nationwide. The new provider was formed through the...

Anthem makes deal with CVS.com.
August 4, 2000... Anthem Prescription Management, which administers the pharmacy benefits for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield health care plans in the Tri-State, forged a deal that gives APM customers the ability to buy products over the Internet through...

Cutanogen gets state investment.
August 4, 2000... Ohio's Industrial Technology and Enterprise Advisory Council approved $389,900 in investments for Cincinnati-based Cutanogen, a company involved in the research and development of tissue-engineered skin substitutes for the treatment of burns...

Pomeroy completes Datanet buy.
August 4, 2000... Hebron-based Pomeroy Computer Resources Inc. has wrapped up its purchase of Datanet Inc., its second acquisition in a month. Datanet is based in Raleigh, N.C., and employs 111. CFI Stephen Pomeroy said the buy gives Pomeroy added services in...

Louis Breeden.
August 4, 2000... Louis Breeden of Louis Breeden Promotions was the recipient of the Hand-in-Hand Award from Children's Protective Services.

Judy Pogue.
August 4, 2000... Judy Pogue, president of Sibcy Cline Relocation Services, has earned the Certified Relocation Professional designation from the Employee Relocation Council.

CBIZ Technologies.
August 4, 2000... CBIZ Technologies has been named to the Great Plains Inner Circle, an accomplishment earned by firms whose sales achievements rank them at the top echelon of Great Plains' global network of value-added reselling partners.

Design Team One Inc.
August 4, 2000... Design Team One Inc., Cincinnati, has been selected to help develop the Web site for Rubber Queen, the Lancaster Colony Automotive Group's flagship brand.

ASK THE CEO.
August 4, 2000... THIS WEEK'S QUESTION: How important is A high-speed Internet access at your office? ASK THE CEO is a continuing series in which we ask important-to-the-region questions of corporate leaders. Len Haussler Opus Capital...

Megamerged radio: same old, same old every day.
August 4, 2000... Is it wrong to expect variety, or is that concept as passe as the pastel-blue sports jacket I keep waiting to come back into fashion? Music is a very large part of my life. Even during those eight to 10 hours a day that I am dotting the i's...

Ballot proposal won't preserve much farmland.
August 4, 2000... Urban sprawl has captured headlines in newspapers across Ohio. Spurred on by recommendations from former Gov. George Voinovich's Farmland Preservation Task Force, state legislators now want to conserve more open space by increasing spending and...

Compromise on estate tax.
August 4, 2000... Nothing is certain except death and taxes, according to the old adage. But there's a chance the link between those two soon could be severed. The U.S. House and Senate both have passed a bill that would eliminate the so-called "death tax,"...

'Big Pig Gig' worth a trip downtown.
August 4, 2000... This summer is a great time to bring the kids -- or the parents -- and come downtown. Parking on weekends is very reasonable and readily available. But why come downtown now when all the roads are torn up? There are a number of reasons....

COURIER RATE BAROMETER.
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INSIDER TRADING RECAP.
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MONEY MARKETS.
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EARNINGS.
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DIVIDENDS.
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INSIDER TRADERS.
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STOCK STATS.
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MORNINGSTAR MUTUAL FUNDS.
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VITAL STATISTICS.
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E-BUSINESS STILL IN ITS INFANCY.
August 4, 2000... Of 462 top industry executives surveyed, 54 percent said their e-business is still in the "childhood or infancy" growth stage, averaging just under two years of operation. Twenty-four percent said their online operations are in the "young adult...

Largest Tri-State Law Firms.
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Stadium account grows thin.(Brief Article)
August 11, 2000... Critic says county's fix is 'whistling past graveyard' Hamilton County's stadium sales tax coffers are so bane that the county will use borrowed money to cover initial contracts for the new Reds ballpark and fund the $45 million in cost...