Tourism
Monday Business Roundup
New Twist in “Whole Oats” SagaThe Whole Foods–Wild Oats merger saga took another unusual turn last week when Walter Robb, Whole Foods' co-president and chief operating officer, posted a blistering message on his blog accusing federal regulators of "not doing their homework" and questioning "what world they are living in."
Citing antitrust concerns, the Federal Trade Commission has asked a judge in Washington D.C. to block the proposed $670 million deal between Whole Foods, the nation's largest natural-foods grocer, and its slightly smaller Boulder-based rival Wild Oats. Among other things, the Commission has publicly released emails from Robb to the Whole Foods board acknowledging that the purpose of the merger is to avoid "nasty price wars" and to "eliminate forever" the chance of a mega-grocery chain like Safeway buying Wild Oats.
In other business news: Local institution Robb's Music lives on under new ownership; Fort Collins Brewfest evokes mixed reactions from Old Town merchants; and real cowboys' favorite jeans brand moves upscale.
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Cows and lack of fed funding are threats to former internment camp
Minidoka Listed as Endangered Site
The former Japanese internment camp at Minidoka was named one of America’s 11 most endangered historical sites today by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
I wrote about the threats to the camp in February. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has put together a very nice Web page (click on "More”) with a history of the site and, if you read to the end of this story, ways you can help preserve it.
The Washington, D.C.-based group, recognized that a huge feedlot proposed near the camp, now a National Monument, could threaten its viability as a tourist attraction and diminish its historical value.
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Friday is the first of June - how did that happen?
Boise City Midweek News
Depot Will be Open to the Public on Sundays
The City of Boise is expanding the hours for the Boise Depot beginning this weekend. Starting June 3rd the Boise Depot, Great Hall and Bell Towers will be open Sundays from 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. through September 30th. Admission is free.
Plenty of Summer Classes Are Still Open at BSU
Many summer session core classes and upper-division, graduate and doctoral classes are still available at Boise State University.
More about both these stories --->
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All Aboard?
Meeting in Bozeman Discusses Southern Montana Passenger LineThe last passenger train rumbled through Bozeman in 1979, and while the Bozeman train depot is in disrepair, a recent meeting at the Bozeman Chamber of Commerce explored the possibility of bringing both a new depot and the passenger train back to Bozeman and southern Montana.
On May 11 the Montana Association of Railroad Passengers (MARP) held an open meeting at the chamber to discuss local support and ideas for bringing passenger rail service back to southern Montana.
About 20 citizens from the Gallatin Valley and Livingston attended, asked questions and gave feedback to MARP President James Green. Green and MARP are working with an anonymous private donor to secure $10-$15 million and are also lobbying for railroad passenger-friendly legislation in D.C. to bring back the passenger line from Billings to Livingston, Bozeman and Helena, as well as a line to Missoula and possibly the Flathead Valley, which could connect with the Empire Builder passenger line in Whitefish.
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Monday Business Roundup
Frontier Airlines Continues to FlourishLike a caterpillar morphing slowly into what one hopes will be a butterfly, the restructuring U.S. airline industry continues at its slow pace. United Airlines said last week that it will trim domestic flights again this year, reducing its "mainline domestic flight capacity" by about 2 percent. While United remains the largest carrier at Denver International Airport, it faces severe competition from low-cost carriers like Southwest Airlines and Denver-based Frontier Airlines. "Clearly, we're under pressure in Denver," United's chief revenue officer John Tague told reporters last month, "and we expect that to continue."
Meanwhile Frontier continues to grow even as it cuts back on select under-traveled routes on the West Coast like its Los Angeles-to-San Francisco flight, which it will drop this summer. Last week Frontier began flying from Memphis to Orlando. Along with its short-hop subsidiary Lynx Aviation, Frontier plans to expand service along the Front Range and to other Rocky Mountain destinations, sparking something of a bidding war as cities compete to lure direct Frontier flights from Denver. Durango is offering the airline an incentive package totaling $257,500, while Sioux Falls, S.D., is putting up $250,000.
Meanwhile Frontier plans to inaugurate its first flight off the North American mainland, applying for federal approval to start non-stop service from Denver to San Juan, Costa Rica.
In other business news: disgruntled Janus and Invesco mutual-fund investors could see some of their money back this fall; Aspen attorneys face disciplinary action from state Supreme Court; and "1031" real estate deals face scrutiny in collapse of investment umbrella company.
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Monday Business Roundup
Soaring Gas Prices Imperil Summer TourismAs gas prices rocket past $3 a gallon, many tourism-based businesses in the Rocky Mountain West are bracing for a tough summer – while the nation's refineries enjoy record profit margins.
A refinery fire in Texas last month has set off a chain reaction across the nation's supply lines, keeping gas supplies tight, and prices rising, even as the price of crude oil has remained relatively stable. Crude oil prices closed on Friday at $61.93 a barrel – high by historic standards but up only about 1.4 percent on the year. Average margins at oil refineries, by contrast, have risen by 57 percent in the last month alone, reaching $31.22 a barrel last week – the second-highest margin in U.S. history according to the New York Mercantile Exchange. If gas prices head toward $3.50 or even $4 a gallon this summer, it could severely limit Americans' traditional driving vacations – many of which bring them to the Rockies.
The good news: pointing to increases in crude-oil inventories over the last few months, a report from Phoenix-based Energy Directions Inc. last week concluded that "the conditions are in place for a meaningful decline" in prices at the pump.
In other business news: Savings-and-loan crook Michael Wise resurfaces in Florida; Qwest tops the Rocky's rankings of top public companies; and Boulder-Denver home prices defy national trends.
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Tuesday Business Roundup
‘Flipping’ a Home? Forget About ItAs foreclosure rates rise, speculators in the West who've made big money buying up homes for investment and then re-selling or "flipping" them for a profit are pretty much out of luck for this year though at least 2008. The housing bust is hitting home especially hard in places like Weld County, north of Denver, and in the suburbs of Las Vegas, until recently the fastest-growing city in the country. "A combustible mix of risky loans and risky real estate deals" has sunk the new home market and made flipping for fun and profit a thing of the past, Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing for Realty Trac, tells the Associated Press.
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Meanwhile apartment rental rates – a leading indicator of the overall real estate market – for the Denver metro area have dropped slightly, while the average vacancy rate has fallen to a six-year-low, according to a report by Gordon E. Von Stroh, a professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. Boulder vacancy rates fluctuate with the seasons – students leave for the summer and return in the fall – so it's unclear that they'll follow the same trends as Denver itself.
In other business news: the Fraser Valley sees big development plans; beekeepers face mysterious, massive die-offs; and per capita income grows in rural Colorado.
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park-n-chide
Proposal to Increase Missoula Parking Fines Sparks Tension
Downtown parking guru Dennis Burns writes in the book Making Business Districts Work, "It is amazing how emotional an issue parking can be. This is because it affects people so directly. Think about it -- how many other areas involve issues of personal safety/security, finance, convenience, wayfinding, accessibility, and customer service?"
In downtown Missoula, a Parking Commission proposal to increase parking fines and the subsequent quarreling between vocal downtown business owners and the Missoula Downtown Association (MDA) and Missoula Parking Commission (MPC), show just how right Burns is.
The proposal would increase $2 meter violations to $5 for first-time offenses, $5 overtime fines to $10, and $15 improper parking fines to $20. MPC director Anne Guest points out that the plan would not increase the cost to park, only the fines for not paying that cost.
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EVEN RICH WEST STILL HAS POOR MAN'S MENTALITY
What Jackson Hole Can Learn From The Big AppleWhen Westerners get their city fix in the Big Apple, some return home with nothing but relief. Lifestyle statistician and commentator Jonathan Schechter got something else: A revelation about the similarities between the green heart of New York City and his own turf in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. His epiphany grew out of conversations he had with investment gurus who told him the best strategy for ensuring sustainable prosperity is to plan ahead and take a long view of the mountainous horizon that, more and more, Americans are coveting. Despite Jackson Hole's reputation as being a refuge for the ultra rich and famous, Schechter notes that the way it approaches growth and plots its own future is still bamboozled by a poor man's mentality in thinking about development. As always, his essays deliver lessons about where the West has been and where it's headed. [more]
Three cheers for Boise beers
Airline Apologizes to Urinating Passenger on Boise FlightThank goodness for barf bags. James Whipple, who drank two "really big beers" at the Boise Airport on March 7, had to use the air-sickness bag tucked into the pocket of the seatback in front of him on a SkyWest Airlines flight to Salt Lake City – only Whipple used it for urination purposes. [more]
