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May 2011 - Posts
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 Cerner Corp.’s board has approved a 2-for-1 stock split, reflecting the company’s intent to capitalize on its surging growth.
The North Kansas City-based company (Nasdaq: CERN) on Tuesday announced the split, which will be effective June 24 and take the form of a 100 percent dividend. Each shareholder of record on June 15 will receive an additional share of common stock for each share held on that date.
Cerner expects the split to increase the total number of common shares from 84.4 million to...
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 Lee’s Summit and entrepreneur Don Nissanka have recharged their negotiations after Nissanka threatened to pull the plug on his energy storage systems plant.
The founder and CEO of Exergonix Inc. said in mid-May that he would find another city for his project if Lee’s Summit didn’t agree to a modified development deal.
Nissanka told the city in a letter that he needed to meet a May 31 deadline to buy an 83-acre property owned by Pfizer Corp.
Lee’s Summit posted a news release Tuesday stating that Exergonix was seeking a two-week extension to close on the Pfizer property at Missouri Highway 291 and...
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Silpada Designs Inc.’s co-founders are in the spotlight yet again, named as Regional Entrepreneurs of the Year by entrepreneurship entities at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Henry W. Bloch School of Management.
Last year, Bonnie Kelly, Jerry Kelly and Teresa Walsh agreed to sell the Lenexa-based company to Avon Products Inc. for about $650 million.
Here’s a release from UMKC about those being honored at its 26th Annual Entrepreneur of the Year Awards celebration, scheduled for...
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 The federal government will pay for 90 percent of the cost of removing debris left in Joplin, Mo., by the May 22 tornado, Gov. Jay Nixon said Tuesday.
Nixon said he received word late Monday that the state application for federal financing of the expedited debris removal was approved by President Obama, who toured Joplin on Sunday. The federal money will help remove millions of cubic yards of debris from around homes, businesses and other buildings in Joplin.
The federal debris removal program is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency with help from the...
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 Missouri served up $12.5 million in tax breaks — spread across 10 years — to lure Applebee’s Services Inc. and its purchasing cooperative from Kansas.
Applebee’s parent, DineEquity Inc. (NYSE: DIN), announced Friday that it was moving Applebee's 350-employee headquarters, now in Lenexa, to the other side of the metro area — 8140 Ward Parkway in Kansas City.
The casual-dining chain’s affiliate company, Centralized Supply Chain Services LLC, also will bring 38 employees to the new...
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 A little more than a week after a deadly tornado hit Joplin, Mo., the question of how to help remains on many people’s minds.
And the answer — hint: it’s not supply drives or immediately driving to Joplin to volunteer — may not be the first inclination. It’s financial gifts, a tack many Kansas City-area companies have taken.
Doug Clopton, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Central Missouri, suggested gift cards as the way to go.
“Financially, it makes a whole heck of a lot more sense to send gift cards,” he...
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 Sprint Nextel Corp. has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission, seeking to block AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA’s merger plans.
In this case, that means asking the FCC to reject parts of AT&T’s application to absorb T-Mobile’s U.S. spectrum licenses, which allow for mobile transmissions.
Sprint and other merger opponents contend that the acquisition would stifle competition and harm public interests, leaving AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless controlling more than 80 percent of the wireless...
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 Ever wonder who’s digging into your medical past?
You may get a chance to find out through a proposed rule allowing individuals to get a report showing who has electronically accessed their health information that’s protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday that its Office of Civil Rights has proposed the change under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, which is part of the federal stimulus...
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 Downtown Kansas City commuters faced a bottleneck of traffic as they headed back to work after the long Memorial Day weekend — and they’ll have to time their drives home well to miss Round 2.
Sprint Center is hosting a sold-out Get Motivated event that drew 20,000 people. Arena spokeswoman Shani Tate Ross said that attendees would head to the nearby Kansas City Power & Light District for lunch just after 12:30 p.m. — restaurants there were notified last week of the expected hordes — and that the event was scheduled to conclude at 5:35...
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 Movie-lovers who missed “The Green Hornet 3-D” in theaters soon will have a new way to watch it: on their phones.
Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) is using the 3-D movie craze to play up the 3-D version of its popular HTC EVO smartphone, set for release during the summer.
Sprint will load “The Green Hornet 3-D,” starring Seth Rogan and Cameron Diaz, on the phone’s microSD card and install the HTC Watch movie app and the Blockbuster On Demand app. The 3-D feature — which doesn’t require glasses — will extend beyond movies to games, chatting services and its three...
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 Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences has appointed former board member Joseph Massman as CFO.
Massman, who previously was CFO for Lenexa-based Freightquote.com, is the fourth person in recent years to jump from KCUMB’s board to a paid position at the school.
Massman’s appointment, announced late Friday, was effective Tuesday.
“Joe Massman brings a unique combination of financial, operations and investment management expertise to KCUMB,” CEO Danny Weaver said in a...
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 And so, the border war continues.
News about a city winning a sizable company headquarters should be good news. It’s jobs, it’s filled office space, it’s prestige. There are supposed to be pronouncements from City Hall, photos, big headlines.
So, why did news that Applebee’s Services Inc. was moving its local offices and 350 or so employees to Kansas City dribble out on the Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend? The same reason that one of Overland Park’s latest economic development wins, engineering firm...
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 Applebee’s Services Inc. will move from Lenexa to Kansas City by Sept. 30.
Here is the company’s release:
LENEXA, Kan. (May 27, 2011)– Applebee’s Services, Inc. today announced that it has entered into a lease agreement with EHD Holdings, LLC and will move the company’s headquarters and Restaurant Support Center to 8140 Ward Parkway in Kansas City, Mo. The move is scheduled to take place by Sept. 30, 2011.
“We’ve been a strong corporate partner in the metro area for 25 years and we’re looking forward to continuing that partnership in our new home,” said Mike Archer, president of Applebee’s Services,...
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 The Missouri Restaurant Association is taking to the phones — smartphones, that is.
The organization, which includes more than 1,500 Missouri restaurants, this week announced its Dine Missouri app for the iPhone. The app offers a comprehensive place for users to look up member restaurants nearby.
The MRA also announced a partnership with Aireal Mobile to allow the restaurants to develop free-standing apps.
Greg Hunsucker, owner of V’s Italiano Ristorante at 10819 E. U.S. Highway 40 in Independence, said his restaurant was starting to use mobile apps to attract a younger customer...
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 Cerner Corp. has seen its stock price surge to more than $120, and the company’s leaders see more growth as health care reform drives demand for its products and services — thus lifting profits.
But don’t expect any of that cash to make its way back to investors in the near future.
Neal Patterson, chairman and CEO of the North Kansas City-based company (Nasdaq: CERN), said Friday at the annual shareholders meeting that the company plans to maintain its strategy of pouring profits back into research and development, not cash dividends or even a stock...
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 The Kansas City Business Journal has announced finalists for the 2011 CFO of the Year awards program.
The program, now in its fourth year, honors the area’s top financial executives.
Applicants were judged for their contributions to their companies’ growth and financial success, their roles in corporate management and strategic planning, and their community involvement.
First-place winners in each of four categories will be revealed at an awards luncheon on Thursday, June 23, at the Overland Park...
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This week, (Chamber CEO) Jim Heeter and I hosted two more Big 5 meetings. They were hosted by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Mid-America Regional Council.
Both were typical of our other meetings in that they were fun and engaging. And, like the others, they had their own twists.
Jim and I have now hosted 17 Big 5 Meetings, with about five more to go. You would think that after 17 meetings, we wouldn’t be hearing anything new. You’d be wrong.
There are a few takeaways so far: The community is enjoying the chance to speak up, the “debate” has been spirited but friendly and the love for Big KC is...
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 Summer means bigger crowds at many of Kansas City’s top attractions, and Memorial Day weekend provides the kickoff.
Worlds of Fun amusement park is celebrating with 64 carved wooden horses and 1,400 lights as it unveils an antique carousel rebuilt and installed just inside the front gates, spokesman Brandon Stanley said.
The carousel appeared at a U.S. sesquicentennial celebration in 1926, but it may have been made as early as 1918, Stanley said. The creation by M.C. Illions includes the hand-carved horses and two...
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California could launch a review into the proposed merger between AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA.
The state’s utility commission in San Francisco voted 5-0 Thursday to begin a possible investigation into the proposal’s implications.
But commissioners must vote again June 9 before the review can officially start, Bloomberg News reported Friday.
“Sprint is pleased that the commission will open up a proceeding to investigate the proposed takeover of T-Mobile by AT&T,” Sprint Nextel Corp. public affairs manager John Taylor said in a written...
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 Kansas City shopaholics have some good news coming out of Las Vegas this week — three of the four retailers named as the “hottest” concepts for 2011 at this week’s International Council of Shopping Centers real estate convention have locations in the area.
Several local developers were at this week’s convention, rubbing elbows with retailers and trying to bring them to Kansas City.
• Smashburger — The Denver-based restaurant chain has about 100 stores nationwide, with two in the Kansas City area and one in...
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Lead Ventures is launching a business incubator and plans to provide an investment of as much as $1 million for the program’s businesses.
Lead Ventures is a business accelerator program designed to equip emerging businesses to grow. It’s affiliated with Lee’s Summit-based Lead Capital LLC and Lead Bank. Other partners include William Jewel College, Net-Work-Space and Van Osdol & Magruder law firm.
Lead Capital CEO Josh Rowland is managing director for Lead Ventures.
“This business accelerator program is our way of supporting entrepreneurs to help boost the growth of our local economy,” Rowland said in a...
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 The City Homes development in Kansas City’s River Market will hit the auction block on June 10.
Consolidated Development Partners LLC launched the $11 million loft-style development featuring two-story, two-bedroom, 2.5-bath free-standing units in 2007.
The 27-home development at 5th and Oak streets was taken over by Arvest Bank, successor to SolutionsBank, in August.
According to the listing, City Homes “has a successful history of sales of finished homes but now needs a new owner to complete the development so this neighborhood can realize its full...
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 Summer is here, school is out (or almost out) and local attractions beckon. This week in the print edition, the Kansas City Business Journal lists top attractions in the metropolitan area.
Outdoor and seasonal attractions make up much of the list, including Worlds of Fun & Oceans of Fun, the Kansas City Royals, City Market, the Kansas City Zoo and Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead.
Find out which attractions were the most popular last year, based on attendance.
Here’s No. 5:
Worlds of Fun & Oceans of Fun
2011 Rank: 5
2010 Rank: 6
Worlds of Fun & Oceans of Fun reported...
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 NetStandard Inc. hosted Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who visited Kansas City, Kan., on Thursday to sign bills related to economic development.
“Our No. 1 priority is to grow the Kansas economy and get the more than 100,000 unemployed Kansans back to work,” Brownback said in a written statement. “We face difficult economic times and high levels of unemployment. This environment underscores the need to make Kansas more competitive in attracting jobs and businesses to the state. SB 196 makes Kansas the only state to offer an economic development incentive of this...
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 Prepare for more pocket and purse room.
Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) and Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) are telling smart-phone users to leave the billfold at home.
The companies announced Thursday that they had partnered to roll out Google Wallet, enabling Sprint subscribers to tap their smartphones at the registers of participating merchants instead of using traditional payment methods.
Overland-Park based Sprint will be the first carrier of the application on Nexus S 4G phones when it launches later in the...
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 Remember the written test when you got your driver’s license? Could you pass it today?
According to GMAC Insurance’s latest survey results, released Thursday, a majority of drivers in Kansas and Missouri would do quite well.
GMAC had 5,130 licensed drivers throughout the country answer 20 questions pulled from actual state Department of Motor Vehicle exams.
Kansas kept its top spot among all states with an average score among respondents of 82.9 percent, up slightly from 82.3 percent in...
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 William Bruning, CEO of the Mid-America Coalition on Health Care, will step down next month after 11 years steering the advocacy group of large employers and medical providers.
He will be succeeded, effective June 13, by Christine Thomas Yonke, the coalition’s senior vice president and a senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard Inc. She will leave Fleishman-Hillard, where she has overseen the firm’s biotech and health care practices, to assume the new role.
“I’ve accomplished what I set out to do,” Bruning said in a statement...
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Simmons First National Bank hired Cris Smith as its new senior vice president and senior lender for the Kansas City region.
Smith was hired away from CrossFirst Bank, where he had worked since 2006, serving as vice president and chief credit officer for its Leawood location.
Smith started at Simmons on Monday.
“Cris’ primary responsibilities going forward are for the development and implementation of our credit culture and launching our maiden voyage in the Kansas City market,” said Pat Anderson, Kansas regional president for...
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 Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, with a stroke of a pen, eliminated the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. on Wednesday, making official the state-owned agency’s dissolution on June 30.
Near the end of their legislative session earlier this month, Kansas lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to get rid of KTEC, but Brownback’s signature turns House Bill 2054 into law.
The law moves most of KTEC’s existing duties and programs to the Kansas Department of Commerce and Kansas Board of Regents.
KTEC’s university-based Centers of Excellence and Entrepreneurial Center are included in the...
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 General Motors supplier Van-Rob Inc. will open a manufacturing and assembly facility in Shawnee during the summer, bringing a $5.8 million investment and 75 new jobs to the region.
The deal was announced Thursday morning at a Kansas City Area Development Council investor meeting in Overland Park.
“This is obviously a dynamic employer in an important industry to the region and to Shawnee,” said Andrew Nave, executive director of the Shawnee Economic Development Council. “The manufacturing base is key for our community and continues to provide great...
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The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce picked fertilizer company SFP as its Small Business of the Year.
The Leawood-based company, whose name stands for Specialty Fertilizer Products, stood out among a crop of more than 1,000 nominees, according to the chamber. The company received the “Mr. K” Award at a Wednesday evening event.
The company was founded in 1998 by Larry Sanders, who grew up on a farm and earned a doctorate degree, then put his mind to developing products that would help farmers bring in better yields while preserving the...
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 Kansas City International Airport is slated for multiple new flights just in time for the peak summer travel season.
“The first four months of the year, we were dealing with flat to negative seat comparisons,” said Justin Meyer, manager of air service development for the Kansas City Aviation Department.
That means airlines’ efforts to make the most out of flights by keeping them full had diminished capacity and driven up prices, yielding results such as April’s 2.7 percent decline in KCI...
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Legislation aimed at boosting the tally of Kansas engineering graduates cleared its final hurdle Wednesday.
Gov. Sam Brownback signed into law Senate bills 127 and 154, which received heavy backing from local businesses such as Black & Veatch, Garmin Ltd. (Nadsaq: GRMN), Burns & McDonnell and JE Dunn Construction.
The legislation created the KAN-Grow Engineering Fund at the Kansas Board of Regents to offset costs of engineering programs at the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Washburn...
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 Truck shipments slipped in April, reversing gains from the prior month, but the blip is not concerning, according to the American Trucking Associations.
The trade organization reported Wednesday that its advance seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index fell 0.7 percent in April. The index had gained 1.9 percent in March — slightly better than the ATA’s preliminary estimate of a 1.7 percent gain.
“Since freight volumes are so volatile, truck tonnage is unlikely to grow every month, even on a seasonally adjusted basis,” ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said in a...
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A former Foulston Siefkin LLP law partner in Overland Park pleaded guilty Wednesday to enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity.
Samuel Logan, 46, was arrested July 22 at Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, where law enforcement officials said he sought to meet a minor he thought he had contacted over the Internet.
Logan was accused of engaging in extensive, lurid communication over the Internet with an undercover police officer who was posing as a 14-year-old girl. Communication included sending the officer a number of pornographic...
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 For more than an hour Wednesday, Mother Nature pulled downtown Kansas City into a vortex of silence.
Office workers from City Hall to Crown Center hunkered down in stairwells and parking garages to wait out a tornado warning that had Downtown in its cross hairs.
At City Center Square, “deadline day” at the Kansas City Business Journal typically is pretty quiet already. About the only sound is the tapping of computer keys and an occasional crinkling of a snack wrapper.
But even deadlines stop for...
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Kansas was the only state to lose jobs between April 2010 and last month, according to an analysis by The Business Journals of new federal employment data.
The Sunflower State lost 200 jobs during the period, ranking dead last. It fared a bit better during the decade that ended last month, coming in at No. 34, down 42,500 jobs to a total of 1.06 million.
Missouri was No. 20 for the year-to-year change, adding 24,800 jobs since April 2010. But it ranked worse for the decade ��� No. 42 ��� losing 98,500 private-sector jobs to land at almost...
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 The University of Kansas Medical Center has reached an agreement with the National Institutes of Health and two health care organizations to speed up development of cancer treatments.
Announced Wednesday, the agreement will focus on getting therapies for rare blood cancers ready for proof-of-concept studies and, eventually, an industrial partner.
KU Med will team up with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, NIH Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases and the hematology division of the National Heart, Lung and Blood...
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Garney Cos. Inc. has landed a piece of $375 million in contracts to make water infrastructure improvements in Colorado.
The splash comes from two separately awarded projects: the Denver Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and Colorado Springs Utilities.
Kansas City-based Garney, which became fully employee owned in 1995, joined forces with CH2M Hill as the design-builder for a treatment plant in the north part of the Denver metro area. The facility — expected to come online by December 2015 — will be one of the most advanced in the western United States and help meet a rapidly approaching need for added capacity, according to a...
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 Bank profits last quarter were up nearly 67 percent from a year prior, with U.S. lending institutions earning a combined $29 billion, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The FDIC���s Quarterly Banking Profile report credits the big increase in profits to lower loan-loss provisions set aside by banks.
The results represented the seventh straight quarter of bank earnings increases, the FDIC reported. The $29 billion in net income was the highest quarterly profit for the U.S. banking industry since the second quarter of...
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 The number of passengers traveling through Kansas City International Airport slipped in April, falling 2.7 percent compared with the same period a year ago.
The airport (Code: MCI) recorded 773,598 arriving and departing passengers last month, according to the Kansas City Aviation Department. Boardings declined 3.1 percent to 387,638, but for the year to date, boardings remained up 0.1 percent to nearly 1.47 million.
Except for April and February, KCI has seen year-to-year increases each month since...
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American Trailer & Storage Inc. has opened a new location in Omaha, Neb., giving the company additional access to customers in Nebraska and western Iowa.
The Kansas City-based company already has a location in Lincoln, Neb., along with locations in Kansas City and St. Louis.
AT&S sells storage, cartage and over-the-road semi-trailers, storage containers/conex boxes and other portable storage-related services. In August 2007, it bought three Nebraska transportation and portable storage rental fleets, beginning an expansion into Nebraska and...
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Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend one of Gov. Sam Brownback���s Economic Development Summits. I also had the honor of participating as a speaker on his guest panel. The event was held at the University of Kansas Medical Center and was focused on life sciences.
Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer convened the meeting, which included several local life sciences leaders and ��� how cool is this ��� an executive from Google.
Anyway, what so impressed me was Gov. Brownback. I���ve always been a big fan, but today was...
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 The banking industry appears to have regained some vigor during the past 10 years, with 21 states showing higher financial-sector employment. But the industry isn���t out of the woods ��� 23 states lost financial jobs during the past year.
Missouri and Kansas both posted 10-year gains, but their fates diverged during the past year, according to a federal data analysis by G. Scott Thomas of The Business Journals.
Missouri ranked 10th, adding 3,400 jobs in the financial sector during the past decade for an April total of...
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Shawnee Mission Medical Center has begun construction of a $42 million birth center designed to increase the hospital���s lead among area maternity programs.
On Tuesday, the medical center broke ground on the project, which is expected to be three times as large as Shawnee Mission Medical Center���s existing birth unit. The project is expected to open in early 2013 with 19 labor and delivery rooms, 36 private postpartum rooms and a 24-bed Level III neonatal intensive care unit. Altogether, the unit will be able to care for as many as 30 babies at once and handle 5,000 births a...
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H&R Block Inc.���s biggest competitor, Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on Tuesday.
This is a ���prepackaged��� bankruptcy because Jackson Hewitt has reached an agreement with its secured lenders about a restructuring plan to slash the company���s outstanding debt and interest expense. It will keep running the company as a debtor in possession under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, and its day-to-day operations are not expected to be...
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 The Missouri River is running high, and river managers said Monday that more water is coming as they struggle to relieve pressure in massive flood-control reservoirs in the Dakotas and Montana.
���The situation in the Missouri River basin is changing rapidly, and planned releases are subject to change with little notice,��� Jody Farhat, chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers��� Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, said in a written statement.
Forecasts Tuesday said that flooding conditions would develop by the weekend at several Missouri River locations near Kansas City, according to...
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 Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback joined more than 160 health care administrators, entrepreneurs and community leaders at the University of Kansas Medical Center on Tuesday to discuss the role life sciences will play in the state���s financial future.
The event, Brownback���s third economic summit this spring, focused on how the state could use health care assets, such as KU Med, to encourage more investment and job growth in the area.
���Our administration is here trying to listen for ideas that we can follow up on and work with you on this,��� he...
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The Hotel Phillips has started a multimillion-dollar renovation that will include work on its exterior and interior.
The 217-room downtown Kansas City hotel enlisted the help of Duncan��Miller��Ullmann, which will aim to keep the hotel���s Art Deco design while adding high-quality comforts, according to a release. The Hotel Phillips, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, opened in 1931.
���We are extremely excited with this project, as it will give the city the most elegant historic hotel with high-quality amenities, coupled with the exceptional guest services Hotel Phillips has been consistently recognized for throughout the years,��� hotel General Manager Dan Bergmann said in a...
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Oklahoma Joe���s, an award-winning local barbecue joint, plans to open its third Kansas City-area location, according to a plan submitted in Leawood.
Richard Coleman, director of community development for the city, said the restaurant was hoping to move into a former TGIFriday���s location at 11723 Roe Ave.
Coleman said the plan calls for adding smokers to the 7,119-square-foot building, adding an outdoor patio and doing landscaping to bring the site up to current requirements.
Oklahoma Joe���s will go before the Leawood Planning Commission for approval Tuesday...
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 Tom Hoenig wants to keep banks focused on, well, banking.
At a trade conference in Philadelphia, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said the United States has to further reform its banking and financial structure if it hopes to have a competitive, accountable and less volatile system in the future. He advocates passing the Volcker Rule, which restricts banking organizations from engaging in proprietary trading activities and involvement with hedge and private equity funds.
President Obama endorsed the Volcker Rule during congressional debate about the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection...
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In 2006, JE Dunn Construction remodeled part of one of the bed towers at the now severely damaged St. John���s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo.
Now, it is offering cleanup and building assistance to the hospital and to the Joplin School District.
���Whatever they need,��� JE Dunn Executive Vice President Gregory Nook said Tuesday.
Kansas City-based JE Dunn sent staff to Joplin on Monday morning to help at the hospital and local high school, but officials said they still were fully engaged in search and...
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 Kansas and Missouri are getting older, and Kansas City economic development officials are working to fill the local labor pipeline with young professionals.
According to the latest 2010 data the U.S. Census Bureau released last week, the median age in Kansas was 36, up from 35.2 in the 2000 census. In Missouri, the 2010 median age was 37.9, up from 36.1 in 2000.
The states straddle the national median age, 36.8, which was estimated using 2009 population figures.
Aging baby boomers are a big part of why the population is getting older, said Martin Mini, a senior vice president with the Kansas City Area Development...
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A series of Missouri pet food companies and the man behind them face a cease-and-desist order for allegedly selling more than $6 million in unregistered stocks and bonds.
More than 700 investors in at least four states ��� including in Kansas City ��� allegedly were misled, according to Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.
The order applies to Frank Renick and his Montgomery County, Mo., companies: Spectrum Pet Care Inc., Spectrum Pet Foods Inc. and SPC Brands Inc. The companies were formed to make and sell natural and organic pet food and treats, as well as pet-care and animal health care products, but some investments weren���t registered, and Renick allegedly didn���t tell investors that Spectrum had little revenue, according to a release from...
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NASB Financial Inc. faces delisting from the Nasdaq Stock Exchange unless it files its first-quarter earnings report by July 19.
Grandview-based NASB Financial (Nasdaq: NASB) is the holding company for North American Savings Bank. On May 11, NASB Financial stated in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it couldn���t file its first-quarter earnings report on time because it was in the midst of amending and restating its fourth-quarter results.
The bank���s regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, directed the bank to reclassify certain residential development loans as troubled...
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Thank you, Blue Valley School District! My eight years on the Blue Valley School District School Board have been the best public-service experience I have ever had.
On Monday, June 13, I will participate in my last school board meeting and you are all invited so I can thank you for forcing me into service eight years ago. What started out as a really bad idea has turned into the best experience of my life in public service.
Almost everyone advised against taking on such a challenging assignment in a community where making everybody happy is never an option and, what���s worse, you will be messing with their kids!
You might remember the election in...
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 Kansas City officials said they have reduced some of the city���s exposure on public financing of the Kansas City Power & Light District.
Kansas City���s Industrial Development Authority issued $177.5 million in tax-exempt refunding bonds on Thursday.
The issuance gave Kansas City $175.97 million to pay off variable-rate obligations previously issued by the Industrial Development Authority.
The fixed interest rate on the $177.5 million in refunding bonds is 4.69 percent.
���This refunding reduces the city���s variable-rate exposure and eliminates a number of risks associated with variable-rate debt,��� Mayor Sly James said in a written...
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Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp. and other wireless carriers have emergency personnel on the ground in Joplin, Mo., to assist with digital communication efforts as the tornado-struck area begins its recovery efforts.
Monday estimates said the disaster killed 89 victims.
In an interview, Sprint (NYSE: S) spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer said the company also is preparing its technicians for a second round of projected storms that are expected Monday in Joplin, where roughly half of Sprint���s cell sites are nonfunctional because of the local loss of...
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Euronet Worldwide Inc.���s epay division has struck software distribution deals with Microsoft Corp. for Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific.
Leawood-based Euronet (Nasdaq: EEFT), a prepaid and payment processor, said the agreements let epay distribute Microsoft products such as Microsoft Office 2010 across its 278,000-retailer worldwide network through a process that is easy and cuts costs and packaging.
The deals apply to products activated at the point of sale. By purchasing the Office 2010 POSA product, consumers can unlock the software already installed on their computers or mobile devices, or they can download the software from the...
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Another Kansas Bioscience Authority official who fueled criticism among state lawmakers this year has stepped down.
Terry Osborn, director of commercialization with the KBA���s Heartland Bioventures program, announced during the weekend that he had accepted a position as CEO of KCAS LLC.
Shawnee-based KCAS performs bioanalytical services for life sciences researchers.
Osborn joined the KBA more than two years ago and helped found the Heartland Bioventures program, which helps bioscience companies find venture financing and commercial uses for their...
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The Kansas City Council may ask the city���s Tax Increment Financing Commission to consider a compromise about a controversial tax-financed project in the River Market.
A resolution before Kansas City���s Plans, Zoning & Economic Development Committee calls for the TIF Commission to reconsider how the city ought to close out a TIF plan in the River Market that splits remaining money among a developer and taxing jurisdictions.
The resolution, which comes to a committee vote Wednesday, suggests that 50 percent of remaining payments in lieu of taxes generated by the River Market TIF go back to taxing jurisdictions until the project closes in 2020 and $825,000 go to the developer ��� the River Market Community Improvement District ��� to pay for infrastructure and streetscape...
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 Insight School in Olathe is changing owners, leaving all 67 employees temporarily with pink slips until the new owners take over and fulfill a verbal agreement to retain the employees.
The school���s executive director said the sale was expected to be finalized by July 1.
Insight School filed a notice in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, giving employees a 60 calendar-day notice. Gary Price, executive director of the school, said the notice was necessary for the employees to move from Kaplan...
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 The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit Monday to block H&R Block���s proposed $287.5 million acquisition of TaxACT, claiming the combination would drive up prices and hamper innovation.
Kansas City-based H&R Block (NYSE: HRB), which had announced the TaxACT deal in October, sought to combine TaxACT with H&R Block At Home to create a single unit led by the TaxACT team.
���The combination of H&R Block and TaxACT would likely lead to millions of American taxpayers paying higher prices for digital do-it-yourself tax-preparation products,��� Christine Varney, assistant attorney general in charge of the department���s Antitrust Division, said in a...
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 Olathe-based Heart to Heart International Inc. is ramping up to help Joplin, Mo., and other communities devastated by tornadoes during the weekend.
In Joplin, a tornado that struck the city���s center killed about 90 and damaged the city���s hospital, St. John���s Regional Medical Center. ���Today��� show weatherman Al Roker and Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Bettes called the tornado the deadliest in Missouri history.
Heart to Heart sent a team of volunteers Sunday night and now will send its Mobile Health Clinic, which includes a waiting room, scrub station, two exam rooms and a...
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The Department of Homeland Security is making great progress in constructing the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kan.
Kansas State University Vice President for Research Ron Trewyn tells me that grading of the NBAF site is almost complete. It���s noteworthy that construction is being overseen by Tim Barr, the first DHS employee ���on the ground��� in Manhattan.
Skeptics had a field day in November when the National Research Council issued a report criticizing the original risk assessment of the Manhattan...
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As I sat through my son���s high school graduation today (my last), all I could think about was how much better prepared he is for this world than I was at 18. In fact, they all were.
Today���s youth aren���t just ready, they are better than us ��� smarter, more responsible and surely more thoughtful.
As my son heads forward, I think: Problems? Sure, but they���ll tackle them, and much better than we...
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 Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics expects to lose almost $1 million in federal financing for a program it uses to train pediatricians.
The Kansas City-based health system confirmed Friday that a 15 percent cut to the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program will result in a reduction of $988,000 to its allocation in the federal budget year ending Sept. 30.
Last year, Children’s Mercy received $6.5 million from the CHGME program to help defray the costs of training pediatrician residents and pediatric subspecialist...
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 LightSquared’s potential interference issues with Global Positioning System receivers have attracted the attention of two regional senators.
Sens. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., have written the Federal Communications Commission, calling on its chairman to ensure that LightSquared’s stations won’t compromise GPS before allowing the company to proceed with construction and implementation of a new wireless network.
“To ensure full protection that GPS service is not compromised in any way, we request the full commission require LightSquared to demonstrate non-interference of GPS as a condition prior to any operation of its proposed service, and we request the commission rescind LightSquared’s waiver until this demonstration can be made,” the senators wrote in a joint letter dated...
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 The Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport now has its own website, offering pilots and travelers information about runways, air traffic control frequencies, weather and airport services.
On Friday, the Kansas City Aviation Department unveiled the website, www.flymkc.com, which is meant to help corporate, charter and recreational flyers. It is the first stand-alone website for the 80-year-old airport.
Joe McBride, marketing manager for the Kansas City Aviation Department, said information about the airport originally was on...
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Mission-based SRA Benefits has acquired Kansas City-based Consolidated Benefits Solutions for an undisclosed amount.
The transaction, which closed May 1, is expected to increase SRA’s revenue by 15 percent. The combined company has more than 1,000 clients throughout the Midwest.
Consolidated Benefits brings a user-friendly Web interface and communication tools that help human resource managers administer company employee benefits plans.
“Our ability to offer new product and service offerings to our combined client list was the key driver of the acquisition,” SRA President David Wetzler said in a...
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 DeLaSalle Education Center plans to kick off a $6.2 million expansion and renovation in June.
The roughly 17,000-square-foot expansion at 3740 Troost Ave. will help revitalize a city block in the urban core along Troost, said Vanessa Van Goethem-Piela, director of development and communications. It will mean about 11 new jobs and increase high school student capacity from nearly 200 to about 250 students.
A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for 11 a.m. June 2.
The expansion, expected to take 12 to 18 months, will house some of DeLaSalle’s key programs — its student press, a printing business run by students; its library; its parent and child education support program; and its space for experiential, or hands-on, learning...
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 Barnes & Noble is contemplating a new chapter after receiving a nearly $1 billion acquisition offer from Liberty Media Corp. The offer represents a 20 percent premium over the bookseller’s market value Thursday.
The board of New York City-based Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) on Thursday revealed the existence of the $17-a-share offer from the Denver-area media and e-commerce holding company controlled by mogul John Malone. Liberty Media said its offer would give it 70 percent ownership of Barnes &...
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There is still time to leave a legacy in the new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. June 30 is the deadline to have your name, or any name of your choice, engraved on a plaque on a seat in the new performing arts center in time for the Sept. 16 grand opening. It is a special way to honor a relative, friend, business or group.
To date, over 1,300 seats have been named, but there are seats in both halls still available for naming. Seat naming opportunities are available for a donation of $2,500, $5,000 — up to $10,000 — depending on seat...
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Missouri and Kansas shared in the broad labor market improvements in April, improving their jobless rates and labor force sizes from a year prior, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Missouri’s unemployment rate declined to 8.9 percent in April, compared with 9.1 percent the prior month and 9.5 percent a year before.
The number of unemployed people declined to 269,800, down from 288,500 in April 2010. The civilian labor force increased by 8,400 to 3.03...
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The U.S. freight economy is on track to “grow significantly” during the next decade, led by acceleration in the trucking industry, according to a forecast by American Trucking Associations.
The trade association’s U.S. Freight Transportation Forecast to 2022 predicts that freight tonnage will grow 24 percent by 2022, with revenue ticking up even more — 66 percent.
“The trucking industry continues to dominate the freight transportation industry in terms of both tonnage and revenue, comprising 67 percent of tonnage and 81 percent of revenue in 2010,” ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello wrote in the...
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 General Motors supplier Flex-N-Gate will add 300 positions in Kansas City during the next five years, according to the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City.
The Kansas City Business Journal first reported about the just-in-time inventory provider’s planned move to Kansas City on May 4.
Flex-N-Gate signed a long-term lease for 148,800 square feet of distribution space at 1601 Southern Road in Kansas City’s Executive Park. The sequencing facility will support GM’s Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City,...
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The Kansas City Council on Thursday approved a $590 million plan for the former Bannister Mall area in south Kansas City.
The amended tax increment financing plan advanced by Trails Properties II, which includes Lane4 Property Group Inc. principals, proposes 1.2 million square feet of retail, 1.5 million square feet of office and clean-tech space, and 150 hotel rooms.
The ordinance accepts the Tax Increment Financing Commission of Kansas City’s recommendations and authorizes it to issue debt to finance the Trails redevelopment...
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The Kansas City Council has approved a contract making Troy Schulte its city manager for a two-year term.
A unanimous vote on an ordinance sponsored by Mayor Sly James strikes “interim” from Schulte’s job description.
Schulte has worked on an acting basis since former City Manager Wayne Cauthen was suspended and fired in November 2009.
Schulte’s contract pays him $187,200, the same amount he’s been earning as acting city manager for the past 18 months.
Performance measures in the employment contract include: hiring a director for Kansas City’s Water Services Department — a position that’s vacant despite the city being in the early stages of a 20-year, $2 billion sewer overhaul project — and improving City Hall’s technology to track revenue collection and business licensing...
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The Kansas City Council on Thursday approved an ordinance to waive permit fees to Google Fiber Missouri LCC to install ultra-high-speed Internet infrastructure.
In return, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is expected to start developing a one-gigabit-per-second fiber-optic network in Kansas City, differentiating the city along with neighboring Kansas City, Kan., by setting up Internet service 100 times faster than what’s available to most Americans. It’s expected to launch next year.
Google announced Tuesday that Kansas City,...
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Anyone interested in hearing the views of Rural Telecommunications Group’s general counsel about the proposed merger of AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA instead heard a lot of static Thursday afternoon.
The group, which represents wireless carriers serving less than 100,000 subscribers, hosted an afternoon webcast, inviting representatives from Cellular South, Washington advocacy organization Public Knowledge and Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) to speak with media about the merger.
All of the speakers opposed the merger, echoing their familiar refrain, including: such a merger would cause a duopoly occupying roughly 80 percent of the marketplace, innovation would cease, rates would increase, and unlimited data plans would disappear for T-Mobile...
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Kansas City political leaders are in talks to resolve the matter of a controversial office building proposal for the Country Club Plaza.
The proposal by Plaza owner Highwoods Properties Inc. (NYSE: HIW) and originally intended as a headquarters for Kansas City law firm Polsinelli Shughart PC met with opposition by a group — which came to be known as “Save Our Plaza” —hoping to preserve the Plaza’s aesthetics. Polsinelli has pulled out of the project.
New Kansas City Mayor Sly James met Thursday morning with a group that included Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Circo, Councilman Jim Glover, Councilwoman Jan Marcason, and Highwoods and Save Our Plaza representatives to seek...
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 More than 600 businesspeople from 27 nations converged on downtown Kansas City on Thursday for the first of two days of one-on-one meetings designed to create business connections and potential deals.
Called Futurallia, the 21-year-old event is in Kansas City for the first time; this is its 16th event overall. The event at Bartle Hall concludes on Friday.
Sometimes called business speed dating, Futurallia lets participants meet with 16 other businesses for 30 minutes each. As opposed to the random nature of matchmaking or networking events, Futurallia lets participants choose a number of companies they would like to meet with and mixes them with companies that have expressed an interest in meeting with...
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Johnson County residents are a satisfied lot. That was the clear message from a new survey conducted for the Johnson County Board of Commissioners.
The survey, presented Thursday to county commissioners, found that 96 percent of respondents were satisfied with Johnson County as a place to live. This figure actually is down two percentage points from a 2009 survey, but it’s far ahead of the national rate of 84 percent and the 78 percent rate for large communities.
Other broad questions followed a similar...
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Kansas City is a top place to go to find IT talent, according to site-selection advisory firm KLG Advisors.
The New York City-based company put Kansas City among nine metro areas with a strong supply of IT talent, low competition and favorable employment costs.
Many companies struggle to find and keep the IT employees they need and have to pay increasingly higher prices for that help, KLG said in a release. That’s partly because of a global shortage, but also because many of those companies are looking for help in places where demand is much greater than supply and employment costs are high, KLG...
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 The success of local software company Archer Technologies LLC propelled its former CEO to spend three hours on a panel with former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, plus give a commencement speech at Kansas State University — all in the name of helping and inspiring entrepreneurs.
Jon Darbyshire was founder and CEO of Overland Park-based Archer before EMC Corp. acquired the compliance software company last year. Initially, Archer had focused on financial services, eventually claiming 29 of the market’s 30 largest...
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Leawood-based Palmer Square Capital Management has launched its first opened-ended mutual fund.
The fund, called Palmer Square Absolute Return Fund, was launched in partnership with Montage Investments.
Palmer Square and Montage Investments are subsidiaries of Mariner Holdings LLC, which is owned by Marty Bicknell.
The fund will be managed by alternatives veterans Christopher Long, founder of Palmer Square, and Chief Investment Officer Angie Long, a pioneer in credit derivatives and former deputy head of credit trading for North America at JP Morgan Chase &...
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 VinSolutions Inc., an Overland Park-based auto dealer software provider, plans to sell to AutoTrader.com for an undisclosed sum.
The deal is expected to close by mid-June.
VinSolutions, which has 160 local employees and 172 national employees, will become a subsidiary of Atlanta-based AutoTrader.com. It will keep its Overland Park headquarters and its management team, led by CEO Mike Dullea and Chief Technology Officer Matt Watson.
Dullea didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking a comment about the...
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Enterprise Financial Services Corp. plans to raise about $30.4 million in an underwritten public offering that will help strengthen its capital position and could open the door for growth and acquisitions.
The St. Louis-based financial services company (Nasdaq: EFSC), parent of Enterprise Bank & Trust, said late Wednesday that it had priced the offering of 2.39 million shares of its common stock at $12.75 a share, totaling gross proceeds of about $30.4 million.
The company’s stock closed Wednesday at...
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'<p>Article In:<br />The Kansas City Star<br />Tuesday, May 17, 2011</p> <p><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/17/2882555/historic-trolley-tour-is-saturday.html">http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/17/2882555/historic-trolley-tour-is-saturday.html</a></p>'
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 YRC Worldwide Inc., which is in the midst of a plan to issue more common shares as part of a financial restructuring, said its stock is in danger of being delisted from Nasdaq if it goes through with the plan.
The Overland Park-based trucking company (Nasdaq: YRCW) said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it plans to ask for a waiver under a financial viability exception, but it may not get that waiver.
As part of its restructuring plan, YRC proposes exchanging some outstanding debt for equity, as well as issuing new equity to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, part of an agreement that persuaded union members to accept extended concessions in...
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 Kansas City Star
Star
Star
Star
Star
multiple rounds of layoffs
advertising revenue declines
Star
The Miami Herald
The Sacramento Bee
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Charlotte...
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 Legends Outlets Kansas City has landed two key outlet stores expected to open in August: J. Crew Factory and Under Armour Factory House.
The news comes on the heels of Saks Inc. (NYSE: SKS) announcing plans to open a Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th outlet store at the Legends in July.
All three are exclusive locations in the Kansas City region.
“These brands are a powerful retail combination for Kansas City consumers,” Lee Ra Johnson of OTB Destination LLC, the company helping the Legends with its upscale outlet conversion, said in a...
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 The Kansas City Planning and Zoning Committee on Wednesday approved a $590 million redevelopment plan for the former Bannister Mall area in south Kansas City. The full council will consider the issue at its Thursday meeting.
The Tax Increment Financing Commission of Kansas City unanimously approved the mixed-use plan on April 13. The amended plan advanced by Lane4 Property Group Inc. includes 1.2 million square feet of retail, 1.5 million square feet of office and clean-tech space, and 150 hotel...
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 The 14-auditorium theater at Legends Outlets Kansas City now has all digital projectors, aligning with an industry shift.
Also, Legends 14 at Village West in Kansas City, Kan., now can play digital 3-D movies in seven of its auditoriums, according to a Wednesday announcement by Phoenix Theatres of Knoxville, Tenn., which manages the theater. The changes were made in recent weeks to improve visitors’ experience.
The upgrades hit just in time for the release of “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” — featuring Johnny Depp — in digital 3-D and digital...
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 North Kansas City has approved a preliminary deal with an Iowa developer for its $100 million mixed-use project along Interstate 35.
West Des Moines-based Ladco Development, a full-service real estate development firm that has an Overland Park office, will advance a private-public partnership to turn 58 acres on the southeast corner of I-35 and Armour Road into restaurants, stores and office space.
“This is the largest commercial development tract that we have undertaken for many decades,” said Jeff Samborski, the city’s economic development...
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 Sporting Kansas City has picked the food and beverage provider for its new Major League Soccer stadium: KC American Sportservice.
The company is a joint venture between Delaware North Companies Sportservice of Buffalo, N.Y., and American Food & Vending of Syracuse, N.Y. It will handle all food and beverage operations, including general concessions and premium dining in Livestrong Sporting Park���s 36 suites and five clubs. The $180 million-plus stadium, which will have its grand opening in June, is in Kansas City,...
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 As expected, Marshall & Ilsley Corp. shareholders have approved selling the Milwaukee-based company to BMO Financial of Toronto.
M&I (NYSE: MI) did not disclose the percentage of votes cast Tuesday supporting the transaction.
The closing — expected by July — remains subject to customary conditions, including regulatory approvals.
The deal, announced in December 2010, calls for BMO Financial to pay about $4.1 billion for $49.6-billion-asset M&I, plus pay off M&I’s $1.7 billion debt from the Troubled Asset Relief Program...
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 Exergonix is threatening to pull out of its landmark development deal in Lee���s Summit by the end of the week if the city doesn���t approve a revised agreement.
Don Nissanka, president of the clean-tech battery manufacturer, said in a letter to the city that U.S. Department of Energy program cuts have altered the company���s financial picture.
Exergonix said the cutbacks mean it must shrink the size of its manufacturing plant, reduce its cost from $90 million to $50 million and cut the number of guaranteed high-paying jobs by nearly half ��� from 275 to...
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Clinipace Worldwide, which has a U.S. office in Overland Park, plans to acquire Switzerland-based contract drug and medical device research firm PFC Pharma Focus for an undisclosed amount.
Based in Durham, N.C., Clinipace on Wednesday announced a definitive merger agreement through which it will acquire all outstanding shares of privately held PFC and its subsidiaries. With the acquisition, the company gains offices in Zurich, Switzerland; Munich, Germany; Tel-Aviv, Israel; and New Delhi, India.
Besides Overland Park, Clinipace also has...
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 The Great Recession took a toll on contractors, but many of the seven Kansas City-area companies featured on Engineering News-Record’s list of the nation's top 400 contractors held steady or gained in the rankings.
Kansas City-based JE Dunn Construction Group stayed at No. 25, the highest-ranked local company.
Gainers included Mission Woods-based Layne Christensen Co., which moved to 48th from 57th last year; Kansas City-based Burns & McDonnell, which rose to 59th from 95th; Kansas City-based Garney Holding...
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 Kansas City economic development officials returned from Jefferson City last week empty-handed in their quest for additional state-backed incentives to retain businesses on the Missouri side of the state line.
But the disappointment was tempered Tuesday by Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) announcement that it will expand its ultra-high-speed Internet project across the state line from Kansas City, Kan., into Kansas City, Mo.
“The KC region now has something nobody else has,” said Bob Marcusse, CEO of the Kansas City Area Development...
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Johnson County unemployment was 6.5 percent in March, down from 7.3 percent a year earlier, but slightly higher than the February rate, according to data compiled by the County Economic Research Institute.
March���s rate matched the county���s 2010 average, which was the highest yearly average recorded by CERI in at least 10 years. The county���s 2011 year-to-date average so far also is 6.5, CERI said in its monthly economic indicators report.
The county���s monthly rate was lower than that of the Kansas City metro area as a whole, which clocked in with...
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Chief executives in the Kansas City metro are paid $160,390 a year, on average, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That amounts to hourly average pay of $77.11.
CEOs in Connecticut’s Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metropolitan area earn an average of $217,080 a year — the highest figure for CEOs anywhere in the nation.
The New York City and San Jose areas were the runners-up in pay levels for chief executives.
Check out a searchable database of CEO pay in various metro...
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A University of Missouri-Kansas City agency that helps the families of children with special needs has seen its federal budget extended to next year.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced $4.9 million in new and continuing grants to support Family-to-Family Health Information Centers throughout the country.
The centers are nonprofits that provide information, education, training and support to families of children with chronic medical conditions or disabilities.
Missouri Developmental Disabilities Resource Center at UMKC���s Institute for Human Development runs the program in...
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A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to participate in the Greater Kansas City Chamber Health Council meeting. What is the Health Council? The Health Council of Greater Kansas City is a group of area leaders who demonstrate an interest and provide innovative solutions to the many issues of health in our communities. The exciting focus of this particular meeting was overall community wellness.
We heard from Matt Condon, CEO of Athletic & Rehabilitation Center, talking about the impact to the bottom line of obesity in our...
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 Kansas City, Mo., isn’t alone on a list of area communities Google Inc. looks to include in the fiber-optic project initially announced for Kansas City, Kan., but it probably will prove the most difficult to pull off, a Google official said.
On Tuesday, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) officials announced that a recently clinched deal with Kansas City Power & Light Co. was the tipping point for expansion to the Missouri side of the state line, but Google’s Milo Medin said the company won’t stop with the Kansas...
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 Kansas City knew Tuesday was probably going to come for a while.
It turns out that Kansas City had been short-listed to receive Google Inc.���s (Nasdaq: GOOG) highly touted hyperspeed Internet network about the same time as its westward neighbor, Kansas City, Kan.
But the difference in federal laws governing publicly traded utilities such as Kansas City Power & Light versus the KCK-owned Board of Public Utilities accounted in large part for the delay in Kansas City letting out its big...
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 Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th will open a store in Kansas City, Kan. ��� one of four new stores it plans to open nationwide this year.
The Saks Inc. (NYSE: SKS) outlet retail concept, formed in 2008, will fill spaces ranging from 25,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet with what the company called a ���luxury in a loft��� store design. It sells apparel for men, women and children, as well as various shoes and accessories.
More details about the Kansas City, Kan., location were not immediately...
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 The announcement that Google will continue its project into Kansas City, Mo., is a big positive for the region. It is amazing that so many people in KC are still scratching their heads trying to figure out the meaning of Google coming here. I have two comments on that.
One, the new knowledge-based economy and the future workers on this planet are very, very, very interested in technology. They will go where they and their families and businesses can be wired to the hilt, period.
One example I know of is a few years back when a man bought two empty office buildings in a downtown area, remodeled them and added the latest...
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 The National Football League lockout will stay in effect at least until June because of a ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court granted a request by NFL owners, who sought to stop a late April ruling by District Court Judge Susan Nelson lifting the lockout.
Numerous NFL players, including retired Kansas City Chiefs player Priest Holmes and current Chief Mike Vrabel, are among the named plaintiffs in an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL. They had sought the preliminary injunction lifting the...
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Kansas City Mayor Sly James has called an 11 a.m. news conference Tuesday at which he���s expected to announce that Kansas City will get hooked up to the much-touted Google fiber-optic network that previously was announced for Kansas City, Kan.
Several sources confirmed that for the Kansas City Business Journal.
A city official reached Tuesday morning declined to speak directly to the announcement, citing a confidentiality agreement struck between most city officials in the know about Tuesday���s...
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 Litigation brought by Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Inc. about Clearwire Corp.���s similarly swirly marble-like logo is coming to an end.
In a Friday release, Sony Ericsson said it reached a settlement after Clearwire testified in federal court that it wasn���t planning to launch a smart phone.
Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR), based in Kirkland, Wash., is majority owned by Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) and provides Sprint���s 4G service.
The lawsuit, which Sony Ericsson filed in January in Virginia, looked to block Clearwire from using the...
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 Kansas added 682 industrial jobs and 25 manufacturers during the year that ended in March, according to Manufacturers��� News Inc.
That���s the first gain by any U.S. state since the middle part of 2008 and yields a total of 4,639 manufacturers that employ 212,088. The Evanston, Ill., publishing company, which has surveyed the industry since 1912, released the information as part of its 2011 Kansas Manufacturers Directory.
���The recovery is gaining momentum in Kansas and across the...
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Mutual of Omaha Bank has leased space on the west end of the Country Club Plaza to set up its first full-service branch in the Kansas City market.
The lease starts in June for the space on the first floor at 700 W. 47th St.
���This flagship location will serve as a focal point for our expansion in the Kansas City market,��� Sam Somerhalder, senior commercial relationship banker in Kansas City, said in a release. ���As a business-focused community bank, we view this move as a tremendous step in a market where so many leading companies are...
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Missouri is among the top five U.S. states for tracking the safety, economic and environmental returns on its investments in transportation, a new study finds.
Meanwhile, Kansas fell to the middle of the pack, according to The Pew Center on the States and The Rockefeller Foundation study released late last week.
The study examined how well the 50 states and Washington, D.C., measured the effectiveness of their investments in roads, rails, pedestrian/bike infrastructure and ports, letting policymakers better set goals and evaluate which projects were most...
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NovaStar Financial Inc. posted quarterly earnings of $1.78 million, a figure that is dwarfed by the prior-year period���s $982.4 million but that hints at improvement.
Its earnings for the three months that ended March 31 didn���t get the same boost on paper as the prior-year���s earnings ��� a move to wipe $993.1 million of liability off the company���s books.
The latest financial results tell the story of NovaStar (Pink Sheets: NOVS) transforming itself from a subprime mortgage lender to an appraisal...
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The Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan., plans a public meeting Monday evening to protest plans to move the Environmental Protection Agency���s Region 7 headquarters out of downtown Kansas City, Kan.
The rally coincides with the General Services Administration���s deadline to file an answer to the General Accounting Office explaining its decision to move the EPA offices to the former Applebee���s International Inc. headquarters in Lenexa.
In April, Joe Reardon, mayor/CEO of the Unified Government, asked the White House to review GSA���s...
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Hawthorn Bancshares Inc. posted a big improvement in first-quarter earnings, helped by a significant drop in interest expenses and in its provision for loan losses.
The Lee���s Summit-based holding company (Nasdaq: HWBK) for Hawthorn Bank posted net income of $464,715, or 10 cents a share, for the quarter that ended March 31, compared with income of $4,866, or less than 1 cent a share, during the same period last year.
Total interest income at the bank dropped 8.7 percent to $13.58 million, but interest expenses dropped 32 percent to...
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 Former Westar Energy Inc. executive Douglas Lake will receive $26.3 million in unpaid compensation and legal fees from the Topeka-based electric utility.
The former vice president, alongside former Westar CEO David Wittig, resigned in 2002 under pressure from Westar (NYSE: WR) amid charges of looting the utility for personal gain.
Both men were convicted after a second federal trial ��� the first one ended in a mistrial ��� which was overturned on appeal. A third trial was scheduled for 2010 but didn���t happen after federal prosecutors dropped the remaining charges against...
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 Reggie Chandra started Rhythm Engineering in 2005 with a laptop, a small room and himself, serving as the company’s CEO, CFO, janitor and procuring agent.
Six years later, the Asian American Chamber of Commerce of Kansas City has named him as entrepreneur of the year.
During his acceptance speech this week, Chandra described his beginnings in southern India and his move to the United States as a 27-year-old to follow his dream.
Now, he leads a Lenexa-based traffic solutions firm, which he said created more than 30 jobs in the course of three...
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 Intel Corp. said Friday that it would sell off 10 percent of its holdings in Clearwire Corp. for tax purposes, prompting Clearwire shares to drop roughly 15 percent after the announcement.
Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR), based in Kirkland, Wash., is majority owned by Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) and provides Sprint’s 4G service.
Clearwire ended the first quarter with 6.15 million subscribers after rolling out its 4G service to 71 markets, including Kansas City. Its wholesale partners, including Sprint, Time Warner Cable and Comcast Cable, resell Clearwire’s service under their brands and are other...
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Mariner Holdings LLC shed some additional light on its acquisition of a stalled retail development in Basalt, Colo., called Willits Town Center.
Mariner Real Estate Management, a subsidiary of Mariner Holdings, will manage the investment with the intent of completing the project, which has been stalled since 2008.
Willits Town Center is a multi-use community midway between Aspen and Glenwood Springs, Colo., about a 20-minute drive in either direction.
Mariner Real Estate Management acquired a majority of the development for $9...
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 Friday’s edition of the Kansas City Business Journal includes a look at the resignations of four Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences board members.
In particular, the story documents how three of the four ended up taking payroll positions with KCUMB and how a fourth — Joseph Massman — quit after one meeting to apply to become the university’s CFO. (If you’re a print subscriber, click here to read the print edition story.)
There’s nothing illegal about angling for a paid position after a short stint on a nonprofit board, and KCUMB board Chairman Terry Dunn said everything has been done...
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All legislation axing the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. needs is Gov. Sam Brownback’s signature before it’s official.
The state-financed agency, which has promoted tech-based economic development since 1987, will shut its doors in the summer after the Kansas House of Representatives’ final vote on Thursday.
Brownback is expected to sign off on House Bill 2054; he proposed eliminating the agency earlier this year.
After negotiations with the Senate, the House voted 97-26 on Thursday to abolish KTEC and transfer most of its programs to the Kansas Department of Commerce and Kansas Board of...
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Saint John Hospital and Providence Medical Center have acquired a pair of medical practices, helping the health system expand its footprint in Leavenworth County.
Financial terms were not disclosed late Thursday.
Associates in Family Health Care, a Lansing physician practice with three physicians, a nurse practitioner and three physician assistants, will join Providence and Saint John in early August and continue to operate under its name.
Rock Creek Imaging, which is in the same building as Associates in Family Health Care, offers MRIs, CT scans and other diagnostic imaging...
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 Kansas City is lagging the nation in its economic recovery but should catch up later this year, a regional economist told local business leaders Friday morning.
The region’s gross regional product grew 1.7 percent between the fourth quarters of 2009 and 2010, and U.S. gross domestic product grew a full 1.1 percentage points faster during the same period. Frank Lenk, the Mid-America Regional Council’s director of research services, reported the data at an economic forecasting breakfast hosted by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of...
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 This week in the print edition, the Kansas City Business Journal ranks the top Minority-Owned Businesses in the Kansas City area. The Top 5 features two newcomers and three familiar names. As always, the full list features companies from across the spectrum of local industries, from technology to auto sales, from engineering to dance instruction. Here’s No. 5:
Saicon Consultants Inc.
2011 Rank: 5
2010 Rank: 5
Saicon Consultants Inc. reported $25,002,341 in 2010 revenue.
Click here for No. 4 on the...
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 BATS Global Markets Inc. plans to raise money, naturally, in the markets.
The Lenexa-based company, whose holdings include stock exchanges and products in the United States and Europe, filed a registration statement for an initial public stock offering on Friday. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission state that BATS wants to raise as much as $100 million, though the company has not yet stated how many shares it will sell and at what price.
Some BATS stockholders also plan to sell...
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TMNG Global on Thursday reported a bigger loss and a decline in revenue for the first quarter.
The Overland Park-based company (Nasdaq: TMNG), which offers consulting services for the communications, media and entertainment industries, attributed some of the declines to the completion of key consulting projects and European operations last year. Activity in its domestic consulting practice partially offset the reduction in revenue.
TMNG reported revenue of $16.9 million for the 13-week period that ended April 2, down from...
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DST Systems Inc. on Thursday announced the creation of a new subsidiary, DST Insurance Solutions, to expand its reach into policy administration.
Kansas City-based (NYSE: DST) also named the organization’s president, Bonnie Wasgatt.
The new group will specialize in offering annuities to insurance companies via Boston Financial Data Services, a combined outfit of DST Systems and State Street Corp., a Boston-based provider of financial services.
“Consumer product and service needs are shifting dramatically based on a convergence of economic and technological changes,” Wasgatt wrote in a written...
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The past three years have been a test for all businesses. It’s also the time frame for which this year’s Champions of Business were evaluated.
On Thursday, about 250 Kansas City-area business leaders applauded 15 of the area’s best businesses during the fifth-annual Champions of Business awards luncheon at the Overland Park Sheraton.
The event highlighted the strategies and successes of these companies and offered each winner a chance to thank their teammates for the hard work and dedication they have...
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Ben Kirtland is the last University of Kansas athletics official on his way to prison for his role in a $2 million ticket scandal.
Kirtland, an associate athletic director at KU until his resignation in April 2010, was sentenced Thursday to 57 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution by U.S. District Court of Kansas Judge Wesley Brown.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas Barry Grissom’s comments in a written statement appeared to signal that the government’s involvement in the ticket scandal is...
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 Thursday morning, local firm BNIM Architects (Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh McDowell) received one of the architecture community’s highest honors.
More than a dozen BNIM team members accepted the 2011 AIA Architecture Firm Award in New Orleans. The firm was recognized for more than 20 years’ worth of advances in sustainable architecture.
Steve McDowell, the “M” in BNIM, said before heading to New Orleans — five years after Hurricane Katrina — that the award holds special meaning.
The same week that Katrina-related flooding devastated the region, BNIM was planning a 35-year anniversary...
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 Overland Park-based Digital Ally Inc. on Wednesday reported a 25 percent drop in its first-quarter revenue, blaming the lagging economy’s effects on the budgets of public police agencies.
Digital Ally (Nasdaq: DGLY) CEO Stanton Ross said in a written statement that the company continues “to battle significant headwinds” because of the reduction in state, county and municipal tax revenue — the primary financing sources for the company’s customers.
“This was exacerbated by issues associated with the recall of our wireless transfer modules during the first quarter of 2011, as we believe some customers postponed new orders for in-car video systems pending resolution of the WTM problem,” Ross...
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 Peter Brown, former chairman and CEO of AMC Entertainment Inc., is looking to raise $75 million through a public offering for a new venture that will look to acquire existing businesses.
Brown is chairman of Grassmere Partners, a private investment firm that is establishing Kansas City-based Grassmere Acquisition Corp. as a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Grassmere Partners would own 20 percent of the entity, and Brown would be as chairman and CEO.
“We will seek to capitalize on the significant deal sourcing, investing, acquisition and operating expertise of our management team to identify, acquire and operate high-growth businesses which provide products or services used by consumers in their leisure time, or which provide products, services and physical assets that support such businesses,” Grassmere Acquisition said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange...
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The Kansas Senate, in a late-night roll-call vote, backed a proposal to eliminate Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp.
The decision came on the eve of the regular legislative session’s end.
Senators voted 21-11 Wednesday night to dissolve the state-owned group and move many of its grant programs under the umbrellas of the Kansas Department of Commerce and Kansas Board of Regents. The university-based Centers of Excellence and Entrepreneurial Center from KTEC are included in the transfer.
The legislation also would completely nix financing for the Pipeline Entrepreneurial Fellowship program, which already has undertaken a fundraising campaign to stay afloat as an independent...
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 The Missouri Public Service Commission unanimously granted a $59.4 million rate increase for KCP&L.
That’s down from the $97.9 million increase in annual electric operating revenues that KCP&L sought from its initial request on June 4, 2010, and reduces its proposed 11 percent return on equity to 10 percent.
KCP&L made its case for an increase by citing the costs associated with the Iatan 2 coal-fired power plant near Weston as well as environmental improvements to three other plants.
PCS staffers estimate that KCP&L’s rate request will mean average residential customers can expect to pay...
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The holding company for North American Savings Bank saw a fourth-quarter profit turn to a loss after regulators directed it to restate financial figures for the period.
Grandview-based NASB Financial Inc. (Nasdaq: NASB) said Wednesday that it received a letter earlier this month from the Office of Thrift Supervision telling it to restate its fourth-quarter numbers. The regulator required the company to reclassify certain residential development loans receivable as troubled debt restructuring.
The reclassification caused NASB to recognize an aggregate pretax impairment of...
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Kansas City ranks near the bottom of U.S. metropolitan areas for how broadly its public transit system serves area commuters, a new study shows.
The Brookings Institute on Thursday ranked Kansas City 90th of the top 100 metro areas, saying that only 47 percent of area residents have reasonable access to public transit and only 18 percent can use transit to get to work. It also said the median wait time for a bus during rush hour is 14.2 minutes.
The researchers defined reasonable access to transit as having a bus stop within three-fourths of a mile from the resident’s home and measured whether their total trip to work would take more than 90...
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Local economic development leaders officially launched Kansas City’s enhanced business retention and expansion initiative Wednesday.
The KC BEST program was announced in November and proposed adding six new positions at a cost of $500,000 a year, doubling the size of the business retention team at the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City.
The program will be housed within the EDC and will be overseen by the EDC’s new Enhanced Business Retention and Expansion Committee, which will monitor the program during the next year to ensure that it is meeting performance...
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 Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation CEO Carl Schramm is set to appear tonight in an HBO2 documentary exploring the link between dyslexia and business innovators.
Academy Award winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond lend a roughly four-minute spot to Schramm in the film, “Journey into Dyslexia.” It also will be available on demand.
The filmmakers met Schramm two years ago when they attended a meeting in Arizona that the Kauffman Foundation hosted on the link between dyslexia and entrepreneurship, said foundation communications director Joy...
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H&R Block Tax Services LLC sued a franchisee in federal court on Tuesday for taking the tax giant’s startup financing but never opening its locations.
The division of H&R Block Inc. (NYSE: HRB) claims in U.S. District Court in Kansas City that Phoenix-based XL Wealth Management LLC signed an agreement on July 20, 2010, to open franchise locations in Arizona in preparation for the height of the 2011 tax season.
But according to the lawsuit, that’s as far as things got in H&R Block’s relationship with XL Wealth...
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Almost 18,000 jobs have left Missouri and Kansas since the North American Free Trade Agreement was approved 17 years ago, according to a new report.
Between the law’s signing in 1994 and last year, 682,900 U.S. jobs were displaced, the Economic Policy Institute said in a report released Tuesday.
Of those, 12,600 were in Missouri, and 5,100 were in Kansas.
The report said the majority of jobs displaced were in manufacturing, making up almost 61 percent of the total, especially in the areas of computer and electronic parts and motor...
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 Edwin Robinson has resigned as president of MidAmerica Nazarene University, effective June 30.
Robinson did not cite a reason for the resignation, which he tendered Monday night at the Olathe university’s board of trustees annual meeting, spokeswoman Carol Best said.
The university governance will form a search committee and appoint an acting president to replace Robinson, who was president for six years, according to a university statement.
MidAmerica Nazarene University has an enrollment of just more than 1,700...
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 Livestrong Sporting Park will be the host venue for this year’s Farm Aid concert on Aug. 13.
The 26th-annual Farm Aid concert, the first concert to be held in the new stadium, will feature Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews. Other artists will be announced soon.
“I’m looking forward to bringing my friends together in Kansas for the first time to honor family farmers,” Farm Aid President Willie Nelson said in a release. “Farm Aid celebrates the independent family farmers and ranchers who make this country strong, and we know we can only fix the challenges our country faces with the know-how of family...
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A U.S. senator shook his head Wednesday as CEOs from T-Mobile USA and AT&T Inc. both denied being competitors during a hearing on their proposed merger.
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights grilled the CEOs as they attempted to reconcile what one lawmaker called “competitive Armageddon” for the wireless industry with claims that the merger would spur job growth and boost the new carrier’s ability to reach rural communities.
A recording of a webcast of the hearing, during which Sprint Nextel...
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The cost of long-term care continues to rise in Kansas and Missouri, in some cases faster than the national average, according to a new report.
In Kansas, the median annual cost for an assisted-living facility is $42,216, compared with the national median of $39,135, said the report released Tuesday by Genworth Financial Inc. and National Eldercare Referral Systems LLC.
The Kansas rate has increased almost 7 percent since 2005, and the national rate is up 6 percent.
In Missouri, the median annual cost is much lower, at $29,040, which has edged up less than 2 percent in the past six...
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 Riverside has named a unit of Briarcliff Development Co. as the master developer for its on-again, off-again Horizons site at Interstate 635 and Missouri Highway 9. This is the project’s sixth developer since 2002, according to Kansas City Business Journal archives.
Briarcliff Horizons LLC is promising to build 1.1 million square feet of office space and 1.5 million square feet of industrial space during the next 20 years, with a total estimated private investment of more than $300 million.
Briarcliff Development COO Nathaniel Hagedorn said construction will begin in the summer on 25 acres of lakes, 3 miles of tree-lined canals and land set aside for public use and recreational...
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 YRC Worldwide Inc. is taking steps to make its trucking fleet more fuel-efficient, less polluting and cheaper to operate.
The Overland Park-based company (Nasdaq: YRCW) said Tuesday that it was beginning a yearlong process of switching its trucks to 5W full-synthetic motor oil.
Mike Kelley, chief sustainability officer, said in a release that the switch, once completed, would save about 100,000 gallons of fuel a year companywide and reduce waste oil disposal by 28,000 gallons.
YRC also is installing wind skirts to its 53-foot trailers, starting in California and spreading to the rest of the...
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 “What if?” was the question on the minds of Sprint Nextel Corp. shareholders Tuesday.
During Sprint’s (NYSE: S) annual meeting in Overland Park, shareholders pressed CEO Dan Hesse about whether Sprint has a backup plan related to the proposed $39 billion merger between AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile USA.
His answer? Not really.
“Are you able to say what your realistic hope for a best-case scenario would be?” said Rob Stitt, a Lee’s Summit shareholder. “It seems unlikely that the government’s going to just squelch the merger...
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 An employment agency targeting the life sciences industry plans to open an office in Kansas City, Kan., next month.
Taylor Strategy Partners, based in Columbus, Ohio, has offices in New York City and Chicago.
Founded in 1969, the firm provides business consulting services and helps companies find and retain top employee talent.
So far, the Kansas City office will include only one employee, Managing Director Todd Radloff. However, future expansion is possible as Taylor Strategy Partners becomes more established, spokeswoman Meggie Matheney...
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 The Kansas City casino market came out ahead in April compared with a year earlier — led by gains for Isle of Capri Casino Kansas City — though its growth still trailed that of Missouri casinos overall, according to Missouri Gaming Commission figures.
The Kansas City market’s four riverboat casinos reported aggregate revenue of $62.8 million, up 3.4 percent, despite a 3.7 percent decline in admissions to 830,400.
Throughout Missouri, total casino revenue rose 4.5 percent to nearly $159.1...
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 A new study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is putting numbers to something most people already know — medical costs requiring a hospital stay are far above what most people can pay without insurance.
According to the report, released Tuesday, about 12 percent of hospital stays billed to the uninsured are paid in full, a statistic that rises to 50 percent for the wealthiest uninsured families.
These unpaid hospital stays make up 95 percent of all hospital costs billed to the uninsured, contributing to the estimated $73 billion in uncompensated care absorbed by the health care industry every...
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 KCP&L is pumping up its wind power portfolio by more than 65 percent, agreeing to buy power from a project to be built in Western Kansas.
The Kansas City-based electric utility signed a power purchase agreement for about 131 megawatts from the CPV Renewable Energy Co. LLC wind farm in Cimarron, Kan., on which construction is expected to begin in the fall. That’s a big boost to KCP&L’s current 200 MW wind power portfolio — which represents enough electricity to power more than 60,000 homes a year — through the Spearville Wind Energy Facilities and Gray County Wind...
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 CBL & Associates Properties Inc. — the owner of Kansas City’s largest enclosed shopping mall, Oak Park Mall — has sold half of the property to TIAA-CREF in a $1.09 billion real estate joint venture.
As part of the deal, CBL (NYSE: CBL) sold a 50 percent stake in three of its regional shopping centers, including Oak Park Mall and malls in St. Louis and Nashville.
TIAA-CREF, a national financial services organization and a provider of retirement services for educators, also will assume 12 percent ownership of a CBL property in Pearland,...
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Kansas Bioscience Authority executives have seen their job descriptions turned upside down, interim CEO David Vranicar reported to the KBA board Monday.
Instead of spending their days asking questions of small and emerging life sciences firms from throughout the state — looking for the right ones to invest in — KBA officials this year have been the subjects of the intense questioning. And a forensic audit, for which the KBA engaged BKD LLP, has expanded.
The embattled KBA has been under fire by members of the Legislature and...
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 Inergy LP saw lower propane sales and costs associated with debt refinancing take a toll on earnings during the second quarter.
The Kansas City-based propane retailer and midstream operator (NYSE: NRGY) posted net income of $36.6 million, or 30 cents a share, for the quarter that ended March 31, down 58 percent from $87.2 million, or 44 cents a share, during the same quarter last year. The company had 121,662 shares outstanding, compared with 47,979 a year prior.
Inergy spent $49.4 million on early retirement of debt as part of its larger refinancing...
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 Several suburban communities are watching to see if Blue Springs can pull off a pilot effort to boost entrepreneurship.
Lee’s Summit; Independence; Stanley, Kan.; and others could latch onto a new Web-based platform aimed at localizing an approach to business development, Blue Springs Economic Development Corp. President Brien Starner said.
Starner looks to the recently launched GrowBlueSprings.com, built by StartKC, to become a macro- and micro-facilitator for building business support at the community...
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 More tests at Bannister Federal Complex in Kansas City have come up empty of health concerns, according to the latest results from an investigation by General Services Administration Region 6 and reviewed by Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 technicians.
The tests examined samples of indoor air and dust for beryllium and uranium. The latter was not found; the former wasn’t found in air samples, though “minute detections” were found in dust samples from two locations, according to a Monday...
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Seaboard Corp. saw sales spike to $1.47 billion during the quarter that ended April 2.
That represented a 44 percent increase from $1.02 billion during the same period of 2010.
Earnings attributable to the Merriam-based company came in at $116.9 million, or $96.11 a share, nearly double the $62.78 million, or $50.84 a share, during the same quarter last year.
Domestically, Seaboard (NYSE AMEX: SEB) mostly works in pork production/processing and ocean transportation, and it has a 50 percent interest in Butterball turkey operations; abroad, the company does commodity merchandising, grain processing, sugar production and electric power...
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 Burns & McDonnell plans to spend $20 million to renovate and expand its south Kansas City world headquarters.
The engineering firm had announced in 2009 that it would lease an additional 217,000 square feet at 9400 Ward Parkway to complement its existing offices at 9300 Ward Parkway. Now, Burns and McDonnell Chairman and CEO Greg Graves says the company also will build a 450-seat auditorium, conference center and wellness clinic.
“We are proud to say that through these tough economic times, Burns & McDonnell has continued to grow,” Graves said in a...
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 Gary Robb’s recent verdict for his clients in the amount of $48 million represents the third-largest plane crash award in Missouri’s history.
It so happens that the two largest plane crash verdicts in Missouri also belong to clients of the Kansas City aviation plaintiff’s attorney, who works for the firm named for himself and his wife, Robb & Robb LLC.
On April 22, a Franklin County jury awarded $4 million each to the families of five people who perished in a 2006 twin-engine plane crash. They were taking off from Sullivan Regional Airport in Sullivan,...
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 First Student Inc. plans to pull out of its Overland Park facility in mid-July, ending about 163 jobs.
The facility at 7321 W. 135th St. will close because the Cincinnati-based school bus transportation services company was not given any routes by the Blue Valley School District for the 2011-2012 school year, according to First Student spokeswoman Maureen Richmond. The company’s last day with the district is July 14.
Richmond said the district chose Cincinnati-based Petermann Ltd. as its new provider after a bidding...
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Leawood-based Palmer Square Management LLC and two other investors have put $25 million of seed capital into Millstreet Capital Management LLC in return for a share in the business.
Palmer Square Management is owned by Mariner Holdings LLC, which acquired it in December 2009. Another Mariner Holdings entity, Montage Investments, also joined in on the Millstreet investment, along with Atlantic Asset Management, which is based in Stamford, Conn., and has an office in Overland Park.
Millstreet Capital, a long/short credit hedge fund manager, mainly invests in mid-sized, established entities that have high-quality assets and solid growth profiles but that Millstreet considers...
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The leadership ledger in Kansas City jumped by 26 people on Friday. The Civic Council’s Kansas City Tomorrow Program ended with some very talented young business leaders presenting their personal plans for future civic involvement to their classmates.
Leadership development is one of the best programs done by civic and charitable organizations for the past 30 years. These folks are ready to get involved in issues of poverty, children, education, economic development, regionalism and a ton of other needful...
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 If you’re looking for a job that pays, focus on health care.
The eight top-paying U.S. jobs are in medicine or dentistry, according to an analysis of federal compensation data for 801 full-time occupations. The analysis was by G. Scott Thomas of The Business Journals, connected with the Kansas City Business Journal.
Surgeons led, earning an average of $219,770 in 2009, the latest year for which official figures are available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). They’re followed by anesthesiologists ($211,750), oral and maxillofacial surgeons ($210,710), orthodontists ($206,190) and obstetricians and gynecologists...
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Merlin Entertainments announced Monday that it plans to build a $15 million LegoLand Discovery Center at Crown Center in Kansas City.
The attraction will be adjacent to the entertainment company’s planned $15 million Sea Life aquarium, which was announced in February.
The Kansas City attraction will be the fourth LegoLand in the...
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The Sprint Foundation has donated $1 million to the University of Kansas Cancer Center to help study blood-related cancers.
The gift, announced Monday, will create a five-year hematology/oncology professorship. That person will lead a team of physician scientists who will care for patients and perform research, the cancer center said in a release.
“Sprint and the Sprint Foundation are committed to seeing success throughout the Kansas City area in our communities and our people,” Ralph Reid, president and executive director of the Sprint Foundation, said in the...
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The state of Kansas has lured a Kansas City engineering firm to Overland Park, where it will add 10 jobs, a company spokeswoman said.
M.E. Group/design+green and a predecessor company, which has had an office on the Missouri side of the state line since 1986, moves to Johnson County June 1, the Overland Park Chamber Economic Development Council announced Friday.
M.E. Group, based in Lincoln, Neb., specializes in sustainable and energy-efficient building design. It has a total of 75 employees at offices in Licoln, Kansas City, Chicago, Denver and...
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Even unflattering Tweets have silver linings.
That’s the message Justin Meyer of the Kansas City Aviation Department drove home Friday to a group of social networking professionals.
Meyer has handled social media for Kansas City International Airport (@KCIAirport) since its first Tweet in 2009. He said companies must grow a thick skin and take the good feedback with the bad if they’re serious about connecting with customers in this venue.
In a presentation to the Social Media Club of KC, Meyer shared this less-than-glowing post about the airport from @ericepperson: “Not sure which is...
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Ali Malekzadeh will take over as dean of Kansas State University’s business school.
Malekzadeh will start his new job as the Edgerley Family Dean of Business Administration at K-State on July 1. He has been dean of Xavier University’s Williams College of Business.
In his years with the Cincinnati private liberal arts school, Malekzadeh created 14 executive advisory boards to advise the college, started an executive mentor program, created the Xavier Launch-a-Business Competition and launched a speaker series featuring CEOs of prominent local...
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Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics has received a five-year, $640,000 grant to study treating childhood asthma with antihistamines.
The National Institutes of Health announced the grant Friday. While previous studies have indicated antihistamines aren’t helpful for children with allergic asthma, this study will see if the medications work better in children with certain types of asthma, the hospital said in a release.
Asthma is the top cause of pediatric hospitalizations at Children’s...
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The Kansas City Animal Health Corridor will hold its third KC Animal Health Investment Forum this summer, providing area companies a chance to connect with potential backers.
The forum will be held on Aug. 30 at the Kansas City Marriott Downtown. Applications must be submitted by June 24. Application information is available here.
Interested companies need to be in the animal health or nutrition industries, seek between $500,000 and $20 million in funding and have revenue projected to reach $20 million within five to seven...
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Arby’s will open a new Overland Park restaurant in July and has two additional stores in the Kansas City area under development.
The Overland Park restaurant will be located at 15021 Metcalf Ave. The roast beef fast food restaurant chain will open locations at Adams Dairy Landing in Blue Springs and near Vivion Road and North Oak Trafficway in the Northland, said Arby’s director of real estate Bob Kralicek.
Kralicek said Arby’s is leasing the land at 151st and Metcalf and building its own 2,800-square-foot...
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Through the years, I have reviewed and recommended scores of books for the Kansas City Business Journal. Today, I say without reservation that I discuss the book that had the greatest impact on me. I suggest that it will have precisely the same effect on any businessperson who reads it.
The book is David Brooks’ “The Social Animal.”
David Brooks is the renowned op-ed columnist for the New York Times. Two of his recent columns were poignant. One dissected Donald Trump’s likely presidential bid and the other used the current Broadway hit “The Book of Mormon” as a vehicle to explore contemporary...
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Judy Mathews, a mainstay at the Kansas Women’s Business Center, is stepping down as program director and into retirement.
Mathews said Friday that the center will seek to hire a replacement before her retirement becomes effective in mid-June.
Mathews, who oversees the center’s program and event logistics, joined the center as program coordinator in 2000, a few months after its opening. She then was promoted twice into her current position.
Her exit won’t be a complete one, however.
She plans to remain connected to the center in a limited...
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Olympic Steel Inc. is opening a 43,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center in Kansas City.
The Cleveland, Ohio-based metals service company’s (Nasdaq:ZEUS - News) expansion into Kansas City will enable the company to be closer to key customers, said Steve Mallory, vice president for Olympic Steel’s central region.
“We have a wide variety of customers in our geography that we are now servicing from our Bettendorf, Iowa, facility. It’s about providing just-in-time deliveries from a diverse product line from that facility rather than being eight to nine hours away,” Mallory...
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Furniture retailer I.O. Metro LLC has found a cozy market in Kansas City and is looking at settling into a third space in Johnson County.
Founder and CEO Jay Howard said the existing stores at Kansas City’s Zona Rosa shopping center and at Summit Fair in Lee’s Summit have been progressing and posting sales increases, prompting urgency in the search for another location.
The retailer, based in Lowell, Ark., has another Kansas City connection, too. In January, local private equity firm Consumer Growth Partners announced that it had acquired the modern, upscale furniture retailer and was looking to expand its regional...
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Westar Energy Inc. first-quarter earnings were flat from the same quarter a year as increased expenses canceled out a rise in revenue.
The Topeka-based electric utility (NYSE: WR) announced that it had earnings of $31 million during the opening quarter of 2011. The earnings translated to 27 cents a share, matching the figure for the first quarter of 2010.
First-quarter revenue was up 7.2 percent, from $333 million to $357 million.
But expense increases nearly matched the growth in revenue, jumping...
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This week in the print edition, the Kansas City Business Journal ranks the Top Area Managed Health Care Plans, broken down into three types of plans: HMO plans, Point of Service plans and Preferred Provider Organization Plans.
They’re ranked by local membership. Here’s No. 5 on the PPO list, which moved up a notch from 2010:
Coventry Health Care - PPO
2011 Rank: 5
2010 Rank: 6
Coventry Health Care - PPO reported 45,977 in local membership.
Click here for No. 4 on the list.
For the full 2011 lists of the Top Area Managed Health Care Plans, ranked by local membership, take a look at this week’s subscriber edition of the Kansas City Business...
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The newly assembled Kansas City Council on Thursday unanimously approved a special taxing district to a finance a $24 million makeover for Ward Parkway Center.
The Community Improvement District will enable the South Kansas City infill center to levy a 1 percent sales tax to help pay for demolition of the former Dillard’s store and add new retail space.
RED Development LLC filed a CID application with the city in March on behalf of the property’s owner.
“It’s major reinvestment of what applicants call a tired shopping center,” said Kansas City Councilman Ed...
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The Kansas City Council on Thursday afternoon overrode former Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s veto of a proposal to build an office tower on the Country Club Plaza.
A 9-3 vote by the new Kansas City Council gives the go-ahead, at least from a legislative standpoint, for the proposal by Plaza owner Highwoods Properties Inc. (NYSE: HIW).
It’s unclear whether Highwoods has a tenant, though.
Originally planned for the Polsinelli Shughart PC law firm and its 500 employees, the building plan encountered vocal opposition from a group that formed as Friends of the...
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The Kansas City area ended up with three companies on the Fortune 500 list — all on the Kansas side of the metro area.
Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) was 85th, YRC Worldwide Inc. (Nasdaq: YRCW) was 488th, and Seaboard was 500th.
Overland Park-based Sprint dropped from 67th last year.
YRC was down from 396th.
But Merriam-based Seaboard edged onto the list, having ended up 552nd last year.
Meanwhile, Kansas City-based H&R Block Inc. slid off the list after ranking No. 493 last year.
Wal-Mart came out on top for the second straight...
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Bank of America plans to triple its number of facilities targeted at helping struggling mortgage borrowers, and Kansas City is among the metro areas slated for the new centers.
In a plan announced Thursday, BofA said it will increase the number of centers to 40 from the existing 12 by early summer. These customer-assistance centers will give distressed borrowers a physical place to go and speak with bank representatives, in addition to the bank’s toll-free phone lines. The centers will be concentrated in areas hit hard by the housing...
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The federal government is offering to pay environmental remediation costs to help offload the old federal complex at the corner of Hardesty and Independence avenues in Kansas City.
The 572,000-square-foot complex went up for online auction beginning Thursday.
The seven-building, 18-acre industrial space was used as an Army Quartermaster Depot during World War II and has been deemed “excess” by the White House, along with more than 12,000 other federal properties.
“Adding a qualification for the government to pay for the remediation costs, we think, will make it more marketable, and hopefully we can get it into the private sector so it can be reused,” said Charlie Cook, a spokesman for General Services Administration Region...
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National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell told Kansas City Chiefs fans that although he understands their frustration about the labor dispute, reaching a new collective bargaining agreement is important for the game’s future.
He also said no deadlines to resolve the issue have been set.
Goodell and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt talked with thousands of Chiefs fans and members of the media during a half-hour conference call Thursday morning. Fans were allowed to ask questions, but not surprisingly, the NFL lockout dominated...
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A Leawood lawyer was among three men a federal grand jury indicted on charges related to a $52 million Ponzi scheme.
James Scott Brown, 66, and his co-defendants, Derek Smith of Oxfordshire, U.K., and Martin Sigillito of Webster Groves near St. Louis, stand accused by a grand jury in St. Louis of orchestrating a decade-long fraud that federal prosecutors said is the most amount of money stolen in the U.S. Eastern District of Missouri. The April 28, 22-count indictment was sealed until Wednesday.
Internal Revenue Service criminal investigators claimed that the three men created an enterprise called the British Lending Program that took loans for purported real estate development projects but instead paid off other investors and lined the pockets of Sigillito and...
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 YRC Worldwide Inc. will show Friday whether it has continued to bounce back from the smaller shipping volumes that had the company in danger of filing for bankruptcy more than a year and a half ago.
The Overland Park-based trucker (Nasdaq: YRCW) is scheduled to release its first-quarter financial results early Friday morning, followed by an 8:30 a.m. conference call with analysts.
The first quarter typically is the roughest in the shipping business because post-holiday volumes are down and wintry weather can delay deliveries and increase...
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Ceva Animal Health completed an $18 million expansion of its Biomune poultry vaccine production plant in Lenexa.
The 55,000-square-foot facility, now about 20,000 square feet larger than the existing space, opened this week. Officials said the larger space will allow the company to add 80 jobs during the next four years.
Ceva currently emloys 185 in Lenexa.
“Today, what we output is almost entirely for the domestic market,” Arnaud Bourgeois, global director of biology at French parent company Ceva Sante Animale, said in a...
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Bill Downey has stepped down as president and COO of Great Plains Energy Inc. and CEO and president of Kansas City Power & Light Co.
He becomes executive vice chairman for the electric utility as he makes the transition to retirement in August.
Terry Bassham, executive vice president of utility operations, will take Downey’s place.
Downey’s career at KCP&L spanned more than 11 years.
“Bill has served KCP&L, our employees and our customers with great distinction for more than a decade,” said Mike Chesser, chairman and CEO of Great Plains, the parent company for...
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MWI Veterinary Supply Inc. is expanding its Edwardsville distribution center and adding 10 jobs.
The company (Nasdaq: MWIV), based in Meridian, Idaho, opened the center in 2007 and employs 60. It plans to begin building the $1.3 million expansion later this month, said Ed Elder, a principal with Colliers International, which represented MWI in its lease negotiations.
The expansion, which will enlarge the facility from 90,000 square feet to 125,000, is expected to be completed in the summer, he...
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Pete Kovac no longer is CEO of Nicholson Kovac Inc., instead taking the title of managing partner.
Kovac will be joined in that role by two other managing partners, both of whom were former Nicholson Kovac clients.
Jim Mannebach arrives at the Kansas City-based full-service marketing agency from earlier stints as CEO of Emerson Electric’s Micro Motion and later as global CEO of Norgren Inc., an engineering and manufacturing company based in the United Kingdom.
Mannebach’s responsibilities include internal operations and...
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Sprint Nextel Corp. plans to hire as many as 250 employees for its Oklahoma City Call Center.
The Overland Park-based wireless carrier (NYSE: S) said its invitation-only open house at the call center will be from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 11. Candidates seeking invitations must apply online.
The call center, which opened in 1999, handles technical support calls for customers nationwide.
The positions offer competitive salaries and benefits, with medical, dental, 401(k), monthly performance bonuses and access to Sprint’s employee wireless phone...
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Kansas City pediatrician Dr. Gary Pettett has been named as president of the Missouri State Medical Association for the 2011-2012 term.
Pettett has a clinical practice at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics and Truman Medical Centers, as well as faculty positions at Children’s Mercy and the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. He also is a fellow at the Kansas City-based Center for Practical Bioethics, specializing in research ethics and professionalism.
He was president of the Metropolitan Medical Society of Greater Kansas City in 2006 and served as chairman of the statewide group’s...
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The Missouri Department of Transportation’s proposal to cut state highway spending in half and eliminate 1,200 jobs could be a devastating blow to an industry already weighed on by the recession.
“It will have a negative effect on all of us, people will lose jobs and some companies may be gone,” Don Clarkson, spokesman for Kansas City-based contractor Clarkson Construction Co., said in an email response. “There simply won’t be enough work. The biggest loser will be the traveling public stuck on outdated and unsafe roads and...
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A Jackson County jury has leveled a $10.6 million verdict against UBS Financial Services Inc. after finding that a Kansas City vice president sexually harassed a subordinate who later was fired in retaliation for reporting it.
The nearly four-week trial ended Tuesday.
UBS has denied charges brought by Carla Ingraham, a longtime employee at the investment bank’s Kansas City location, and said it disagreed with the jury’s findings.
“UBS is disappointed in this verdict,” UBS spokeswoman Karina Byrne...
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A subsidiary of UMB Financial Corp. has landed a contract with Los Angeles-based Luminous Capital to provide alternative investment administration services for about $1 billion in assets under management.
JD Clark & Co. will provide the services. It is the alternative investments division of Milwaukee-based UMB Fund Services Inc. (Nasdaq: UMBFS), which is a subsidiary of Kansas City-based UMB Financial Corp. (Nasdaq: UMBF).
Fee income from investment services was a big driver of UMB Financial’s...
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 Six former senior executives from now-defunct Brooke Corp. and two subsidiaries were charged Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission with hiding key information from investors and running a massive financial fraud.
Former Chairman and founder Robert Orr is among the defendants.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court of Kansas, the SEC alleged that the defendants misrepresented the health of the companies and the “increasingly dire liquidity and financial condition of the Brooke companies” in SEC filings and other public statements for year-end 2007 and the first and second quarters of...
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My kids are passionate! The oldest is both right- and left-brained, so she analyzes how to be more creative. My middle child should already have a law degree for her skill at rebutting our directives. The youngest — yes, another girl — is filled with more compassion than Dr. Dolittle for every living creature.
They were all raised on the principal of “learn to teach.” In fact, that is what we say to each other as we go off to work and school each day. It simply means that if you know something well enough to teach it to someone else, then you are sure you know it...
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 TradeWind Energy LLC is pumping up its Rocky Ridge Wind Project near the Oklahoma-Kansas border to the tune of 25 megawatts, 18 turbines and 17,000 acres.
The expansion, announced Tuesday by Lenexa-based TradeWind and Western Farmers Electric Cooperative, brings the project to a total of 150 megawatts, 93 wind turbines and roughly 28,000 acres throughout Oklahoma’s Kiowa and Washita counties.
The boost had little effect on other aspects of the project, however.
TradeWind still estimates that the project will generate 150 jobs and still is shooting for a January...
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 Great Plains Energy Inc.’s first-quarter earnings dove, affected by slackening consumer demand and low natural gas prices.
Kansas City-based Great Plains (NYSE: GXP), the parent company of Kansas City Power & Light Co., reported quarterly earnings of $2 million, or 1 cent a share, compared with $19.9 million, or 15 cents a share, in the prior-year period.
The electric utility posted $492.9 million in operating revenue for the first three months of the year, down 2.8 percent from $506.9 million for the same quarter a year...
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 Two more suburban Kansas City newspapers are shutting down.
The Star Herald of Belton, Mo., and the Blue Springs Journal, both properties of Kansas City Star owner The McClatchy Co. (NYSE: MNI), will publish their final editions on May 12 and May 11, respectively, Publisher John Beaudoin said in a Tuesday interview.
The Blue Springs publication shares its employees with the Lee’s Summit Journal, he said. The Belton publication employs five.
Beaudoin became publisher of the Belton publication in March, along with The Cass County Democrat Missourian in Harrisonville,...
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 Bernstein-Rein hired former Barkley CEO Brian Brooker as the advertising agency’s chief creative officer.
Brooker, who left Barkley almost exactly a year ago, succeeds Arlo Oviatt, who worked in a similar role for eight years before briefly joining PlattForm Advertising and now working as Young & Rubicam’s global executive creative director.
Brooker was a writer for Bernstein-Rein from 1983 to 1985.
Bernstein-Rein also hired Joe Bartolucci, formerly senior vice president at Leo Burnett, a large advertising agency in...
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 YRC Worldwide Inc.’s latest restructuring effort has gotten a cool reception from investors and Wall Street analysts.
The Overland Park-based trucking company (Nasdaq: YRCW) announced late Friday that it had signed definitive agreements to pump $100 million in new capital into its beleaguered balance sheet and eliminate $140 million or more in debt, as well as replace an expiring asset-backed securitization facility.
But current shareholders will watch their ownership of the company slide to...
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 Sprint Nextel Corp. is extending its efforts against the proposed merger of AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA to state public service commissions.
Sprint (NYSE: S) attorneys began with West Virginia’s commission Monday, requesting what is known as a contested-case proceeding on AT&T’s (NYSE: T) filing in the state, the Overland Park-based wireless carrier announced Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission regulate wireless carriers — not state regulators.
“But with an exception,” Sprint spokesman John Taylor said in an...
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 A prolonged refueling outage at the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Plant is estimated to cost about $62 million.
Kansas’ only nuclear power generator, located about 80 miles southwest of Kansas City in Burlington, has been shut down since March 19.
Jenny Hageman, spokeswoman for the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp., said the plant went offline for planned maintenance and refueling.
It’s expected to resume normal operations by late May, Hageman said.
Although all nuclear generators go offline for routine refueling and maintenance, Wolf Creek’s inactivity for about two months represents a relatively long period of time for a shutdown, Hageman...
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 General Motors and Ford Motor Co. posted strong April sales, assisted by vehicles produced in the Kansas City area.
Ford sold 182,542 vehicles in April, up 24.5 percent from the same period last year. Not to be outdone, General Motors posted April sales of 232,538 vehicles, up 26.4 percent from last year.
The Chevrolet Malibu, produced at GM’s Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kan., saw the largest sales increase among vehicles made locally, up 49.4 percent to 24,701. The Malibu is GM’s third-best selling vehicle behind its Chevrolet Silverado pickup (29,342) and the newly released Chevrolet Cruze...
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 Kansas City hiring and real estate news drove the needle last month, delivering the Kansas City Business Journal's most-read online articles in April.
If you’ve been reading our popular DailyUpdate — the email every weekday afternoon that covers breaking news and complements the exclusive features of our weekly print product — and wondering what everyone else is reading, check out the top stories from April:
1. Leading the list is a story about Overland Park-based engineering firm Black & Veatch planning to hire more than 400, about half in the Kansas City area, as well as to open a new facility in...
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National Football League owners are pushing for a more permanent lockout after an April 29 appeals court ruling temporarily reinstated the exclusion.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Nelson issued the injunction against the lockout last week. But the owners said she ignored an act that defines a labor dispute in terms broad enough to apply to the players even after they decertified the NFL Players Association.
“Controversies concerning terms or conditions of employment can and do occur whether or not employees are unionized,” the NFL argued in a court...
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Entertainment Properties Trust has hit the ground running this year, delivering an “extremely productive” first quarter, CEO David Brain said. Earnings soared by more than 50 percent.
The Kansas City-based real estate investment trust (NYSE: EPR) — which focuses on holdings such as megaplex movie theater, destination recreational and other specialty properties — has accomplished many of its stated objectives for the year, Brain said in a release.
Entertainment Properties sold the formerly financially troubled Toronto Dundas Square entertainment retail center for the “very attractive price” of about $238 million, diversified its tenant base — which includes many AMC Entertainment...
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 Cerner Corp. and its more than $400 million office project in conjunction with Sporting Kansas City's Major League Soccer stadium is one of the top 10 North American economic development deals for 2010, according to Site Selection magazine.
The joint effort, which will bring a promised 4,000 jobs to Wyandotte County’s Village West development area, was the continent’s eighth-largest deal in 2010 based on dollar amount, according to values listed by the magazine. Samsung/KEPCO’s (Korea Electric Power...
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 Missouri tax collections in April missed last year’s figure by a wide margin, though year-to-date revenue in 2011 still is outpacing the same period of 2010.
Missouri collected $878.4 million in April, down 11 percent from $986.8 million in April 2010.
Nevertheless, Missouri’s collections for the fiscal year-to-date stand at $5.86 billion, up 3.4 percent from the $5.67 billion collected at the same point year ago. Missouri’s fiscal year starts July 1.
Individual income tax, the state’s largest revenue source, saw a modest...
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 NIC Inc. saw earnings escalate on higher revenue as the company maintained strong profit margins on the government websites it makes and runs.
Earnings jumped by more than 50 percent to $5.06 million, or 8 cents a share, compared with $3.32 million, or 5 cents a share, during the same quarter of 2010.
Revenue rose 11.7 percent to $42.7 million during the three months that ended March 31 compared with the same period of 2010, Olathe-based NIC (Nasdaq: EGOV) reported Monday afternoon.
Typically, NIC does not charge the government entities for the services it provides, instead charging small fees to residents who use online tools for convenience and to companies allowed access to certain government...
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YRC Worldwide Inc. share prices plunged Monday, the trading day after the Overland Park-based trucker announced a restructuring plan that would leave shareholders owning about 2.5 percent.
About 2:40 p.m., YRC shares (Nasdaq: YRCW) were trading at $1.54, down 44 cents, or 22.2 percent, according to Yahoo Finance. They had closed at $1.98 on Friday.
YRC announced Friday that it had reached definitive agreements with the majority of its financial partners about a restructuring plan that would attract $100 million in new capital and swap current debt for stock...
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 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has signed a bill that will provide $189 million in federal financing to schools in the state.
The bill provides $36 million for Kansas City-area schools.
Normally a matter of routine appropriations, federal financing for state programs has been a contentious issue in the General Assembly this session, with some senators who are concerned about the federal deficit threatening filibusters on federal appropriations.
Others have expressed concerns about using federal appropriations for ongoing costs, such as education...
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 Southwest Airlines has closed on its $1.4 billion purchase of AirTran Airways.
Dallas-based Southwest (NYSE: LUV) said Monday that it had bought all outstanding common stock of AirTran Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AAI), which operates AirTran Airways. When adding in AirTran’s net debt, the total transaction value is $3.2 billion.
The deal adds bulk to the market-share leader at Kansas City International Airport (Code: MCI), where Southwest handled more than 40 percent of passenger boardings last year. AirTran’s KCI market share last year was...
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The Robert E. Miller Group has acquired human resources firm FBD Consulting, a move aimed at expanding the company’s reach into the employee benefits business.
The Kansas City-based health and property/casualty insurer announced the purchase Monday. Terms of the deal were not announced.
The purchase closed on March 31, but the Miller Group waited until it had a chance to notify all of Leawood-based FBD’s clients before formally announcing the deal, Miller Group Chairman Sean Miller said.
The acquisition will allow the Miller Group to help small and midsize business customers with human resource demands, Miller...
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 Sunday night news from far away in Pakistan sent Kansas City businessman Wit Solberg far away, too — back in time to Sept. 11, 2001, when he was working in New York.
Osama bin Laden, the man credited with ordering the terrorist attacks nearly 10 years ago, died Sunday during a raid in Pakistan by U.S. military forces.
That news prompted a period of reflection for Solberg, owner of Mission Peak Capital, who recalled looking out his window in a building a couple of blocks south of the World Trade Center and seeing burning...
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 Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City has named Dr. Blake Williamson as its new chief medical officer.
Williamson spent the past eight years as a medical director for the health care insurer, helping develop new benefit programs and initiatives.
Before joining Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, Williamson was a health care management consultant with Milliman USA, an executive with Asante Health System in Oregon and chief medical officer of TriSource, a Kansas City-based partnership involving Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City and several local...
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 The National Railway Labor Conference says the nation’s leading railroad companies have reached a tentative agreement for a new labor contract with the United Transportation Union, the nation’s largest rail union.
In a Monday release, the conference said the agreement covers more than 38,000 employees. Terms of the agreement, reached April 21, were not disclosed, pending approval by UTU members.
The UTU represents about a third of the railroad workers covered in the negotiations that began in January 2010, the conference...
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A standing-room-only crowd filled the Kansas City Council chambers Monday morning for the swearing-in of Mayor Sly James and the City Council. In his inaugural address, Mayor James noted a new sense of optimism in the city and promised a collaborative effort to bring all Kansas Citians together.
The only awkward moment came when Mayor James promised that his administration would not be a “family affair,” which brought an extended round of applause from all in attendance, except former Mayor Mark...
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 The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce now has an app for that.
The chamber announced Friday that a new mobile application, “KCChamber2Go,” is available to members.
The chamber partnered with Kansas City-based software developer Moblico Solutions LLC and Fairway-based MetroMedia Inc. to create the interactive program for Android, Apple's iPhone and other smart phones.
The app includes an interactive member directory, chamber and member news feeds, access to local deals and discounts, a barcode reader, Twitter feeds, ChamberTV viewing access and other...
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Kansas City’s Stowers Institute for Medical Research has created a graduate program, expected to welcome its first students in September 2012.
The Graduate School of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, announced Monday, will provide a research-based Ph.D. degree in biology, with students doing thesis research at Stowers Institute labs under direct supervision of institute investigators, who will be the faculty and lead the courses. The average student will finish the degree in five...
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