• Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment's Lumiere Place saw October revenue of $17.9 million, up 41 percent from $12.7 million in October 2008.
• Pinnacle's President Casino saw revenue in October of $1.9 million, down 9 percent from $2 million last October.
• Ameristar Casino in St. Charles saw its revenue increase 7 percent last month to $23.8 million, compared with revenue of $22.3 million in October 2008.
• Harrah's Casino in Maryland Heights reported revenue of $25.4 million last month, up 9 percent from $23.2 million in October 2008.
• Argosy Alton reported revenue of $6.7 million in October, down 8 percent from $7.3 million in October 2008.
• Casino Queen in East St. Louis reported October revenue of $11.8 million, down 3 percent from $12.2 million last October.
As you can see, the only two places where profits decreased are on the Illinois side of the river, a nice bit of fodder for those seeking to keep the casino exemption in the recently passed city/county smoking ban.
A pharmaceutical giant's love affair with St. Louis is over, and it seems no amount of drugs and/or chemical enhancements will ever rekindle the flame.
Just when you think Pfizer will grow, it shrinks. It happens to lots of companies.
Yesterday, Pfizer (maker of Viagra, Celebrex, Lipitor and countless other drugs whose advertisements pay for the network evening news) announced that it will cut 600 of it 1,000 employees in St. Louis.
If they're gonna build a canal, why not a mountain, too? Just like in the real San Carlos, Mexico!
St. Chuck, apparently.
Mike Sellenschuetter, president of Dean Homes, has a $1.5 billion plan to erect the Harbor San Carlos not far from the Family Arena.
The developer hatched the partly-public-subsidized idea more than four years ago, but it'd been nearly swamped because of the economic mess. Until this week, that is.
The St. Louis Business Journal's Kelsey Volkmannreports that on Tuesday night, Sellenschuetter was officially designated developer of the 300-acre site by the St. Charles County Council.
According to Volkmann's story, "The plan calls for a hotel, shops, condos, marina, restaurants and pedestrian walkway on the city's largest undeveloped swath of land. The plan also requires dredging sand in a canal to allow for boating between the shore and Bangert Island, a St. Charles County park."
Contractors who've done work for Sellenschuetter are pissed.
The New York Timesreported yesterday that salaries among college presidents rose 5.5 percent in 2007-08 fiscal year. (Hold your rage, for now; they stopped calculating before the beginning of the Great Recession.) The median compensation for a college president is $627,750, but naturally, some earn more. Much, much more.
Near the top of the rankings, at number four, is former Webster University president Richard S. Meyers, who earned $1,429,738 in 2007-08. That's more than $150,000 less than his most highly-compensated peer, Shirley Ann Jackson of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, who pulls in $1,598,247.
That must chafe.
flickr.com/photos/matthewblack
Except, says Webster spokeswoman Susan Kerth, the Times' reporting is not entirely accurate. "His salary was not $1.4 million," she says. "That was what was on [tax] Form 990, but it was not a true reflection of [Meyers'] salary."
Today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an interesting story about the Missouri Department of Revenue's determination that yoga studios are fitness centers and therefore subject to the state's 4 percent sales tax on the latter.
The yoga lobby -- OK, that's a stretch, but Unreal couldn't resist -- counters that yoga classes aren't the same as, say, spinning classes because the physical activity is actually a means to a spiritual end.
If the yoga studios can sway the state on this First Amendment-based argument, they'll get an exemption on religious grounds.
Before you guffaw, consider that the state of Washington, after pulling a similar maneuver, considered the yoga studios' argument and then backed down.
Now, Unreal's never been one to favor anything that denies folks their spiritual enrichment. But the few times we've darkened a yoga studio's door one of the first impressions we've noted is feet. Stinky feet.
That's an uptick of nearly a full percentage point from the 9.5 percent of the region that was out of work in August.
The last time St. Louis region had an unemployment rate of 10 percent was in August 1983. How long ago was that?
Consider this, back in 1983 the Chrysler plant in Fenton (you know, the one that was shuttered earlier this year?) was just starting to churn out the very first Dodge Minivans.
Francine Katz thought her 2002 promotion to Vice President of Communications and Consumer Affairs at Anheuser-Busch was her ticket to untold riches as an executive of a major corporation.
Instead, Katz claims she received compensation worth just a fraction of what A-B paid her predecessor. The pay disparity continued despite complaints she made to the brewer's top executives, including August Busch III and August Busch IV.
In a discrimination lawsuit filed today in St. Louis Circuit Court, Katz alleges that a corporate culture akin to a "locker room and frat party atmosphere" at Anheuser-Busch (now AB-InBev) adversely impacts female managers such as herself.
Katz is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages she claims she's entitled to as a result of the alleged discrimination.
In the suit, Katz maintains she was paid just $500,000 in compensation when she was first promoted to the job. Meanwhile, her predecessor -- John Jacob -- earned $1.25 million prior to his retirement.
The article about a $5-million loan to developer SCR Investments for the rehabbing of the office building One City Centre also states (almost in passing) that the mostly vacant shopping mall St. Louis Centre will be turned into parking.
SCR Investments plans to convert a bulk of the former St. Louis Centre
mall into parking for One City Centre tenants and parking for tenants
at the U.S. Bank Plaza office building at 505 N. Seventh St. The entire
St. Louis Centre/One City Centre development has been renamed 600
Washington.
As everyone has heard by now, times are tough on the auto lot.
Even after the incredibly popular "Cash for Clunkers" incentive in August, sales of new cars this year are trailing last year's numbers by 11 percent.
As such, auto dealers are trying anything and everything to get customers into the showroom. We're just not so sure that the following is the right, um, sales vehicle for the job.
That's right, the award given each year to the best college football player in America will be on display from 3 p.m. 8:30 p.m. at the dealership.
Question is, though, will it sell cars or encourage visitors to the dealership to emulate the statue and give Auffenberg's salespeople the ol' stiff-arm (a.k.a. "The Heisman")?
For the economy's sake, let's hope it's the former.
The fifth-largest homebuilder in the St. Louis region has filed for bankruptcy.
St. Charles-based Whittaker Homes filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week. The company, headed by Greg Whittaker, is perhaps best known for its massive new-urbanist development -- New Town -- in St. Charles.
According to the St. Louis Business Journal, revenue at Whittaker Homes has declined sharply in recent years from $93.3 million in 2006, to $29.2 million in 2008. In 2007 the builder downsized its work force from 288 employees 150.
In a statement, Greg Whittaker suggested that changes to the credit market negatively impacted the company. As recently as August, Whittaker was optimistic for a turnaround, saying on the company website that increased sales in July boded well for the future.
As devoted readers of Daily RFT discovered in a related post this week, Fred Teutenberg (he of the brilliant/politically-incorrect Dirt Cheap Cigarettes & Beer commercials) is no longer with his old employer.
Teutenberg left the company after what he described as a "parting of ways."
"I don't want to go into it any more than that," states Teutenberg. (A call to Dirt Cheap headquarters for comment went unreturned.)
Teutenberg, however, was only too eager to share with Daily RFT tidbits about his new venture.
In the next couple weeks the man known for defending the "persecuted smoker" and reminding male customers that "the more she drinks, the better you look," plans to open two stores under the name "Fred's Cheapo Depot."
The shops (one in the city the other in south county) will -- as Teutenberg puts it -- "offer you all of your favorite vices at cheaper prices." The website for Cheapo Depot informs that Teutenberg is joining some former people at Dirt Cheap in his new venture.
And, yes, Teutenberg already has a new television commercial for Cheapo Depot featuring a cartoon caricature of himself break dancing while mixing a martini. It's a noble start, but in our opinion still not as good as the Dirt Cheap ad in which Teutenberg's abused body magically transforms into that of a bodybuilder.
Woot.com can brag about doing something not many businesses are doing these days: they're growing. In fact the online retailer is growing so much that last week their St. Louis- based creative wing made the move from a cramped storefront on South Kingshighway to a custom-built space on the second floor above Seki Sui on South Grand.
Woot.com was founded in 2004 by Matt Rutledge in Dallas. His plan to hire his brother, web designer, and St. Louis resident Dave Rutledge to create and manage the website ran into a snag when Dave said he didn't want to leave the Lou' for Dallas. So the brothers worked out a deal where Dave could set up shop and manage the creative side of things here while Matt managed the nuts-and-bolts of the acquisition and distribution end of the business in Dallas.
On Monday, Anheuser-Busch-InBev announced the nationwide release of Bud Light Golden Wheat, the latest spin-off of the company's most popular brand (Chelada, anyone?) and another attempt by the world's largest brewer to break into the micro-brew market and quench the nation's ever-increasing thirst for craft beers.
Described in the press release as "an unfiltered wheat brewed with citrus, a hint of coriander and the superior drinkability of Bud Light" the beer is essentially A-B's attempt at imitating Blue Moon. They even suggest serving it with an orange-slice garnish.
Just as they did for Bud Light Lime, the company will spend a mint -- about $30 million -- marketing their new brew.
Predictably, beer snobs' initial response to the hype has been flatter than a week-old keg. A critic at Pint Log described it as "extremely watered down" and "totally devoid of flavor." (It's possible he just drank a regular Bud Light, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)
Lew Bryson, author of the beer blog Seen Through a Glass, was less harsh in his critique but he posed an interesting question: With the massive marketing push behind Bud Light Golden Wheat, why hasn't AB-Inbev specified what specific variety of wheat beer they have created, especially when they're targeting a demographic (craft beer drinkers) that's familiar with different types of wheat beers? Is it because Golden Wheat is actually a Belgian-inspired witbier, and the now Belgian-owned company desperately wants to avoid the impression that they've turned an American classic into some European sissy beer meant to be sipped out of a schooner?
Details are emerging on that endorsement deal we mentioned yesterday between cyclist Lance Armstrong and Michelob Ultra.
Armstrong was in St. Louis yesterday to publicly unveil the endorsement at the AB brewery on Pestalozzi Street.
According to an article today on BusinessWeek's website, Armstrong inked a three-year deal with AB InBev that will have the seven-time Tour de France champ appearing in two Michelob Ultra commercials as well as lending his name and image for billboard and print ads and possibly packaging.
One of the commercials, titled "Little Bumps", will show Armstrong pedaling up a steep peak. The message of the ad: "Some people see mountains, others see little bumps."
First they stopped giving away free beer at SeaWorld and Busch Gardens. Then they cut off the two cases of beer per month stipend paid to theme-park employees. Now comes word they're plan to sell the magic kingdoms full of overpriced food and beverages and incarcerated sea creatures to one of the world's largest investment firms.
Oh InBev, don't you know how to have any fun?
Rumors are swirling that the Blackstone Group is offering around $3 billion (!) for the theme parks. Yes, your company is $52 billion in debt from buying out St. Louis' largest brewer. But heck, don't you realize that owning acres and acres of roller coasters and exotic wildlife is the American dream? Oops, you're Belgian. Never mind.
The St. Louis Business Journal has the details on the impending sale:
Don't stare too close. The water jets on this lid could shoot your eye out.
Unreal had a pleasant conversation today with our old friend Bruce Santhuff -- the St. Louis native and founder of the Riverfront-Times-endorsed Spaloo toilet seats.
What makes these toilets seats so special? Well, for starters, they're only the best-darned automated keister cleaners this side of Tokyo.
And now they're getting even better! That's right. Santhuff informs Unreal that he's launching two new models, the Spaloo Classic II and the Primus -- a throne that comes with its very own remote control!
Unreal:Why mess with a winning formula? The original Spaloo was pretty incredible just as it was.
Santhuff: We sold out of our original model, and the new versions are big improvements in terms of features and quality. We've moved production from Taiwan to Korea.
Tells us about the Classic II. Is it named that because each time you go No. 2 on this toilet seat it's a "classic"?
Meet Jimmy Winkelmann. Or as his lawyer affectionately refers to his client: "Little Jimmy."
At the tender age of 18, the St. Louis native and University of Missouri freshman apparently has caught the attention of the outdoor clothing giant North Face, which is threatening to sue Winkelmann over his clothing line South Butt.
Winkelmann's attorney, Albert Watkins, says North
Face has indicated that South Butt (which riffs the North Face "Never Stop Exploring" motto with the tagline "Never Stop Relaxing") violates its trademark and could confuse the public.
But that argument just doesn't hold up, according to Watkins: "There appears to be little
recognition, if any, that the savvy of consumers precludes anyone from
confusing a face with a butt," says the lawyer.
Family Arena: So lonely, it could use some company.
If Paul McKee's controversial redevelopment proposal for north St. Louis never comes to fruition, hopefully he can take solace in knowing that there's always room for growth in O'Fallon.
The town in St. Charles County, which boasts of being Missouri's "fastest growing city", is already home to McKee's Winghaven planned community. Now it seems the city also wants to be home to the St. Louis Bandits junior hockey team, and O'Fallon leaders are sparing no expense to ensure their community can steal the club from the Hardee's IcePlex in Chesterfield.
Recently the O'Fallon City Council approved a $40,000 contract for a "feasibility study" to look at whether or not the city should construct a $35-million, multipurpose arena. The arena would be built on 12-acres of land owned by McKee's McEagle Properties.
The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra ended its fiscal year August 31 with an increase in fundraising and a decrease in its deficit. Added to the increase in ticket sales reported at the end of the concert season in June and a successful labor agreement with the musicians' union, the SLSO appears to be the rare cultural institution able to thrive during the recession.
During this year's Annual Campaign, the symphony raised $4.8 million, its highest revenue since 2004 and a 1.7 percent increase over last year. The SLSO reported a structural deficit of $2.96 million, down 2 percent from last year. The organization claims, however, that these gaps are covered by extra contributions and the symphony is actually debt-free.
Says Fred Bronstein, SLSO's President and Executive Director, "Despite a difficult environment in 2009, significant progress was made in key areas, including a major step forward in turning around multi-year ticket sales and attendance declines in ways that engaged many new patrons; in a second consecutive year of growth in the Annual Campaign; and through continued progress toward financial stabilization by the reduction of the structural deficit."
True story. I used to work for a St. Louis publication that each year came out with a supplement profiling the "Wealthiest St. Louisans."
This special edition required us to pore over SEC filings and other public records in an effort to attain the estimated wealth of the individual. That was the easy part.
The nauseating part was then calling up these individuals and families -- whose only news value was their affluence -- and ask them to comment on just how stinking rich they really were.
In the two years I worked on this supplement -- reporting on a dozen or so blue-blooded St. Louisans -- only one person ever called me back. He was Don Bryant.
A guy walks into HSB Tobacconist in the Delmar Loop on Wednesday afternoon and asks Rick, the store manager, for a pack of Djarum Black Cloves.
Rick laughs. "You living in a cave? Monday was the last day we could sell cloves. The flavored cigarette ban started yesterday. You want a clove cigarette? Get some tobacco, buy some cloves and make your own."
The customer settles on a pack of American Spirits instead. To get them, Rick reaches past several empty racks that used to hold packs of cloves.
Secretary
of State Robin Carnahan today announced officials in her office issued a Cease
and Desist Order against a St. Louis pair, Armod L. Hinkle and his mother, Gina
M. Hinkle, for selling unregistered investments and spending $178,000 of their
investors' money on personal expenses.
In 2006, the Hinkles
formed a business, Direcutec, LLC, to develop, market, and sell personal
digital assistants and software products to law enforcement, health care, and
restaurant services industries. According to the order, the Hinkles sold
membership units in Direcutec to at least 14 investors by promising returns of
up to $3 million on a $10,000 investment.
The Hinkles allegedly raised more than
$315,000, but did not use the money to start the business. Instead,
most of the money was spent on mortgage payments, cosmetics, personal
insurance, and cash withdrawals.
It should probably have come as no surprise that there is an Advertising Walk of Fame on Madison Avenue in New York, but we were unaware until this morning. That was when we received a press release from Anheuser-Busch informing us of the induction of the Clydesdales.
The induction ceremony took place yesterday, September 21, as part of the kickoff of Advertising Week. We were unaware of this festival as well (to us, it sounds more like a great excuse to spend a week hunkered down watching Mad Men), but it has apparently been going on since 2004.
Henceforth, should you find yourself in New York, you can show your hometown pride by visiting the spanking-new bronze Clydesdales plaque and lamppost banner on Madison Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets. Our horsies join the august company of Colonel Sanders, Tony the Tiger, Juan Valdez and the AFLAC Duck and the less-august company of this year's other inductee, the AOL Running Man.
Anheuser-Busch yesterday agreed to stop producing the black-and-gold Mizzou Bud Light "fan cans" that were a source of concern to the university's administration because they were said to promote underage drinking.
In a letter to Mizzou chancellor Brady Deaton, the brewery promised to discontinue the cans in "the near future." A-B's letter was in response to one that Deaton sent last month complaining that the cans "infring[ed] on the university's name and reputation." On the same day Deaton sent his letter, freshman quarterback Blaine Dalton was dismissed from the team because he had been charged with a DWI.
Arnold Defense and Electronics in Arnold, Mo., landed a $6.5 million contract to manufacture rocket launchers for the U.S. Navy and Air Force by 2010, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
This contract combines purchases for the Navy (64 percent), Air Force (28 percent), and the government of Mexico (8 percent) under a foreign military sales program.
This contract includes options, which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $15.2 million.
...should strike fear into the heart of every terrorist from Beirut to Islamabad. Behold, the "Redneck Rocket Launcher":
You may not be aware, but there are high and low seasons for gasoline consumption. (Yeah, it was a surprise to us, too.) The summer driving season ended last week, on Labor Day, and in the resulting plummeting of gas prices, St. Louis ended up with the lowest in the nation.
Yes, we are finally first at something!
The bearer of these glad tidings is Lundberg Survey, an independent market research firm based in California that specializes in checking gas prices. According to Lundberg, the national average gas price is $2.5911. In St. Louis, we pay $2.26.
Add Mizzou to the list of schools that fail to see the "genius" of the Bud Light Fan Can. Chancellor Brady Deaton has officially registered his disapproval.
As Chad reported last week, Fan Cans, A-B's latest ad campaign for the fall, involves selling cans of Bud-Light decorated with stripes in various color combinations which, curiously, recall the colors of college football teams, though no names or logos appear.
Strangely enough, many of the administrators of colleges whose colors were used in the promotion were not amused. Could it have anything to do with the fact that the vast majority of college students are under 21 and, therefore, not legally allowed to drink? Why yes, it could!
A-B created Fan Cans for 27 schools, though none gave their express permission. So far 25 have objected. Last week it was unclear whether the University of Missouri at Columbia was among them. After all, in addition to being neighbors, of sorts, A-B donated $1.5 million to construct what is now known as the Anheuser-Busch Natural Resources Building.
But now Tigers take note: There will not be beer floats at this Friday's college colors ice cream social, at least not ones made with Bud Light from black-and-gold cans.
It must be said that most people's idea of hot-rod fashion comes from the Fonz and the "Go Greased Lightning" number in the movie Grease, that is, leather jackets and shop-class jumpsuits, both worn over plain white undershirts.
It must also be said that the most lingering image of an attempt to mix hot-rod fashion and high-fashion -- in some minds, at least -- comes from an episode of the cult TV series Freaks and Geeks in which one of the geeks, in an attempt to be cool, shows up at school in a "Parisian Nightsuit" that appears to take its inspiration more from an auto-repair shop than from France. It does not go over well.
Nonetheless, Charlie Smith and Jon Maurice, two St. Louis admen-turned-designers, have launched a new fashion line, TRIM, which is, in Maurice's words, "a premium menswear line with contemporary cut and style inspired by iconic American cars."
That means that you would not actually wear one of TRIM's $55 T-shirts to work on your car.
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