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Local investor buys Abercorn Common

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The nation’s first green shopping center is back under local ownership.

Local real estate investor David Garfunkel has purchased Abercorn Common, the environmentally friendly strip mall at Abercorn Street and White Bluff Road, for $24.2 million. The deal closed Thursday.

The Garfunkel family’s company, AJ&C Garfunkel, has been in business in Savannah for 104 years and owns investment properties in 11 states, including Twelve Oaks and Largo Plaza shopping centers on Abercorn Street. David Garfunkel’s firm, David Garfunkel & Co., is a subsidiary of AJ&C Garfunkel.

“We’re excited to own a beautiful property located right out our backdoor,” said Garfunkel, whose office is nearby on Mall Boulevard. “It’s the first certified LEED shopping center and has been well-maintained.”

Garfunkel purchased the property from a real estate investment firm based in Miami Beach, Fla., known as LNR Property. LNR bought the property in January 2011 from Melaver Inc., a Savannah-based family owned company, for $20.5 million, according to Chatham County property tax records.

LNR’s purchase came a little more than a month after Melaver Inc.’s lender, Bank of America, gave legal notice of foreclosure.

Abercorn Common tenants contacted Thursday were pleased to hear the center is locally owned again.

“It’s nice to know you have somebody local who can take care of all your needs,” said Rick Wortley, owner of F.P. Wortley Jewelers, a business that has called Abercorn Common home since the shopping center opened in late 2005. “Their office is pretty close. It’s nice to have a real landlord.”

Garfunkel’s first goal as Abercorn Common’s new owner is to fill the shopping center’s two vacancies. He is in negotiations with two national clients, one in the food industry, the other in retail, and said he hopes to secure those leases soon.

He also plans to “freshen up” the landscaping.

Abercorn Common is America’s first shopping center to receive the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification. The center was hailed as a prototype for sustainable retail development.

Abercorn Common’s environmental features include a cistern that collects rainwater for irrigation, waterless urinals, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, a porous concrete parking lot that allows water to pass through to the ground and a special roof coating that reflects heat from the sun. Recycled materials were used in its construction.

Garfunkel was attracted to Abercorn Common’s prime location as much as he was to its green features. The shopping center sits adjacent to Oglethorpe Mall and across the street from Oglethorpe Plaza, home to the Kohl’s store that opened last month.

“Synergy is a wonderful thing, and we’re pleased to see Kohl’s across the street,” Garfunkel said. “It all adds more to dynamics of the area.”

 

 

ABOUT ABERCORN COMMON

The retail center measures 185,244 square feet and is located at the intersection of Abercorn Street and White Bluff Road. It is the first certified LEED shopping center in the United States. Anchor tenants include Home Goods, Michaels, Party City, Office Depot, Ulta, Ashley Furniture. Other national tenants include Firehouse Subs, Panera Bread, McDonalds, Motherhood, Oreck and Sprint.


Exchange in brief

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Georgia jobless rate drops to 9 percent

ATLANTA – Georgia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate declined to 9.0 percent in September, down two-tenths of a percentage point from 9.2 percent in August, the state Department of Labor announced Thursday. The jobless rate was 9.8 percent in September a year ago.

“The unemployment rate dropped in September because Georgia had the fewest new claims for unemployment insurance benefits in five years, since before the start of the Great Recession,” said Labor Commissioner Mark Butler.

The number of initial claims in September declined to 39,564, down by 6,161 from 45,725 in August, the fewest since 32,139 were filed in September 2007. Most of the decline came in administrative and support services, retail trade, health care and social assistance, educational services, and accommodations and food services.

The state lost 400 jobs from August to September but gained 61,800 jobs since the 3,877,600 in September of 2011. Growth sectors were professional and business services; trade, transportation, and warehousing; education and health care; leisure and hospitality; manufacturing; and technology.

Historical society gets digital grant

The Georgia Historical Society will digitize around 1,600 archival collection finding aids over the next two years to create a searchable online database to be hosted by the Digital Library of Georgia.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission has awarded a $68,488 grant to the society to support the project.

Finding aids are documents that provide detailed information about the contents of individual archival collections, which in turn allows researchers better access to and understanding of the materials. Once the digital database is created, finding aids will be linked to existing online educational resources such as the New Georgia Encyclopedia and the historical society’s Today in Georgia History to provide the public with increased access and context.

Bluffton chamber to hold Lowcountry boil

BLUFFTON, S.C. — Presenting sponsor 98.7 The River, has partnered with the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce on their inaugural Lowcountry Boil and BBQ event to be held Nov. 10 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Bluffton Oyster Factory Park on Wharf Street in Bluffton.

If it rains, the event will move to the Rotary Community Center at Oscar Frazier Community Park.

In addition to traditional Lowcountry boil, attendees will enjoy pulled pork BBQ, creamy cole slaw, seasoned potatoes, tossed salad and dinner rolls.

Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door. Children 12 and under are free.

For more information, call 843-757-1010 or go to www.blufftonchamberofcommerce.org

Google delivers 3Q letdown early, stock plummets

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SAN FRANCISCO — As far as unpleasant surprises go, Google hit Wall Street with a double whammy Thursday.

The Internet search leader that prides itself of organizing the world’s information lost control of its own data when a contractor released its third-quarter earnings report more than three hours before the numbers were supposed to come out.

As if that was jarring enough, the numbers alarmed investors because the company’s earnings and revenue fell well below analyst projections. The disappointment triggered any 8 percent drop in Google’s stock price that erased about $20 billion in shareholder wealth.

“This is a monumental failure of epic proportions,” said Michael Robinson, an executive vice president for the Levick Strategic Communications, which specializes in financial crisis management. “This was bad news compounded by bad process. It came out in the worst way possible.”

Google Inc. blamed printer R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. for filing the company’s quarterly statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission more than three hours ahead of schedule.

“We are fully engaged in an investigation to determine how this event took place and are pursuing our first obligation, which is to serve our valued customer,” R.R. Donnelley said in a statement.

Google’s stock initially plunged more than 9 percent after the early release of the results. Trading was then suspended to allow more time for the information to be digested. After a nearly three-hour break, investors decided the results weren’t quite as bad as they initially appeared, and the shares recovered slightly.

Even so, the stock wound up dropping $60.49, or 8 percent, to close at $695.

The sell-off reflects a reversal of the optimistic sentiment that had propelled Google’s stock to a new all-time high earlier this month. The stock had surged 27 percent in the three months before Thursday’s unsettling developments.

Most of the trouble appeared to be concentrated in Motorola Mobility, a troubled cellphone maker that Google bought for $12.4 billion in May. Analysts have been fretting that Motorola Mobility would turn into a financial albatross, and some of those fears appeared to be realized in the latest quarter spanning from July through September.

The device maker suffered an operating loss of $527 million, more than tripling from the same time last year when it was still an independent company.

Google is trying to improve Motorola Mobility’s performance by laying off about 20 percent of its workforce — about 4,000 employees — and closing one-third of its 90 plants and office. Those cost-cutting measures resulted in $349 million in charges during the quarter.

But there were also some worrisome signs in Google’s main business of selling online advertising.

Google’s ad revenue rose 16 percent from the same time last year, the slowest pace in three years. The company’s ad revenue had climbed by at least 21 percent in each of the previous 10 quarters.

As has been the case for the past year, the average prices companies pay Google for ads appearing alongside search results also fell.

The decelerating growth in ad revenue is likely being driven by the growing use of smartphones and tablet computers to access the Internet. The ads are more difficult to see on smartphones, in particular, so marketers aren’t willing to pay as much for those commercial messages as they do for ads that are seen by people on personal computers. And people relying on mobile devices tend to use specially designed applications that aren’t as receptive to Google’s ads as Web browsers are.

Google earned $2.18 billion, or $6.53 per share, during the three months ending in September. That compared with net income of $2.73 billion, or $8.33 per share, last year.

The earnings would have been $9.03 per share, if not for Google’s accounting costs for employee stock compensation and the Motorola charges. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting $10.63 per share, on average.

Revenue climbed 45 percent from last year to $14.1 billion. Excluding compensation for websites that generate traffic for Google’s ads, revenue was $11.33 billion. Analysts were expecting $11.86 billion.

The strong dollar may also have contributed to Google’s miss. The company said that if foreign exchange rates had been stable, its revenue would have been $136 million higher.

Share Everything boosts Verizon 3Q

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NEW YORK — Verizon’s Share Everything plan looks like it’s good for the company’s shares.

The parent of the nation’s largest cellphone company on Thursday reported a blowout number of new devices on its network, boosted by the revolutionary plan, introduced four months ago. The plan made it cheaper for households to add wireless service to tablets and laptops.

Verizon Wireless added a net 1.5 million devices to contract-based plans in the third quarter, more than it has in many years. Analysts were expecting it to add about 900,000. Including non-contract devices, overall additions were the strongest in four years.

Verizon is gaining market share in wireless, said Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. “Unless one believes that industry growth rates accelerated — and we certainly don’t — Verizon’s gain is AT&T’s, Sprint’s, and T-Mobile’s loss,” he said.

Verizon said 13 percent of its customers with contract-based plans were already on Share Everything, signaling that the plan has caught on, helped by aggressive advertising. Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said customers were adding huge numbers of “mobile hotspot” devices, which allow the sharing of Internet service over several other devices, like PCs and tablets.

That’s helped push up how much subscribers are paying. The average household with a contract-based plan paid $145.42 per month in the quarter for wireless service, up 6.5 percent from a year ago.

Verizon ended the quarter with a billing relationship for 96 million wireless devices on its network, plus an undisclosed number through wholesale relationships. No. 2 AT&T had 77 million direct-billed wireless devices at the end of June.

The launch of the iPhone 5 at the end of the quarter also helped Verizon’s numbers. It activated 650,000 units of the new model in just over a week, according to Shammo. It activated 3.1 million iPhones of all kinds in the quarter, accounting for 46 percent of its total smartphone activations.

The launch of an iPhone usually brings down Verizon’s earnings in a quarter, because it has to pay Apple about $600 per phone, which it sells for $199. It then makes the money back over the course of a two-year contract. But the iPhone 5 launched so late in the quarter that it failed to weigh seriously on Verizon’s profitability. Its operating profit margin in wireless was 31.8 percent, the highest in years.

However, not all of the wireless profits flow to parent company Verizon Communications, which only owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless. The rest of the wireless division is owned by Vodafone Group PLC of Britain, which gets a corresponding share of the profits. The wired side of Verizon Communications operates at break-even.

For the three months ended Sept. 30, New York-based Verizon Communications reported earnings of $1.59 billion, or 56 cents per share. That’s up from $1.38 billion, or 49 cents per share, a year ago.

Removing 8 cents per share in charges related to patent lawsuit settlements, earnings were 64 cents per share. That matched analysts’ expectations. In September, Verizon said it would pay TiVo Inc. $250 million to settle allegations that the video recording feature of its TV set-top boxes infringe on TiVo’s patents, and $260 million to settle a suit by ActiveVideo Networks Inc. regarding video-on-demand features.

Revenue increased 4 percent to $29.01 billion from $27.91 billion. That also matched analysts’ expectations.

Verizon’s stock added 56 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $45.28 in morning trading.

The company also said it’s still on pace to meet its 2012 financial goals.

On the wireline side, revenue continued to shrink, and Verizon posted the first decline in overall broadband customers in four years, as it stopped marketing DSL connections to customers who don’t also buy phone service. DSL connections are slower than cable modems, and Verizon has stopped investing in the technology, focusing instead on fiber-optic FiOS connections available in about two-thirds of the areas where it provides local phone service.

Verizon’s report is the first for telecommunications companies this earnings season. Rival AT&T Inc. reports on Wednesday.

Maritime community promoting logistics careers

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What started less than two years ago as a field trip designed to familiarize area high school students with the logistics industry has blossomed into a full-fledged program with the ability to shape the future maritime workforce in Savannah and beyond.

The brainchild of Freightliner Trucks sales exec David “Fish” Mihuta and Robert Dowd of Savannah’s Port City Logistics, “Follow the Container” allowed students and their teachers to see what’s involved in getting merchandise from manufacturer to store shelf.

Starting at Georgia Ports’ Garden City Terminal, where containers are unloaded onto trucks, the group followed a container from ship to truck, through customs and security and over the road to a designated warehouse/distribution facility. There, they watched as it was unloaded and “cross-docked” — palletized, repackaged and reloaded for shipping to the final customer.

Georgia Ports Authority, Savannah Technical College and freight forwarder D.J. Powers were among the first to sign on to help Freightliner and Port City sponsor the field trips, each offering a presentation on the types of jobs available in the logistics area.

Last week, Mihuta spoke to the Propeller Club of Savannah, updating the maritime business group on how “Follow the Container” has evolved into the Maritime Logistics Education Taskforce, a collaboration of resources designed to reach, educate and grow the current and future workforce of the logistics and maritime industry in Savannah and the surrounding areas.

The task force has already done a lot of the heavy lifting, meeting with senior management at GPA as well as schools superintendent Thomas Lockamy, high school executive director Aretha Rhone-Bush and Angie Lewis, high school program manager.

In addition to continuing the “Follow the Container” tours, they have interviewed hiring managers and human resources personnel at several big box distribution centers and met with representatives at Savannah Tech as well as Armstrong Atlantic and Georgia Southern universities.

They have developed a brochure outlining the wide variety of logistics-based careers available in the area and — working the public school system — have produced a three-minute video designed to spark student interest in a logistics educational pathway.

In the spring, the group hopes to sponsor 28 students — seven from each of four local high schools — for 10-week internships.

“The students will be placed in different areas of the maritime and logistics industry to work four hours a day, five days a week,” Mihuta said.

“At the end of the 10 weeks, we’ll have 28 students, each with 200 hours of practical experience, ready to go to work.”

Students will come from Jenkins with a focus on engineering, from Woodville Tompkins with a focus on mechanical and robotics, from Johnson with a focus on international business and marketing and from Groves with a focus on logistics and transportation.

A number of companies had already signed on to host a student intern, and several more stepped up after the Propeller Club meeting, Mihuta said earlier this week.

He hopes the entire maritime community will eventually get involved.

“I believe this internship program will raise awareness of all the good jobs available in logistics right here in the Coastal Empire,” he said.

“And that has the potential to help both Chatham County students and our maritime community for years to come.”

GET INVOLVED

For more information on the Maritime Logistics Education Taskforce, contact David Mihuta at davidm@freightlinerofsavannah.com or 912-655-8518.

ON THE WEB

To watch the video on logistics education pathways, go to:

http://video214.com/play/1e0IsYHGhuBfx4xGyvK2yg/s/dark

Senior business reporter Mary Carr Mayle covers the ports for the Savannah Morning News. She can be reached at 912-652-0324 or at mary.mayle@savannahnow.com.

SHIPPING SCHEDULE

These are the ships expected to call on Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City and Ocean Terminals in the next week. Sailing schedules are provided by Georgia Ports Authority and are subject to change.

Terminal Ship name Arrival

GPA AL NOOF today

GPA MSC TOKYO today

GPA MSC EUGENIA Saturday

GPA OOCL AMERICA Saturday

GPA ANNA MAERSK Saturday

GPA MSC TEXAS Saturday

GPA NORTHERN HONOUR Saturday

GPA EVER DIAMOND Saturday

GPA MARFRET SORMIOU Saturday

GPA WASHINGTON EXPRESS Saturday

GPA SAIGON EXPRESS Sunday

GPA ARENDAL Sunday

GPA MSC MICHAELA Sunday

OT BBC WINTER Sunday

OT ATLANTIC GLORY Monday

OT TALISMAN Monday

GPA GENOA EXPRESS Monday

GPA UASC JEDDAH Monday

GPA ATHENA Monday

GPA AGNES RICKMERS Monday

GPA STUTTGART EXPRESS Tuesday

GPA MAERSK DHAHRAN Tuesday

GPA MOL ENDURANCE Tuesday

GPA ZIM TARRAGONA Tuesday

GPA CMA CGM MATISSE Tuesday

GPA MSC SUSANNA Tuesday

GPA GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE Tuesday

GPA HANJIN SHANGHAI Tuesday

GPA YM ENHANCER Wednesday

GPA KOBE EXPRESS Wednesday

GPA ARSOS Wednesday

GPA RIO DE JANEIRO EXPRESS Wednesday

GPA SEA-LAND METEOR Wednesday

GPA MOL TYNE Wednesday

GPA APL OMAN Wednesday

OT COMMON CALYPSO Wednesday

OT TITANIA Wednesday

OT STAR ISFJORD Wednesday

OT AUSTANGER Thursday

OT LORD VISHNU Thursday

GPA CSCL BRISBANE Thursday

GPA DUSSELDORF EXPRESS Thursday

GPA CMA CGM CORAL Thursday

GPA MSC ALICANTE Thursday

GPA PRESIDENT POLK Thursday

GPA MAERSK DENPASAR Thursday

GPA OOCL ANTWERP Thursday

GPA ZIM PANAMA Thursday

GPA NYK NEBULA Thursday

GPA MAERSK ROUBAIX Thursday

Exchange in brief

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Computer firm opens on Abercorn

A computer company, ITS Computer Services, has opened in Savannah’s midtown district at 1801 Abercorn St. and will donate $1,000 in computer services to Safe Shelter of Savannah, a nonprofit that helps abused women and children.

ITS repairs and sells computers, installs and monitors networks, develops WIFI infrastructure, installs VOIP/PBX phone systems and does digital surveillance and premise wiring.

The co-owners are Ken LaMantia and Ronald King. LaMantia is a U.S. Army veteran who owns the New South Financial Group, is a regional general agent for Midland National Insurance Company and is the founder of BANG (Business and Networking Groups).

King has worked in the IT industry in the Savannah area for 15 years.

For more information, call 912-335-7521 or go to ITSAV.BIZ.

Accounting firm launches redesigned website

Hancock Askew & Co., LLP has announced the release of its redesigned website.

The website, hancockaskew.com, is designed to help clients and prospective clients learn more about the firm’s services. Navigation has been set up to help users find content they are looking for, articles and tax blasts, as well as a future QuickBooks® forum to answer client questions.

Signups are available the firm’s newsletter.

For more information, contact Ann Carroll at 912-704-7650 or acarroll@hancockaskew.com.

Hilton Head Taste of the Season tickets on sale

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Tickets are on sale for the 23rd annual Taste of the Season. The event, presented by the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, will feature more than 35 of the area’s top chefs and restaurants vying for “Best Cuisine.”

An exclusive VIP preview party and premier wine tasting also will be offered.

Taste of the Season will be held on Nov. 16 at the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa from 6-9 p.m. First Federal is the presenting sponsor.

Basic tickets are $45; VIP tickets are $85. Both are available at hiltonheadchamber.org, at chamber headquarters and at the chamber’s Bluffton office.

Beaufort regional chamber to host economic development conversation

BEAUFORT, S.C. — The Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce will host a conversation on economic development on Tuesday from 3:30-5 p.m. in the chamber office at 701 Craven Street in downtown Beaufort. The roundtable discussion will provide an open brainstorming forum to share ideas, suggestions and questions about economic development in Beaufort County. All interested local residents, businesses, organizations and government entities are welcome to join the discussion.

RSVP to Jayson Gardner at jayson@beaufortsc.org or 843-525-8526.

U.S. gun industry is thriving during Obama's term

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WASHINGTON — Tennessee lawyer Brian Manookian says he never considered himself a gun enthusiast. He owns just one handgun and was raised in a gun-free home. But the firearms industry has proven so successful in recent years that he decided to give up practicing law and make guns his livelihood.

It’s a decision that’s put Manookian on track to earn four times what he made as a corporate health care attorney, a job that earned him six figures right out of law school, he said.

And he’s far from alone. An analysis by The Associated Press of data tracking the health of the gun industry shows that President Barack Obama has presided over a heyday for guns.

Sales are on the rise, so much that some manufacturers cannot make enough fast enough. Major gun company stock prices are up. The number of federally licensed, retail gun dealers is increasing for the first time in nearly 20 years. The U.S. gun lobby is bursting with cash and political clout. Washington has expressed little interest in passing new gun laws, despite renewed calls to do so after recent deadly shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin.

Four years ago the gun lobby predicted Obama would be the “most anti-gun president in American history.” Yet it is hard to find a single aspect of the gun world that isn’t thriving.

“The driver is President Obama. He is the best thing that ever happened to the firearm industry,” said Jim Barrett, an industry analyst at C.L. King & Associates Inc. in New York.

Obama has made no pledges to push for new gun control legislation and does not have the support in Congress or among voters even if he did. During this week’s presidential debate, he did suggest renewing a U.S. ban on assault weapons and coming up with an overall strategy to reduce violence. But both Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said the real need is for the government to enforce gun laws already on the books.

Meanwhile, sales are brisk.

Since opening a $5 million armory in Nashville last month, Manookian and his business partner have outdone their own expectations, selling inventory three to four times faster than they expected. The facility has high ceilings and granite fixtures in the bathroom and provides instructional courses and a shooting range in addition to firearms for sale.

“It is a very strong investment,” Manookian said.

Others agree.

For the first time since 1993, the number of federally licensed retail gun dealers in the U.S. increased slightly in 2010 and 2011. The country added 1,167 licensed retail gun dealers, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records. After the assault weapons ban of 1994 — now expired — the number of gun dealerships dropped annually until 2010. As of October 2012, there were 50,812 retail gun dealers — 3,303 more than in 2009.

“Business has been very good,” said Frederick Prehn, who a year ago opened a small gun store above his dentistry practice in Wausau, Wis. In the past year, Prehn has relocated twice to larger spaces and gone from one employee to eight.

Some gun store owners can’t keep shelves stocked, said Brian Jones, owner of Bullseye Shooter’s supply in Painted Post, N.Y. Jones said he opened his gun store in November 2010. In his first year, he said he sold between 600 and 700 guns. A little more than halfway through his second year, he’s already sold 700.

For the first time in the company’s history, Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc. stopped taking orders for a couple of months this year. Ruger, one of the nation’s largest gun manufacturers, has since resumed taking orders, though gun-sellers say demand is still outpacing production.

Dan Wesson Arms, Inc., a small gun manufacturer that sells to a niche market, stopped taking orders this spring because the company had sold out the entire year’s production, spokesman Jason Morton said. The company has stopped taking orders before, but never so early on the entire line, he said.

“Wouldn’t you want to be in a business where customers are just begging to hand you money?” said Bill Bernstein, owner of East Side Gun Shop in Nashville.

Obama is not yet through his first term, but the federal government already has conducted about as many background checks for gun owners and prospective buyers on his watch as it did during the first six years of George W. Bush’s presidency. In the first 3 1/2 years of the Bush administration, the FBI conducted about 28 million background checks. During the same period of the Obama administration, the FBI conducted more than 50 million. The gun industry uses the number of background checks as a reliable indicator of demand.

Ruger and Smith & Wesson represent nearly 30 percent of the U.S. gun manufacturing industry and lead the market in production of pistols and revolvers, according to government statistics. The two companies have been running production lines around the clock, hiring workers and operating at maximum capacity, said Barrett, an industry analyst who also owns Ruger stock.

Ruger’s sales have increased 86 percent since Obama took office, and Smith & Wesson’s sales have gone up nearly 44 percent, compared with 18 percent for overall national retail sales.

And the companies have big expectations for the industry’s future, as they’re spending more money on research and development than ever before.

The NRA itself has done well, too. The lobbying organization has had more cash on hand during the Obama years than it had since 2004, finishing 2010 with more than $24 million, according to the most recent figures available.

“Which makes it incredibly ironic that the gun lobby is opposing Obama,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Gross said Obama, who initially campaigned to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired under Bush, has done what he said was “disappointingly little” on gun control.

But the gun lobby says the success of the industry does not indicate that Obama is good for Second Amendment rights.

“This is the most dangerous election in our lifetimes,” NRA chief executive officer Wayne LaPierre said in February, a point he’s made regularly during the NRA’s campaign to defeat Obama.

The gun lobby stands by its 2008 predictions that Obama would be anti-gun. NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam noted Obama’s appointment of two Supreme Court justices whom the NRA considers anti-gun, plus Obama’s support of a United Nations arms trade treaty and the botched operation called Fast and Furious, which the NRA says was concocted as part of a plan to enforce new gun restrictions.

“Gun owners and hunters fear that a second Obama administration with no future political campaigns to worry about will try to destroy this great American freedom,” Arulanandam said.

Fears of a Democratic president taking office and issuing stricter gun control laws led to an initial spike in gun sales in 2008, giving dealers some of the highest profit margins they’d ever seen. But even after it became clear Obama was not going to make gun control a priority as president, the industry has continued to do well.

Fear of crime may be driving some sales. The number of violent crimes rose by 18 percent in the U.S. in 2011, according to Justice Department figures released this week. It was the first year-to-year increase for violent crime since 1993, marking the end of a long string of declines.

Firearm sales typically increase during poor economic times, said Steve Sanetti, chief executive officer and president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the industry. More Americans are hunting and shooting for recreation as well, he said. Sanetti attributes that to military servicemen and women with firearms experience returning to civilian life and wanting to keep up with shooting as a pastime. He also said recreational shooting is a relatively cheap and accessible hobby, drawing in new buyers.

Voters have made clear that gun control isn’t a priority. A recent AP-National Constitution Center poll found that 49 percent of adults felt laws limiting gun ownership infringe on the public’s right to bear arms, while 43 percent said such laws do not infringe on those rights. After the recent mass shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin, 52 members of Congress sponsored a bill to track bulk sales of ammunition, but the legislation went nowhere.

The firearms industry entrepreneur Manookian said it is clear that guns are a priority for Americans. People around the country are waiting in lines at shooting ranges, he said, cash registers at gun stores are ringing with $1,000 purchases and his brand new armory in Nashville is in the black two weeks after it opened.

Free Enterprise: Designing markets, improving lives

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When you think about economists, “stable marriage” is probably not what naturally comes to mind first.

However, this may very well be the case after this week’s announcement of the 2012 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (popularly, but wrongly — as other social scientists like to remind economists — called the Nobel Prize in Economics). A wealth of information, technical and non-technical, on this year’s laureates in Economics can be found at the website of the Nobel Prize (http://bit.ly/WcfgJN).

A lot has been written about the two winners, Americans Alvin E. Roth, 60, and Lloyd S. Shapley, 89. Much was made of the fact that an important 1962 paper co-authored by Shapley and David Gale had the title “College admissions and the stability of marriage.” However, the marriage example was just a small — albeit catchy — part of the story. The authors had set out to design a simple system that would result in efficient matching. The “Gale-Shapley” deferred-acceptance algorithm that they developed not only theoretically solved the problem but has also been shown to have practical relevance.

This is where Stanford professor Alvin Roth developed matching theory further. In the 1980s, he demonstrated that a national clearinghouse system used to make residency assignments of newly minted doctors to U.S.-hospitals was an application of the Gale-Shapley mechanism. Later, he took this a step further. The assignment system started to break down when more and more couples sought positions in the same geographic area. Roth re-designed it to be able to accommodate such requests.

He didn’t stop there. Roth, after refining his theories and mechanisms in laboratory experiments, solved real-world problems to also match students to high schools and organ donors to patients. Especially the last application (featured in this National Science Foundation video: http://1.usa.gov/ISzcse) had a profound impact on people’s lives, by improving and accelerating the matching of kidney donors with recipients.

What is so important about this year’s selection of Nobel Laureates in Economics is that it is a reminder of the power of the economic science to improve people’s lives. Not only is economic growth essential to increase living standards, which explains the significance of analyzing topics in macroeconomics (the national and global economy) and political economy (the role of institutions). At a more micro level, it is also the case that economists, rather than just studying markets, can actually improve them by designing exchange mechanisms from the outset.

Treat yourself to a lecture by Roth (available at: http://bit.ly/bZMY6J) with the title “What Have We Learned from Market Design.” You might discover that economists as social scientist are far more hands-on in making the Free Enterprise system work, than you may have realized.

In one of the many interviews that Roth has given about Gale and Shapley’s insight and his own work, he compared economists to biologists that go beyond just describing plants to actually engineering new ones.

In his own words: “We’re starting to be able to know enough about how some of those things work that in some cases, when you’ve got a market in trouble, and you think, ‘Who’re you gonna call?’ you could call an economist.”

What a reassuring statement in times of economic turmoil.

As long as you don’t assume that one call to an economist could save your marriage.

Dr. Michael Reksulak teaches economics and public finance in Georgia Southern University’s College of Business Administration. He may be reached by email at mreksula@georgiasouthern.edu.


New blood for StartUp Lounge Savannah

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Savannah’s pool of aspiring entrepreneurs continues to deepen.

The majority of the 60 wannabe or early stage business owners to apply for the third annual StartUp Lounge Savannah were newcomers, according to event organizer Jake Hodesh. The invitation-only event pairing 20 of those entrepreneurs with investors in an intimate, low-pressure setting is Thursday.

“We have new folks, new energy and new interest,” said Hodesh, executive director of the Creative Coast.

Several new investors also plan to participate in the event. Qualified investors must have a demonstrated interest in investing in start-ups and have the wherewithal to invest at least $50,000.

The leaders of SLAAM Ventures, a newly formed seed capital firm, will attend as will Jerald Mitchell, director of the Savannah Economic Development Authority’s new SEDA Innovations initiative. SEDA Innovations is still in its infancy and Mitchell is working to understand what the entrepreneurial community’s needs are and how SEDA can best help.

Engaging at StartUp Lounge is part of what Mitchell calls “due diligence.”

“What we’ve realized is one thing that attracts large companies and investments to our area is our diverse economy, and the ability to build and retain certain knowledge-based companies is key part of that,” Mitchell said. “There’s no shortage of talent and ideas, and we need to help those companies become investment-ready.”

Also on the investor side will be representatives of local community bank The Coastal Bank, an event sponsor. The bank has a “record of loaning money and supporting local entrepreneurs,” Hodesh said.

The Start-Up Lounge concept was born four years ago in Atlanta. Co-founders Scott Burkett, a veteran IT and management consultant, and Michael Blake, a venture capitalist, recognized the difficulties entrepreneurs in Atlanta and the Southeast faced in securing early stage capital.

The duo started a website, www.startuplounge.com, and began organizing invitation-only events.

The first Savannah StartUp Lounge was held in November 2010. Along with the annual FastPitch competition, during which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of judges that includes investors, the StartUp Lounge Savannah is meant to assist the inexperienced in gaining exposure for their product or service.

Exchange in brief

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Federal agency to open Savannah office

The Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services has signed a 10-year lease on office space in the Cay Building on Ellis Square.

The agency is one of the largest in the federal government and oversees Medicare, Medicaid, public health, medical research, food and drug safety, welfare, child and family services, disease prevention, Indian health and mental health services.

The office measures 2,100 square feet and will be located on the second floor of the six-story Cay Building, which is also home to the local U.S. Attorneys office. The Inspector General of Health and Human Services does not currently have a presence in Savannah.

Parker’s donates to Savannah-Chatham schools

Parker’s convenience stores have presented a check for $6,000 to Savannah-Chatham public schools as part of the company’s Fueling the Community program. The donation ceremony, which took place at Godley Station School in Pooler, is part of a larger $20,000 charitable contribution to schools in Georgia and South Carolina.

Parker’s donates 1 cent of every gallon of gas purchased at all 27 of its convenience stores on the first Wednesday of the month to community schools through the Fueling the Community program. The company operates 27 convenience stores across the region.

Coastal Bank has new online services

The Coastal Bank, headquartered in Savannah, has launched a new online banking system.

The new online system, available at www.thecoastalbank.com, includes separate retail and business user interfaces as well as real time core integration, express bill pay services and external fund transfer capabilities, the company announced. A special Passmark security feature provides state-of-the-art, multi-level online banking protection.

The Coastal Bank’s person-to-person payment service, powered by PayPal, enables customers to transfer money by using an email address or cell phone number, the bank’s announcement said.

AARP tax service seeks Savannah area volunteers

AARP Tax-Aide, a free, volunteer-run tax preparation and assistance service, is looking for volunteers in the Savannah area to help taxpayers who need help to prepare and file their 2012 tax returns.

Volunteers do not need to be an AARP member or a retiree to participate but should have some computer experience, such as email and Internet browsing. Also needed are volunteers who have management experience.

AARP Tax-Aide volunteers receive free IRS-certified tax training and are reimbursed on a limited basis for qualified program-related expenses.

For more information, visit www.aarp.org/tavolunteer8 or call 1-888-OUR-AARP (1-888-687-2277). Deadline for application is Dec. 15.

City Talk: Savannah job market: Some sectors growing, others still lagging

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After a protracted stagnation, we’re seeing some significant improvement in the local jobs market.

Last week, the Georgia Department of Labor estimated that the Savannah metro area (Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties) had 3,600 more nonfarm payroll jobs in September than we had a year ago. We just started seeing such annual improvements a few months ago.

But keep in mind that employment is a lagging indicator of economic conditions. As Armstrong Atlantic State University’s Nicholas Mangee explained in his column in this paper last week, employers are slow to fire and slow to hire. They generally don’t expand or shrink their payrolls until economic conditions are clear.

So the recent improvement in our jobs data had its roots back in the spring. The current increase in jobs is consistent with the surge in private investment that we’ve been chronicling at City Talk since the beginning of the year.

It’s also worth noting that the year-over-year jump in payroll employment represented an increase of 2.3 percent. That’s also encouraging news because it’s almost twice the rate of increase needed to keep up with population growth.

Public employment was virtually unchanged over the last 12 months, but we saw a 2.7 percent increase in private payrolls.

Still, we’ll need to add jobs at this rate deep into 2014 before we’ll reach the peak of metro employment in 2008.

Local job growth has certainly not been consistent across professions.

We’re finally seeing a significant increase in the number of hospitality industry workers, with a jump of 800 new jobs in the past year to reach 21,300 in the metro area last month.

Manufacturing gained 300 jobs. The broad sector that includes transportation, warehousing and utilities added 500 jobs.

Education and health services added 700 jobs, while professional and business services added 800.

In other words, we’re seeing broad-based improvement.

Government employment was virtually flat year-over-year, however, adding just 100 jobs, and so was the construction sector, which lost 100. Those stagnating numbers are worth emphasizing.

Generally when the economy is in recovery mode, public jobs increase on pace with population growth.

And new residential construction is typically a key driver out of recession.

But the overbuilding during the housing boom prevented housing from playing its usual role in the recovery. We’ve seen a significant rebound in housing starts around the country, but 2012 is still going to be one of the worst years since World War II.

If public employment and construction employment were on pace with other sectors, we’d be seeing some really robust numbers.

The local trends are slightly better than ones statewide. According to the Department of Labor estimates, Georgia added 61,800 jobs over the last year, a respectable 1.6 percent increase.

These estimates come from a survey of payroll establishments. The estimates are subject to revision, and there’s obviously a margin of error in any survey.

The estimates of the unemployment rate, the size of the labor force and the labor force participation rate come from a separate survey of households. That data is much more volatile for a variety of reasons.

We won’t get the local estimates from the household survey for a week or so, but Georgia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell from 9.2 percent in August to 9 percent in September. Some folks got in a tizzy about a slightly larger decline in the national numbers a few weeks ago, but moves of this magnitude are pretty common given the margin of error in the household survey.

Inventories too high as housing market enters slow season

A few weeks ago I noted that there are increasing signs that Savannah-area home prices have bottomed, but I have routinely cautioned that we could see continued declines in some areas and at some price points.

The relatively weak sales numbers for September certainly don’t bode well for prices in the coming months.

In September, sales of single-family homes declined significantly in some areas compared to a year ago, including West Chatham, Bryan County and Effingham County. We saw modest improvement in a number of other areas, including the southside and on the islands.

But we’re heading into the slowest sales months of the year with pretty high inventories. We have almost 10 months of inventory of single-family homes across the region.

The southside has only about seven months of inventory and West Chatham just six months. Those levels suggest relatively stable prices since the balance of supply and demand is close to its historical norm. But look for price declines in more expensive areas with significantly higher inventories.

Despite those cautions and despite the decline in sales last month, it’s definitely worth noting that we’re seeing steady improvement in housing, just as we are in employment and other key economic measures.

City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.

Ford tough: J.C. Lewis Ford dealership marks 100 years in business in Savannah

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To get an idea of how long J.C. Lewis Ford has been selling cars and trucks in Savannah, consider what the dealership accepted as a trade-in on their first deal.

“A horse,” said Walter Lewis, who now heads the family business on Abercorn Street. “Or so we’ve been told.”

Lewis’ lack of first-hand knowledge is forgivable — he wouldn’t be born until decades later. He is the third generation of the Lewis family to operate the now 100-year-old dealership.

His grandfather, Julius Curtis Lewis, bought the business from another long familiar name in Savannah’s business community, the Weeks family, in 1912. Jim Weeks was preoccupied with the business his father helped start, Fox & Weeks Funeral Directors, and all five of his sons turned down the opportunity to run the Ford dealership.

“They didn’t think Fords would catch on, that the other automobile manufacturers at the time would crowd them out,” said Elmo Weeks, Jim Weeks’ grandson. “And in those days, you not only had to sell customers a car, you had to teach them how to drive it, how to change tires, how to repair it. Running the dealership didn’t look too promising.”

With the lack of family interest, Weeks offered the business to his friend and golfing buddy, J.C. Lewis. Lewis initially refused for lack of the $500 Weeks was asking for the franchise. When Weeks offered to front Lewis the money, a Savannah business empire was born.

“Mr. Lewis’ son Curtis was my age, and I told him many times my granddaddy picked the wrong business to stay in,” Elmo Weeks said. “He should have kept the Ford business and sold the funeral homes.”

 

Building an empire

Ford offered just a handful of models at the time J.C. Lewis put his name on the dealership that was located downtown on Bull Street across from the old Desoto Hotel.

Lewis did more business in horses than cars in the early years. Cars were expensive and made one at a time or in small batches. Henry Ford didn’t open his first assembly line until December 1913.

“Cars were definitely luxury items at the time,” Lewis said. “The assembly line changed all that by making cars more affordable. The rest is history.”

Fortunate timing may have helped Lewis launch the business, but he and his successors’ conservative approach to business have sustained it. For years, J.C. Lewis Ford carried a “very low” inventory of cars, and the staff consisted of Lewis, an office assistant and a mechanic.

That assistant, Sam Steinberg, would stay with the company for eight decades and would be the first of what Walter Lewis classifies as the key to the business’ longevity: “Good help.”

Steinberg temporarily led the company upon J.C. Lewis’ death in 1942. Lewis’ son, J.C. Lewis Jr., was a teenager, and Steinberg minded the store until Lewis finished schooling.

Ford was by far the world’s most popular automobile at the time of the elder Lewis’ death, and business grew even more following World War II.

J.C. Lewis Jr. proved to be a brilliant businessman, opening additional Ford dealerships in Daytona Beach and Melbourne, Fla., adding new brands to his Savannah dealership, and investing in tractor sales, taxi cab businesses, television and radio stations, hotels, life insurance, yacht sales and real estate.

“My father and grandfather’s success was largely because they had pretty conservative business philosophies,” said J. Curtis Lewis III, a local lawyer and the brother of J.C. Lewis Ford’s current leader, Walter. “They both borrowed plenty of money in their time, but they were wise in their investments and managed to never get into too much debt. And they were good at identifying good people.

“If you have good folks selling a good product and you don’t mess it up along the way, it’s something that can go on and on.”

 

Visionary thinking

Lewis Jr.’s foresight on southside Savannah’s potential cemented the J.C. Lewis Ford legacy.

He moved the dealership from downtown to the southside in 1962, first to a plot just south of DeRenne Avenue. Later that decade, Lewis talked Jacksonville car dealer Dan Vaden into building a dealership on farm land Lewis owned south of Montgomery Crossroad with the promise Lewis would build next to him.

Vaden opened his business in 1968, followed soon after by Lewis’ new dealership. The area would quickly become car central, home to several dealerships.

“Dad was a visionary, always thinking of the future,” Walter Lewis said. “He couldn’t sit still.”

Lewis Jr. had six children, all of whom grew up around the business. Lewis III remembers as a boy visiting his father at work and spending hours “chasing my brothers and sisters around the dealership.” All worked part-time jobs with their father as teenagers, and all are active in the family businesses, in one form or another, today.

Walter Lewis joined his father’s staff upon his graduation from the University of Georgia in 1975 and worked his way up from department to department. By the mid 1980s, Lewis Jr. was devoting much of his time to his other business interests as well as his philanthropic efforts and turned over operations of the car dealership to Walter.

“I can’t tell you exactly when I took over; it just kind of evolved,” Walter Lewis said.

Lewis Jr.’s presence remained, though, even following his 2005 death. Walter Lewis anticipates the business will endure another 100 years and notes the fourth generation of his father’s family numbers 11 children.

“Some Lewis will be sitting here come our 200th anniversary,” Walter Lewis said. “Although they’ll probably be selling Ford-powered rocket ships.”

And taking cars on trade-in, just as their ancestors once did horses.

Lewis: Car industry future about mileage

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An embroidered wall-hanging of a Ford Model-T decorates the wall behind Walter Lewis’ office desk.

The artwork underscores just how much the automobile sales business has changed in the Lewis family’s 100 years selling Ford cars and trucks. Walter Lewis, whose grandfather founded the business, marvels at how far the industry has come in his tenure – and where it is going now and in the future.

“It was all about horsepower when I started,” Lewis said. “But gas only cost 30 cents a gallon back then.”

Lewis went to work for his father, J. Curtis Lewis Jr., a week after graduating from the University of Georgia in the summer of 1975. He’s since experienced the tail end of the muscle car era; the rise of the economy car and Japanese automakers such as Toyota and Honda; several slumps by American nameplates; and the shift toward hybrids, electric vehicles and higher fuel efficiency.

“The thought has always been to give consumers a choice and let the market decide which cars to build,” Lewis said. “That’s where we’ve been, and that’s where we’re going.”

The 1970s energy crisis “changed the game” and opened the door for the imports to move in, Lewis said. The industry today is much more segmented, and it’s “all about your slice getting larger.”

Ford’s approach is to shun electrification in favor of hybrids and more fuel-efficient gasoline engines, those employing Ford’s “eco-boost” technology. Ford’s best-selling vehicle remains the F-150 truck. Those buyers and others of Ford products aren’t willing to sacrifice power.

“It’s about same power, better mileage,” Lewis said. “There’s a new model of the Fusion (sedan) that has a four-cylinder engine that gives the same horsepower of a V6. That’s where we’re headed.”

Lewis predicts boom years ahead for Ford and other dealers due to the pent-up demand, a product of the recession and the slow economic recovery.

“The scrap rate has been higher than the sales rate for a while, and we’re due for a catch up,” Lewis said. “The future is bright, at least for the next several years.”

Business calendar

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Savannah Real Estate

Investor Alliance meeting

Savannah Real Estate Investor Alliance meets Monday at 6 p.m. Jim Hitt, of American IRA, will teach you how to use your self-directed IRA, or self-directed 401(k) plan, to invest in real estate and how to earn tax free income.

The meeting will be held at Barnes Restaurant, 5320 Waters Ave. Call Kristin Mack, 912-321-6277 for more information and to RSVP.

River’s Edge hosts

educational senior seminars

River’s Edge, an independent senior living community in Savannah, is offering an educational Let’s Talk Seniors seminar on Tuesday. All seniors and families are invited for free. River’s Edge, is located at 6206 Waters Ave.

For more information, go to www.riversedgeretirement.com.

Goshen Real Estate Investor Group meeting

The Goshen Real Estate Investor Group will meet Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Carey Hilliard’s on Hwy 21 in Garden City. Sherry Stanton of Roddenberry Accounting will speak on tax issues for investors. First visit is free; $5 for non-members. For more information, go to www.goshenreig.org.

QuickBooks Seminars

Hancock Askew & Co. LLP is pleased to announce the 2012 QuickBooks Seminars in Savannah. There is no charge for these classes, which will be held in the Learning Center at our offices located at 100 Riverview Drive.

QuickBooks® 101 will be held Tuesday from 9 a.m.-noon. The class covers Getting started, setting up your first accounts, basic navigation, bank reconciliations and credit card reconciliations.

For more information or to register, contact Barbara Fierstein at 912-527-1337 or bfierstein@hancockaskew.com.

Georgia Society of CPAs

hosts fundraiser

The Georgia Society of CPAs Savannah Chapter is holding its annual Scholarship Fundraiser on Thursday at The Savannah Golf Club. The program will be an educational luncheon from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and state Sen. Buddy Carter will discuss the state budget and legislative issues.

Space is limited, so RSVP to Maliece Whatley, whatleym@savannahstate.edu. Proceeds will be used to fund accounting scholarships for local college students. The cost is $35, including lunch, free parking and 1 hr CPE.

Young Professionals of Savannah October AfterHours

October AfternHours for Young Professionals of Savannah will be held on Thursday,from 6-8 p.m. at Moon River, 21 W. Bay St. in downtown Savannah.

The event is free; attire business casual.

QuickBooks Seminars

Hancock Askew & Co. LLP has announced the 2012 QuickBooks Seminars in Savannah. There is no charge for these classes, which will be held in the Learning Center at 100 Riverview Drive.

Intermediate QuickBooks® - Taking it to the Next Level will be held Oct. 31 from 9 a.m-noon. The class covers proper procedures for recording sales, receiving payments and using creditmemos, payables, payroll and sales tax to keep year-end adjustments to a minimum.

For more information or to register, contact Barbara Fierstein at 912-527-1337 or bfierstein@hancockaskew.com.

Chamber young

professionals group

The chamber’s young professionals group will meet at Corks in Bluffton on Wednesday, Oct. 31 from 5:30-7 p.m. The popular networking group for the 40-and-under set, presented by the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, is an opportunity to meet with business colleagues in a casual setting. To register, go to www.hiltonheadchamber.org.

A kick start for your Kickstarter project

This workshop will be presented by Jamie Bowerman, the creator of the Bowerbag and successful Kickstarter campaign. The program is an hour-long introductory session to Kickstarter fundraising campaigns. This will be a general overview of the nuts and bolts of putting together your own Kickstarter.

It will be held Nov. 1 from 6-7 p.m. at The Creative Coast, 15 West York St. Space is limited and registration will end the day before. The cost to register is $15. Go to www.thecreativecoast.org/workshops to register.

QuickBooks Seminars

Hancock Askew & Co. LLP announced the 2012 QuickBooks Seminars in Savannah. There is no charge for these classes, which will be held in the Learning Center at 100 Riverview Drive.

Reporting will be held Nov. 6 from 9 a.m.-noon. The class covers how to manage your business using QuickBooks®, how to use “classes” as a tracking system for different retail locations or separating rental properties, manage inventory, available reports and processes.

For more information or to register, contact Barbara Fierstein at 912-527-1337 or bfierstein@hancockaskew.com.

Georgia Tech-Savannah

hosts course

Georgia Tech Professional Education will conduct a Lean and Safe: Safety-Integrated Process Improvement course (MFG 2003) Nov. 6-8, 2012 at the Georgia Tech-Savannah campus. Participants will learn about the importance of developing an integrated approach for production processes and safety outcomes.

For more information or to register, go to www.gtpe.gatech.edu/lean-safe.

Inaugural Lowcountry Boil

and BBQ Event

Presenting sponsor 98.7 The River, has partnered with the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce on their inaugural Lowcountry Boil and BBQ event to be held Saturday, Nov. 10 from 5-8 p.m. at the Bluffton Oyster Factory Park on Wharf Street, Bluffton. If it rains, the event will move to the Rotary Community Center at Oscar Frazier Community Park.

Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door. Children 12 are free. Beer, wine and soft drinks will be available for an additional fee. For more information, call 843-757-1010 or go to www.blufftonchamberofcommerce.org.

QuickBooks Seminars

Hancock Askew & Co. LLP has announced the 2012 QuickBooks Seminars in Savannah. There is no charge for these classes, which will be held in the Learning Center at 100 Riverview Drive.

Finance for Non-Financial Managers will be held Nov. 13 from 9 a.m.-noon. The class covers Internal Controls — Important questions for your tax advisor for year-end, making QuickBooks® work with a paper or paper-less filing system, how to use QuickBooks® information as a management tool and using Internal Controls in QuickBooks.

For more information or to register, contact Barbara Fierstein at 912-527-1337 or bfierstein@hancockaskew.com.

Bonding and Insurance workshop

Join Chatham County’s Minority and Women Business Enterprise Program and Ajax Building Corp. Bonding and Insurance Options Workshop.” The meeting will be held from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Nov. 8. at the old courthouse, 124 Bull St., in the 3rd Floor Conference Room. This workshop is free, but RSVP required to attend. Space is limited. Please contact B. Grant at 912-652-7925

ONGOING

Pooler Business Network

When: Every first and third Thursday, 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Where: Western Sizzlin, U.S. 80 in Pooler

Information: RSVP to Jason Torres at jasonjtorres@gmail.com.

Downtown Business Professionals Chapter
of BNI

When: 11:30 a.m. every Thursday

Where: Hilton Savannah DeSoto, 15 East Liberty St.

Information: For information, call Kevin Brown at 912-447-1885 or email rkbrowndc@msn.com.

The Islands Chapter —
BNI group

When: Each Thursday at
8 a.m.

Where: Johnny Harris banquet facility, 1652 East Victory Drive

Information: Contact Kathy Salter at studio@dalyandsalterphoto.com.

Savannah Women’s
Business Network

When: Every second and fourth Wednesday, 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. for lunch.

Where: The Exchange Tavern on Waters Avenue

Cost: Cost for lunch

Information: RSVP to Kari Brown at kcbrown@colonybank.com.

Historic Savannah
Chapter ABWA

When: 6-7:50 p.m. second Thursday.

Where: Candler Heart & Lung Building, room 2.

Cost: Free

Information: Call 912-925-4980 or email blynneroberts@yahoo.com.

Toastmasters Club

When: Noon each Tuesday

Where: Savannah Mall across from “ Hill of Beans” Coffee Shop.

Information: Call 912-844-9139 or go to www.sbcsouthsidetm.com.

Savannah newsmakers

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HIRES/PROMOTIONS

TAKIYAH S. GIBBS

New job title: Director of Social Services

Company: The Salvation Army

Duties: Gibbs directs the administration of all social services programs, including transitional living accommodation, emergency services, as well as financial, food, clothing and furniture assistance.

Related work experience: Gibbs was the case manager and recruiter at Lutheran services and later the regional case manager for the homeless prevention and rapid rehousing program for the Salvation Army.

Education: Gibbs holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice with a minor in sociology.

JESSICA MUNCH-DITTMAR

New job title: Volunteer coordinator

Company: The Salvation Army

Duties: Munch-Dittmar will be responsible for recruiting and maintaining volunteers. She will also organize events and act as liaison between the organization and the community.

Related work experience: Munch-Dittmar has partnered with The Salvation Army as the coordinator of the CAPA program. She has also arranged music and drama performances and guest speakers for special events.

Education: Munch-Dittmar received her B.A. in music education from the University of South Carolina. She recently received a graduate certificate in volunteer management from Georgia Nonprofit University.

JIM JOHNSTON

New job title: Sales associate

Company: Cora Bett Thomas Austin Hill & Associates

Duties: Johnston is a full service real estate agent. He assists and advises clients in the purchase and sale of properties in the greater Savannah area.

Related work experience: Johnston was a financial consultant with Robinson-Humphrey. He was also the owner and proprietor of La Belle Maison in Habersham Village.

Education: Johnston holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

ERIC O’NEILL

New job title: Intern architect

Company: Greenline Architecture

Duties: O’Neill will assist the firm’s architects and project managers with a variety of assignments including drawings, presentations and the preparation of construction documents.

Education: O’Neill received his master’s in architecture and his bachelor of fine arts from Savannah College of Art and Design.

RICHARD EVANS

New job title: Acting assistant city manager for Administrative and Community Services

Company: The city of Savannah

Duties: As one of two assistant city managers, Evans will advise the acting city manager on citywide issues. He will also be responsible for two bureaus — management services and community & economic development — that house 28 departments.

Related work experience: Evans served as assistant town manager of Upper St. Clair, Pa.; as a computer system consultant for ISR Inc.; and served in the Air Force.

Education: He holds a master’s degree in urban management from Carnegie-Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree from Allegheny College.

TAFFANYE YOUNG

New job title: Community and Economic Development Bureau chief

Company: The city of Savannah

Duties: Young will oversee much of the city’s neighborhood development programs, including housing, community planning and development, economic development, the citizen office and real property services. She will also oversee the administration of funds to a number of city-supported social service agencies.

Related work experience: Young began working for the city in 1993 as a neighborhood services coordinator. She was promoted in 1994 to director of the Community Services Department and in 2000 to director of community planning and development. She also worked with the University of California at Davis and the Department of Army Overseas.

Education: Young has a master’s degree in public administration and a bachelor’s degree from Georgia Southern University.

CAM MATHIS

New job title: Director of Information Technology

Company: The city of Savannah

Related work experience: Mathis has worked in the IT Department since 1995, serving as senior systems analyst; IT administrator, where she managed network services and application services; as well as acting director since February 2011. Mathis previously served as environmental coordinator in the Sanitation Bureau and GIS Coordinator in the Engineering Department.

Education: Mathis earned her master’s degree in city planning from Georgia Institute of Technology and bachelor’s degree from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.

BRITTNEY SECREASE

New job title: Financial advisor

Company: Edward Jones Investments

Duties: Secrease will assist clients in planning and preparing for their financial future.

Related work experience: Secrease worked as a retirement and education specialist in the Edward Jones headquarters in St. Louis.

Education: Secrease attended the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

BRIAN K. SAPP

New job title: Project manager

Company: Tharpe Structural Design Group

Duties: Sapp will be responsible for all phases of structural design projects from schematic design through construction administration.

Related work experience: Proficient in building information modeling, Sapp will also oversee the firm’s projects that utilize this collaborative project delivery approach.

Education: Sapp holds a Master of Science in civil engineering from Georgia Tech.

AMY CORDES

New job title: Director of Admissions

Company: South University

Duties: Cordes is responsible for leading the recruitment and enrollment program for accelerated graduate programs that offer a 12-month MBA in business administration or health care administration.

Related work experience: Cordes has been with South University as an assistant director of admissions since July 2009. She worked at PHH Mortgage and as an account executive at the Philadelphia 76ers organization.

Education: Cordes earned a
Bachelor of Science degree in sports management from James Madison University in Virginia.

GREG REED

New job title: Senior financial analyst

Company: South University

Duties: Reed supports all aspects of financial planning and operations for South University. He provides financial and operational metrics analysis, variance analysis, planning support and other requests.

Related work experience: Reed’s experience includes sales, marketing, financial analysis and financial auditor roles at organizations such as AT&T, Ernst & Young, Robert Half International and Royal Alliance Associates.

Education: Reed earned a master of business administration degree from South University and a Bachelor of Arts in accounting from the University of Northern Iowa.

DAVID HARPER

Company: Harkleroad’s Diamonds and Fine Jewelry

Related work experience: Harper has worked in the jewelry business for 25 years with such companies as Service Merchandise, Zales. Previously he was the assistant manager at Levy Jewelers.

NATALIE L. LEGGETTE

New job title: Development manager

Company: Union Mission

Duties: Leggette will oversee and create strategic development plans to address the needs of agency programs, coordinate fundraising initiatives and solicitation packages and work to find alternate revenue sources.

Related work experience: Leggette served as volunteer coordinator at SAFE Shelter, Inc. and as director of marketing and promotions at Monroe County Broadcasting Company in Rochester, N.Y.

HONORS/AWARDS

NLaws Produce names Driver of the Month

Jerry Lipsey has been named the NLaws Produce Driver of the Month.

SCAD architecture professor named to board

Savannah College of Art and Design architecture professor Andrew Phillip Payne has been named to the 2013-14 board of directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Georgia chapter.

NAWIC announces board of directors

Coastal Georgia National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) has announced its 2012-13 board of directors. They include:

• TJ Baggett of Stage Front Presentation Systems, president.

• Heather Vinas of VOS CPAs, vice president.

• Polly Hendricks of Joe Marchese Construction, corresponding secretary.

• Tricia Larson of Stage Front Presentation Systems, recording secretary.

• Tonya Reed of Henry Plumbing, treasurer.

• LaShonda Robinson of CH2MHILL, director.

• Kim Taylor of UNITS Mobile Storage, director.

• Dawn Morgan of Collins Construction, immediate past president.

Union Mission announces board member

Union Mission, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing and preventing homelessness throughout the greater Savannah area, has announced that Dr. Brian P. Redmond, Jr., has been named to the board of directors.


Exchange in brief

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Westin’s looking for gingerbread entries

The Savannah Harbor Foundation and The Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa are seeking entries for the upcoming 12th annual Gingerbread Village: Savannah’s Edible Design Competition, a gingerbread-or-whatever-material-you-can-find house contest.

Make a gingerbread airplane or an aluminum-can Leaning Tower of Pisa. As long as all visible components of the design are edible, there are no limitations on how funky, eccentric or over-the-top entries can be.

Entries are divided into two categories, adult (18 and older) and student (17 and younger).

The adult division grand prize winner will receive $1,500, up from $100, and the student division grand prize winner will receive $500, double the amount awarded last year.

Entry forms must be received by Nov. 1 and can be downloaded from westinsavannah.com/gingerbreadvillageform or requested by email at Teresa.Berry@Westin.com or telephone, 912-201-2048. Forms can be submitted by fax, 912-201-2074 or email to Teresa.Berry@Westin.com.

Designs are due Nov. 18 and 19, and judging is scheduled to take place the evening of Nov. 19.

Savannah Tech to host ‘graduate’ program

This year’s first session of the graduate program for alumni of Leadership Savannah will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 at Savannah Tech. Two more programs will follow.

The program offers Leadership Savannah alumni access to information about important institutions and organizations in Savannah and describes their roles in the community. Savannah Tech serves 5,000 students each semester among five campuses in Bryan, Chatham, Effingham and Liberty counties.

It offers more than 70 certificates, diplomas and associate degrees.

Members of the Leadership Savannah Graduate Program are invited to this program in the Eckburg Auditorium at 5717 White Bluff Road. Graduate dues for 2012-13 are $75 for all three programs.

RSVP to Margaret Mary Russell at MRussell@SavannahChamber.com or call her at 912-644-6432.

Autism workshop to focus on social skills

The Matthew Reardon Center for Autism will host a daylong workshop entitled “Skills for Life: Teaching Social Skills for Independence” on Nov. 2.

The presenter, Marian Joiner, specializes in social skills development programs presented in inclusive small group learning sessions to support the growth of greater independence and community participation.

The workshop will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Fahm St.

Registration is $49 per person. CEUs are available for an additional $12.

For more information or registration, contact Jennifer McGee at 912-355-9098, ext. 223 or go to matthewreardon.org.

Market waits for election; earnings disappoint

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NEW YORK — The stock market is waiting for the presidential election as much as anyone.

The U.S. stock market struggled for direction Monday. All three major indexes waffled between gains and losses before closing slightly higher. Investors were underwhelmed by earnings reports from toymaker Hasbro, clothing maker VF Corp., regional bank SunTrust and other companies.

The overhang of the presidential election in two weeks didn’t help. Investors are wary of making big moves before they know who’s going to be the next president.

“They need to know the playing field before they get out there and play,” said Jeff Savage, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank in Portland, Oregon.

David Katz, principal and senior portfolio strategist at WeiserMazars Wealth Advisors in New York, said it matters more that the election is wrapped up than who is elected.

“One could say the markets will rally stronger if the Republican candidate becomes president,” Katz said. “But one way or another, the markets will have direction, and the markets like direction.”

The Dow Jones industrial average ended virtually flat. It inched up 2.38 points, or 0.02 percent, to close at 13,345.89. A late rise erased a 108-point deficit in the Dow.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was also little changed, edging up 0.62 point to 1,433.81. The Nasdaq composite index rose 11.34 to 3,016.96.

Besides the election, an economic report due Friday also has the markets in a holding pattern. That’s when the government is supposed to report how much the U.S. economy grew in the third quarter. But already, company reports are signaling that consumers, who drive the bulk of economic growth, are far from healed.

To be fair, most companies are reporting better-than-expected profits. But investors want to know how companies are faring on revenue. Revenue can give a more accurate picture of how a company is performing, because profits can vary widely on items like accounting charges and cost-cutting.

Katz described companies’ third-quarter revenue results as “fair” and said the U.S. economy is “slow and steady.”

“It is at a snail’s pace,” he said. “But it’s certainly better than what we had.”

 

Of the roughly 100 companies in the S&P 500 that had reported third-quarter results as of last week, 70 percent have beat analysts’ estimates for profits, according to John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet. But only 42 percent have beat estimates for revenue. That’s the lowest since the first quarter of 2009, when the stock market hit its Great Recession lows.

Company profits so far this quarter are down 2.3 percent compared to a year ago. Revenue is down an average of 0.6 percent.

One stock that jumped was Ancestry.com, the genealogy website, which announced it will be bought by European private equity firms. The stock popped $2.26 to $31.44. The buyers had offered $32 per share.

Apple also jumped, rising $24.19 to $634.03. The company is expected to release a new, smaller iPad on Tuesday, to compete with Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire and Google Inc.’s Nexus 7.

In other trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.81 percent from 1.76 percent late Friday. The euro was worth $1.3045, up slightly from Friday. Energy prices fell. Crude oil lost $1.32 to $88.73 a barrel.

City Talk: Feds could've softened housing bust

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The housing collapse has been the dominant economic story for more than five years, but we’ve heard very little about it during this year’s presidential campaigns.

The decline in real estate values and plunging new home construction are largely to blame for underwater homeowners facing foreclosure, investors going into bankruptcy, banks failing, tax collections eroding, unemployment roles increasing and Americans’ net worths declining.

We’ve sure seen all that fallout here in Savannah, and it would be good to hear a substantive, vigorous debate about recent federal housing policy.

The homebuyer tax credit was one of the signature moves under the Obama administration. While it might have been a boon to some homebuyers, it was bad policy for many reasons.

Locally we saw a surge in activity before the credit expired. That came with a false sense that both sales and prices had bottomed.

Even before the expiration, anyone looking closely at the numbers knew the tax credit was not part of a true solution. According to Zillow’s Home Value Index, Savannah metro prices fell another 15 percent after the homebuyer tax credit expired in summer 2010.

In other words, because of the tax credit, we ended up with even more homeowners underwater than we would have had.

The credit might have given banks some much-needed breathing room, but the ultimate effect was to drag out the bottoming process for a year or more.

That delay has also contributed to the slowdown in new construction. As I noted in this space on Sunday, construction remains one of our lagging sectors for local employment despite generally positive labor market trends.

There are certainly other federal policy moves that could have softened the blow from the housing bust.

We could have seen programs that mandating mortgage “cramdowns,” principal forgiveness and refinancing of privately backed notes.

We could have seen a much more aggressive implementation of refinancing programs for mortgages backed by the federal government.

Of course, all these efforts would have required a more activist federal approach. I’m not sure that would have been politically possible in the ultra-partisan climate of the past few years.

And that’s true for the economy generally, not just the housing bust. The policies that would have boosted the recovery the most would have required more federal action and spending, not less.

Over the long run, we might want to unwind some of the federal role in mortgage markets and in housing generally, but if we took such steps in the short run, we’d risk another housing-led recession.

City Talk appears every Sunday and Tuesday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 E. 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.

Savannah businesses explore China trade

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It was the chance Richard Shinhoster’s been waiting for.

The city of Savannah, in conjunction with the Georgia-China Alliance, brought in Shanghai business executives Monday for a workshop about how to get started doing business with China.

Shinhoster, a member of the Greater International Alliance advisory committee, imports from several countries in Africa for his shop, The Diaspora Marketplace, 510 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

“I’ve very interested in trade with China,” he said. “I want to know what kind of products they have that I might bring to my business.”

Nearly two years after a second Savannah delegation visit to China, this was the first time Chinese business owners were here. Previous international visits have been from government and education officials.

It also reflects a recent city decision to create an international office tasked with building global outreach.

Alliance administrators contacted the city about a day visit, but city officials, learning that Shanghai business leaders were here to explore trade options, asked to create a workshop session, said MarRonde Lumpkin Lotson, who heads the city’s international efforts.

“It was a prime opportunity,” she said. “There’s a lot of mystique about doing business globally. We want to remove that mystery and keep it from seeming so daunting.”

The session covered basics of the Chinese economy, looked at developing high-tech manufacturing and outlined some of the protocol and customs essential to building relationships.

Hank Wilfong Jr., a retired CPA and former Nixon administration appointee to the Small Business Adminstration, plans to encourage the city and local businesses to pursue relations with China. Wilfong recalled Nixon, who in 1972 was the first president to visit China, explaining the diplomatic outreach by saying it would be hard for the U.S. to ignore 1 billion people.

China’s population today is more than 1.3 billion, and it also has rapidly developing industries in mining, defense and auto manufacturing. Pair that with Savannah having the second-largest port on the East Coast, and the business opportunities are obvious, Wilfong said.

“Savannah is the gateway to the Southeast,” he said. “We’ve got to set up our businesses to benefit from that opportunity. We need to take advantage of what comes our way, the millions and the billions that flow through here.

“They’re reaching out their hands,” he said of the Chinese delegation. “We’ve got to get with it.”

Ga. Tech: Factories here are increasing ‘in-shoring’

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ATLANTA — More Georgia factories transferred work in from other states and overseas than outsourced reversing a long-term trend, a recent report from Georgia Tech shows.

The report by Tech’s Program in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy is based on the latest in a series of surveys in which factory executives give extensive details about their operations. The latest survey showed that about 16 percent of the firms brought into Georgia plants some aspect of their manufacturing while 14 percent of them were subject to outsourcing, mostly to other parts of the United States, Asia, Mexico and Central America.

That reverses a trend that the college has seen in its surveys since 2005 in which more work would be heading out each year than was coming in.

“An increase in companies using more in-sourcing will benefit more Georgia businesses,” the authors wrote. “These trends suggest a net increase in value added of the manufacturing sector in the state.”

In-sourcing may benefit the state, but the survey data suggests that it didn’t improve the companies’ bottom line since there was no difference in profitability between those bringing in work and those transferring it out.

The new, in-sourcing trend is not uniform across the state. Firms in the Rome-Dalton area still shipped out more work than they brought into the state, and those in the Augusta region were the only ones that reported bringing no work in at all while 20 percent of them there exported work.

At the same time, Augusta-area firms invest the least in research and development per employee of eight regions that the authors divided the state into. They spent far less than the state and national average on R&D.

Firms in the Albany area spent the most per employee, followed by the Atlanta area and those along the coast. The geographic differences are likely tied to the distribution of industries since the transportation and science-related companies invested more in research, and those dealing with food, textiles and materials invested the least.

Overall, plants in Georgia are well below the national rate of research investment, but the authors speculate that is because most of the plants are headquartered in other states.

 

Research and development investment per employee

Rome-Dalton-Cartersville: $3,265

Athens-Gainesville: $1,917

Atlanta: $7,948

Columbus-LaGrange: $4,895

Macon-Dublin: $2,307

Augusta: $1,683

Albany-Douglas: $9,548

Savannah-Brunswick: $5,262

Source: 2012 Georgia Manufacturing Survey by Georgia Institute of Technology

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