Business
The government is weighing in on the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping madness this year. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is recommending retailers have bullhorns, barricades and uniformed guards ready for the rush.
Eyes are on retailers this year, following last year's trampling death of a Walmart worker on Black Friday.
Although they won't say it's related, Walmart is staying open 24 hours before Black Friday for crowd management purposes. Discounts will begin at 5 a.m. Friday.
This year's special circumstances do make one wonder if it will be an extra tense Black Friday: More cash-strapped shoppers may be desperate for bargains. Retailers in stiff competition with each other are offering better-than-ever discounts. And in an effort to save money, stores have limited the amount of merchandise they stocked, meaning shortages could happen.
 It's a pretty standard routine for a traffic stop: License, registration and proof of insurance, please.
We published a story today about a renewed push to let low-income motorists know about a low-cost, liability-only auto insurance program. But why now?
Give thanks to Thanksgiving for that. State insurance officials and California Highway Patrol officers say with more drivers hitting the road next week for the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, there's concern that more drivers will be out there without insurance.
Continue reading "No auto insurance? Your excuses just got fewer" »
The first homeowners under the federal government's Neighborhood Stabilization Program are starting to move in. They include Josh Morgan, who hopes to get the keys Friday to his newly remodeled three-bedroom, two-bath home in Visalia.
Morgan, 22, is the second person in Visalia to buy a house through the stimulus-funded program where cities and counties buy abandoned and foreclosed houses, renovate them and resell them to low and moderate families.
He figured he looked at an average of seven houses a week before finally landing one through the government program. "I had been looking for a good year," said Morgan, who will live in the house with his fiancé and young daughter. "But the houses we liked either had something wrong with them or we were getting beat out by other offers."
Morgan learned of the stabilization program through his real estate agent, George Mendonca, and found it helped level the playing field. That's because investors can't participate in the program.
Morgan used an FHA loan to make a 3.5% down payment on a house priced at $97,800. His monthly payment will be $710, including taxes and insurance and replaces his $600 monthly rent.
"I would definitely recommend the program," said Morgan, who works in retail. "It's great for lower-income people."
Visalia officials used their $2.3 million allotment to buy 13 houses, with six others in escrow or with purchase offers waiting for acceptance.
Continue reading "NSP participants starting to move into homes" »
  Motor Trend today named the Ford Fusion (right) as its 2010 Car of the Year. But is that enough to make you want to buy one?
The Fusion was chosen from a field of 23 models under consideration by the magazine's editors. To be eligible, a car must be either totally new or a substantial redesign from the previous version. Motor Trend editor-in-chief Angus MacKenzie announced the winner this morning in a live webcast from Detroit -- a city that has seen its leading industry ravaged by layoffs in two years of economic downturn. MacKenzie described the award to an American automaker as good news for Detroit, "one of the places most hardest hit" by the industry's woes.
Continue reading "Ford Fusion is Motor Trend's 2010 Car of the Year" »
It probably isn't too big a surprise to learn that borrowers are less satisified with their mortgage lenders in this real estate recession.
A recent survey by J.D. Power and Associates revealed the length of time it takes to close a loan increased from 30 days in 2008 to 47 days today, thanks to increased scrutiny of loan applications.
In addition, lending criteria has tightened. Credit scores are higher and the number of loan applicants faced with requests for more documentation climbed from 33% in 2008 to 45% in 2009.
Officials at J.D. Power said the increased scrutiny is warranted, but said that good service and good underwriting are not mutually exclusive. "...Some of the effects of a tightened lending environment can be mitigaged simply by improving communication between lenders and customers," said David Lo, director of financial services at J.D. Power.
Wachovia, Wells Fargo, GMAC Mortgage and Bank of America ranked higher than average in customer service. Countrywide, Chase and CitiBank fell below, according to J.D. Power.
The National Retail Federation released its list of top 10 retailers for customer service today.
Here's who made the list (in alphabetical order):
Amazon.com
Coldwater Creek
HSN
JCPenney
Kohl's Department Stores
Lands' End
LL Bean
Nordstrom
Overstock.com
QVC
Zappos
They'll announce rankings in January.
It doesn't surprise me that Zappos made the list. The online shoe retailer is known for its customer service, including sending flowers to a customer whose mother had just died. And the company aims for good employees, even offering recruits a $2,000 bonus to walk away from the job after one week of training. How many companies do that?
Any surprises on there? Any personal experiences that reinforce the honor?
 At a time when the green awnings of Starbucks seem to be popping up just about everywhere, one might wonder how a mid-sized community smack on Highway 99 gets passed over by the coffee giant.
That's what intrigued me in reporting for today's Word on the Street item about changes in the coffee biz in Selma.
Local entrepreneurs aren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. They know an opportunity when they see it.
Julie Kestly (right, Bee photo by John Walker), owner of Heavenly Grounds, reopened about a month ago near the Selma 6 Cinema after losing the lease on the downtown Selma site she occupied for more than five years selling morning coffee and pastries and noontime sandwiches.
Business at the new location is picking up, albeit slowly. "The lunch crowd has followed me," Kestly said, "but mornings are still pretty quiet."
Continue reading "Coffee independents take advantage of Starbucks' absence" »
 If a California Highway Patrol officer or a local city police officer has ever lit you up for a traffic stop in recent years, chances are he or she was behind the wheel of a Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.
But Ford Motor Company announced today that it will develop an all-new police vehicle to replace its venerable Crown Vic Police Interceptor (right) in late 2011. That's when the automaker is phasing the Crown Victoria -- one of the last of Detroit's big "tuna boat" sedans -- out of its model lineup altogether.
Ford's announcement comes more than a month after General Motors opened up the potential for a patrol-car war with news that it's reviving the Caprice as a Australian-built, police-only model due to hit the mean streets in 2011.
Continue reading "New Ford interceptor sets stage for patrol war with Chevy" »
Journalists and others got a sneak peek at the downtown Fresh & Easy store Friday.
The company held a press conference to announce opening dates (this one opens Jan. 13, more dates here).
A couple things that caught my interest:
1. Fresh & Easy offers all its employees a minimum of 20 hours a week, which entitles them to medical, dental and vision insurance. The company pays 75% of the cost and also matches 401(k) contributions. Starbucks also offers benefits to part timers, but that seems to be fairly unusual, especially in these economics times.
2. The mosaic mural out front was recently completed by local artist Stan Bitters. The artwork includes a river flowing from a dam. I'm told the developers sought out feedback from the community before implementing the design, not wanting a repeat of the Tower District mural fiasco.
Edited to add: Stan Bitters just called to chat about his mural. He says the conversations with the Fresno Arts Council and Fresh & Easy didn't happen because they were trying to avoid another Tower District mural situation. Rather, they were focusing on the past and the future of Fresno. That includes the ghost of a high-speed rail image and a river full of salmon.
Some of the regions hit hardest by the housing crisis have seen the most real estate activity lately, according to a new study. Those regions include Fresno and other parts of California, where it seems prices also are starting to edge up.
Foreclosure disposition company Integrated Asset Services compiled the data from its index, which tracks nonconforming, bank-owned and conventional sales transactions in addition to those insured by the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Affairs.
It says home prices in Fresno County climbed an average of 5% between August and September. That followed a total decline in value of 42.5% from the peak in 2006. Prices in some places in Fresno County are now at 2003 levels, according to IAS.
Another hard-hit region, San Bernardino County, climbed 4% in value, and now is at 2001 prices in some areas. Parts of San Joaquin County have plunged to 2000 levels.
The 5% gain in Fresno County -- one of the largest increases in the index -- isn't too far off from the 4.2% boost in existing-home prices that Guarantee Real Estate calculated for Fresno County between August and September.
Buying opportunities
Home sales are thriving in part because investors took advantage of low prices and abundant foreclosures. Look for the same scenario in commercial real estate.
A new Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP study says investors with cash have a "nervous euphoria" over the opportunities in shopping centers and office buildings.
Continue reading "Home prices edging up in Fresno" »
 Winning $2,000 worth of gasoline in a contest sounds like a pretty good deal to a lot of people, but for someone who drives as much as Fresnan Rob Krider, there's a big question about just how far that will take him.
Krider, a race-car driver and mechanic, automotive columnist and blogger, was one of five grand-prize winners announced today by Shell Oil in the company's V-Power "Fuel My Passion" contest. The prize: "gasoline for a year," awarded as $2,000 in Shell gift cards.
Krider and the other contest winners were chosen in a nationwide Internet vote among entrants who sent in pictures of their cars and, in 100 words, described how Shell V-Power gasoline "fuels their passion" for driving.
Krider, 36, entered a photo and blurb about his Krider Racing 1969 Volkswagen "Baja Bug" (above) that finished first in its class and second overall in the 2009 Beetleball Endurance Rally, a 450-mile Long Beach-to-Las Vegas race last month.
Continue reading "Online vote wins 'a year of gasoline' for Fresno racer" »
Fresno County bucked a statewide trend in September when sales of new houses increased 6.8% from a year earlier, according to the California Building Industry Association.
In Fresno County, 126 new houses were sold, an increase from 118 in September 2008.
The median price was down 2.9% for the year to $253,190.
Meanwhile, year-over-year sales increased 4.5% in Tulare County.
 Lots of people try to think outside the box. But one researcher reached into the toy box to find a way to solve a problem.
Michelle Khine, a former assistant and founding professor of engineering at UC Merced, has been recognized by editors of MIT's Technology Review as one of the publication's Young Innovators Under 35 for 2009.
(Right: Khine on the cover of Genome Technology magazine in May 2007)
Khine, 32, is a biomedical engineer who is now an assistant professor at UC Irvine. She was chosen by Technology Review because of her unorthodox use of Shrinky Dinks, a children's craft material, as a fast, low-cost way to creating test molds for microfluidics, a type of chemical research.
 Typically, such molds require expensive engineering equipment that wasn't available when Khine arrived at the brand-new UC Merced campus in 2006. So she turned to Shrinky Dinks -- plastic sheets onto which she can print patterns for molds (left). When popped into an oven for a few minutes, the sheets -- and the patterns printed on them -- shrink down into a suitable size for her research needs. (Photo from UC Irvine Web site, by Dave Lauridson for Technology Review)
Because it's cheap and quick, ideas can be tested and modified without great expense. In a video on the Technology Review Web site, Khine explains that other fields -- including medical diagnostics, stem-cell research and the solar power industry -- may find the technique valuable for making prototype molds and chips without the expense of clean rooms and other necessities for silicon chips.
 Justice isn't moving quickly for hundreds of victims who are awaiting new developments in an alleged Ponzi scheme run from a Fresno leasing company.
Ara Jabagchourian, a Bay Area attorney, said his firm continues to take depositions and track down financial information in a potential class-action lawsuit filed against the estate of the late John W. Otto, the company he ran, HL Leasing, and others accused of defrauding investors of as much as $138 million.
It could be late 2010 or early 2011 before the civil case goes to trial, said Jabagchourian, with the Burlingame firm of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy. A trial date could be set by Fresno County Superior Court Judge Donald S. Black following a hearing later this month.
(Above right: A sign on the door notified visitors in May that HL Leasing and Heritage Pacific Leasing were closed)
Continue reading "Justice creeps slowly in alleged Fresno Ponzi scheme" »
 We will soon see if holiday seasonal hiring makes any sort of dent in the local unemployment picture.
(Bee file photo, right: Holiday shoppers browse at Clovis' Sierra Vista Mall)
There is both doubt and hope:
- Doubt because of the demise over the past couple of years of major retail employers such as Mervyns, Gottschalks and others who typically ramped up their staffing for Christmastime sales.
- Hope because, at least in the national picture, economic growth is being reported. And, for the first time since 2007, consumer confidence has edged upward, according to The Nielsen Company.
 "There are some signs that retail is picking up, so we could see a surge in November employment gains," John A. Challenger, CEO of Chicago-based staffing consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement today (click on the seasonal job growth chart, at left, to see the last 10 years of hiring).
Last year, the holidays yielded only 384,300 seasonal retail jobs across the country -- the worst holiday hiring season since 1989, Challenger said.
In Fresno County, where unemployment is about 14%, the number of retail jobs in which people were employed has crept up slightly in recent months. There were about 35,100 retail jobs occupied in September in Fresno County, according to the state Employment Development Department. That's 500 more than July or August.
We don't yet know what the October employment numbers will show for Fresno County when they're released late next week, but they're likely to reflect the opening of a new Macy's store in north Fresno with about 216 employees at the site of a defunct Gottschalks department store at The Shops at River Park. And if the mild uptick observed nationally by Challenger holds true in Fresno as well, we may see that number climb a bit higher still. Are you on the hunt for a seasonal job in retail, either as your only source of income or as a second job? We'd like to hear what the job market is like for you. Use the comment field below to share your experiences and feelings.
What an unusual collection of news in today's Word on the Street. It features a trucking company, Old Dominion, that is in expanding in Fresno, a sign it's betting the economy will recover soon.
The second item is Objex by Alicia Evans Inc., which makes bras and short tank tops. (You should have seen how the three male co-workers deftly handed this one off to the sole female business reporter.) A co-worker tells me the fledgling Visalia company had a long line of interested customers at the Two Cities marathon this weekend.
And in Coalinga, another thrift shop has opened, following a spate of them opening in Fresno.
Word on the Street is a weekly business news column. If you have a new business or other business news for inclusion in the column, please e-mail me at bclough@fresnobee.com
First Belana closes, now the Borders Express store in Sierra Vista Mall is scheduled to close.
The closures come on the heels of this story about all the new shops and restaurants opening up in Fresno. It's a reminder that we're not quite out of this mess yet.
Belana may have faced the same problems attracting customers as other restaurants, despite famed local businessman Krikor "Kirk" Vartanian's involvement.
As for Borders Express, the company is closing mall-based stores in an effort to stay profitable. The Hanford Mall location will stay open.
This just in: An extension of the home-buyer tax credit passes House and heads to Obama's desk for signature.
http://www.house.gov/smbiz/democrats/PressReleases/2009/pr-11-5-09-homebuyers-credit.html
Fresno Historical Society home tour
Nov. 13-14
Tickets for Friday: $50.
Saturday tickets: $30 in advance; $35 day of
Information, tickets: 559-441-0862; www.ValleyHistory.org
Fresno's architectural heritage will be showcased Nov. 13 and 14th when five homes along historic Huntington Boulevard open for tours.
It is Fresno Historical Society's annual fund-raising home tour. Participants can gather on the front lawn of the A.G Wishon home, 3555 Huntington Boulevard (which is not open to visitors) from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Nov. 13 for a wine and harvest dinner. A candlelight tour will follow.
At 11 a.m. the next day, participants can gather in the Roosevelt High School library for an illustrated lecture by Karana Hattersley-Drayton, the city's historic preservation officer and a panel discussion on how to green up a historic home. A home tour will follow from noon to 4 p.m..
Huntington Boulevard is the heart of one of Fresno's most architecturally distinct neighborhoods. A variety of styles - from modest to grand - face a wide boulevard bisected by a grassy median. The boulevard was a streetcar route from 1907 to 1939.
This year's tour includes the following:
Continue reading "Huntington Blvd. home tour set" »
If you are facing foreclosure and about to lose your house, would you consider renting it back from the lender to stay there?
Now you might be able to. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have started programs that allow homeowners to stay in the house. Fannie's program, announced this week, allows qualifying homeowners to lease back the house for up to a year, with the possibility of month-to-month leases after that.
Freddie's program, unveiled in January, enables some families to rent the house on a month-to-month basis.
The objective is to ease the trauma of foreclosure and not force families to move. In many cases, the lease or rental agreement transfers to the new owner if the house is sold - although Fannie Mae says it won't list the house for sale during the one-year lease period.
Fannie's program is available to borrowers who don't qualify or haven't been able to sustain a loan modification.
Fannie didn't say how many people will qualify for the program, but roughly two-thirds of homeowners offered rental contracts under Freddie Mac have taken them, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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