A sedan worth taking to Cherry Creek
Downtown Denver’s Westin Tabor Center recently purchased a $90,000 Mercedes-Benz S500 sedan to ferry VIP guests to nearby entertainment venues, such as the Pepsi Center or Coors Field. The hotel expects the Cherry Creek Shopping Center to be the swank vehicle’s top destination, according to spokeswoman Susan Stiff. Hotel staff have even nicknamed the luxe shuttle “the Bling Mobile.”
They’re not the only ones who love to shop. Cherry Creek Shopping Center consistently ranks as one of the top local destinations. Last year it was rated third most popular, behind the 16th Street Mall and LoDo, according to the annual Longwoods International tourism study.
Be careful, what you ask for might bite
Verizon Communications Inc. wrapped up its $8.5 billion purchase of MCI Friday, claiming the spoils of a three-month battle with Qwest Communications for control of the long-distance provider. At the time, analysts said Qwest’s failure to acquire MCI would doom the company’s stock to mediocrity. Several studies show that corporate mergers often destroy more shareholder value than they create.
Since the Denver telecom pulled out of its bid for MCI on May 2, Qwest shares have risen 54 percent. As for Verizon, the giant telecom company has lost a tenth of its market value since then.
Promoters get a little balmy over weather
Chamber of Commerce types will go to great lengths to trumpet Denver’s temperate winters and to counter the stereotype of a blizzard-begotten icy outpost.
But enough is enough!
Days of temperatures flirting near 70 degrees appear to have taken their toll on the Apollo Alliance, a newly formed coalition of business, labor, agriculture and environmental groups that will focus on alternative energy.
In an advisory for a news conference Monday, the alliance says that if inclement weather prevents it from using the west steps of the Capitol, the building’s third-floor press room will serve as a “rain location.”
Print media the top source for job hunters
The Internet may be the future, but job hunters still favor print publications when looking for work.
A recent report by The Conference Board, a New York research organization, found that three of every four job seekers still use the newspaper when looking for employment.
That’s slightly ahead of the Internet, which attracted three of every five job seekers.
The majority of job seekers ( 88 percent) looked at help wanted ads online, 60 percent posted résumés, and 50 percent researched potential employers, the report showed.
High-wage workers – those with annual incomes above $50,000 – were the only ones more likely to use the Internet than newspapers. Those with incomes below $25,000 used newspapers to find work 80 percent of the time.
Another interesting finding: The West was the nation’s only region where the Internet topped newspapers.
Gap makes thrifty change to redesign
Stuck in a sales slump that has lasted for more than a year, the Gap is betting that a radical plan to redesign its spartan stores will help win back shoppers. Seven metro Denver stores were the chain’s first remodels. Since their debut in April, they have been so successful that all 1,400 U.S. Gap stores will get the same facelift in the next several years.
At Cherry Creek Shopping Center, for example, shoppers relax on a brown leather couch next to a coffee table strewn with magazines and local newspapers such as The Denver Post. But some local touches didn’t make economic sense, according to a recent Wall Street Journal story.
“When the stores first reopened, cashiers wrapped jeans in butcher paper printed with an image of the Denver skyline and sold shirts printed with the names of local neighborhoods, such as ‘Wash Park’ and ‘LoDo,”‘ the Journal said.
The friendly frills were discontinued because they weren’t cost-effective.
Such a carrot for sticking to goal
Employees at Douglas County-based EchoStar Communications Corp. received a gift when Dish Network landed its 12-millionth subscriber late last month – a paid day off. According to company spokesman Marc Lumpkin, adding 1 million new subscribers was one of the company’s main internal goals for 2005. EchoStar employs 20,000 worldwide, with 5,000 in Colorado.
