A week rarely goes by in Denver without some civic leader, architect or developer pontificating about the promise of “transit oriented development.”
But while they’re busy describing the land that will open up around new rail stations as FasTracks is built, two plain-talking public servants found a better way to explain the rationale behind the 10-year construction project.
“Tarzan didn’t have just one vine to swing on,” Bill Vidal, Denver Public Works manager, told a group on Thursday. Nor should travelers have just one way to move through metro Denver.
By 2016, they’ll have access to eight transit lines or, in the words of Community Planning and Development manager Peter Park, a number of new vines on which to “swing through this urban jungle.”
At the post office, time may fly, but don’t try to watch it
The clocks are disappearing from the nation’s post offices.
It’s no conspiracy or science fiction-inspired mystery, but a quietly executed program by the U.S. Postal Service to take down all timepieces from retail areas of the country’s 37,000 post offices.
“Well, they’ve been removed,” confirmed Stephen Seewoester, a Dallas spokesman for the Postal Service, which is an independent agency of the federal government’s executive branch. “We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock.”
Seewoester said the wholesale clock clearing is part of a “retail standardization program” launched last year that will give the public-service areas a more uniform appearance, whether the post office is in Fort Wayne, Ind., or Fort Worth, Texas, “like Starbucks or a McDonald’s.”
A customer-service expert at Texas A&M University questioned the wisdom of taking down lobby clocks.
“It’s silly,” said Leonard Berry, a professor who holds the M.B. Zale Chair in Retailing and Marketing Leadership and whose papers include The Time-Buying Consumer. “I guess they think people don’t have watches. Removing the clocks is actually removing a service,” he said.
Natural supplements might build a better cup of coffee
Most of us think of our morning coffee as more of a vice than a virtue, but one enterprising businessman has found a way to make it both.
Texas chemist Michael Sweeney has come up with the idea of spiking an organic, gourmet Arabica coffee with herbs such as gingko biloba and echinacea. The natural supplements are manufactured in Houston, then shipped to Atlanta, where they are used to fortify Spava’s coffee beans.
Watch for the product line in nearby stores, including “Clarity” (with gingko biloba and white tea); “Flexibility” (with chondroitin); “Immunity” (with rose hips and echinacea); “Metabolism” (with green tea extract); and “Calm” (with passionflower and B vitamins).
For more information on the Internet, visit www.SPAVACoffee.com.
Top 100 corporate citizens lose No. 59 from the roster
Two Colorado companies were listed among CRO Magazine’s “100 Best Corporate Citizens,” as judged by their dedication to serving shareholders, community, governance, diversity, employees, environment, human rights and product.
Broomfield-based holistic mail-order company Gaiam Inc. came in 24th. Boulder-based natural food chain Wild Oats Markets Inc. came in 59th.
The honors were published in the magazine’s January-February issue. One week later, Wild Oats was swallowed up by Texas-based Whole Foods.
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
