Beginning this fall, Amtrak passengers on select routes will have the option of enjoying five-course dinners, sleeping in luxurious suites and having personal butler service.
The premium service is being made possible by a new partnership between Evergreen-based GrandLuxe Rail Journeys, a private rail tour operator, and Amtrak.
Called GrandLuxe Limited, the new service uses a separate, private, seven-car luxury train attached to several regularly scheduled Amtrak trains. The GrandLuxe train, which features dining, lounge and sleeping cars appointed with vintage furnishings, will be occupied exclusively by GrandLuxe Limited passengers.
GrandLuxe Limited will be available on three Amtrak routes: the California Zephyr, running between Chicago and San Francisco and passing through Denver; the Southwest Chief, between Los Angeles and Chicago; and the Silver Meteor, which runs along the eastern seaboard from Washington to Miami.
Prices for GrandLuxe Limited range from $789 to $2,499 per person.
DENVER
Movie firm ordered to quit selling interests
Colorado Securities Commissioner Fred Joseph said Thursday he had ordered a California movie production company to cease selling interests in a proposed movie in violation of Colorado securities rules.
Oak Films LLC and Modern Twain Partners II LLC of Studio City, Calif.; Modern Twain’s owners, Joseph Reilly of Los Angeles and Tom Kelly of Studio City; and two salesmen, John Yang and Steve Games, also of Studio City, entered a final cease and desist order with the Colorado Division of Securities.
The parties allegedly sought to raise $7 million in Colorado and elsewhere for a feature-length film that was tentatively titled “A Modern Twain Story: Tom Sawyer.” State securities regulators ruled the investments being sold should have been registered as securities and weren’t.
NIWOT
Crocs CEO sells 140,000 stock shares
Ronald Snyder, the president and chief executive of Crocs Inc., sold 140,000 shares of common stock this week, according to a regulatory filing made Thursday by the trendy shoemaker.
The shares, priced between $90.87 and $92.50 a piece, were worth more than $12.7 million. Snyder still holds more than 234,000 shares of the company.
DENVER
Apex employees win CU business contest
Nate Algoe, Jason Osaki and Scott Thomas of Apex Design PC, a transportation engineering consulting firm, won first place and a $10,000 prize in the sixth-annual Business Plan Competition sponsored by Bard Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Denver, on Wednesday.
Jeff Cahoon, Jeffrey Kohn and Tomas Kaplan of Dizgo, a provider of mobile-based advertising for brick-and-mortar retailers, won second place and $5,000.
ValveXchange, led by Ivan Vesely, placed third and won $2,500. The medical-device company also was awarded the BioScience Award with a $5,000 prize.
COLORADO SPRINGS
Research firm wins $6.3 million contract
Research Development Corp., a micro-electronics firm in Colorado Springs, won a $6.3 million contract to design space components, systems and process for a “six-day” satellite.
Micro-electronics will lead efforts at the Air Force Research Laboratory in support of a space initiative that can launch a military satellite in six days from the time it is ordered. The contract work runs through June 2010.
SEATTLE
Amazon won’t profit from “Potter” book
Amazon.com Inc. has taken more than a million orders for the final “Harry Potter” book due in July, but the world’s largest Web retailer won’t make a profit, chief executive Jeff Bezos told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting Thursday.
Amazon’s handling of the “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” release – a $17 discount off cover price, a free shipping offer and guaranteed on-time delivery – showed yet again that the company is willing to take a hit to cement customer loyalty.
WILMINGTON, Del.
Topps must postpone vote on Disney deal
Topps Co., the baseball trading-card maker that agreed to be sold to investors led by former Walt Disney Co. chief executive Michael Eisner, must postpone a shareholder vote on the deal until rival suitor Upper Deck Co. can make a bid, a judge ruled.
Delaware Chancery Judge Leo Strine Jr. on Thursday ordered the Topps board to disclose additional information about “Eisner’s assurances that he would retain existing management” and to delay the shareholder vote until Upper Deck is allowed to make “a non-coercive tender offer.”
NEW YORK
JPMorgan to build tower at ground zero
JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to build a skyscraper near ground zero for its investment-banking headquarters, becoming the second Wall Street firm to commit to moving into the area devastated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The third-largest U.S. bank will occupy a tower with about 40 stories, 1.3 million square feet and six trading floors, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said Thursday at a news conference with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
WASHINGTON
Condom packaging may be redesigned
Condom packaging may be redesigned to emphasize the devices’ limits in preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, U.S. regulators said.
The Food and Drug Administration plans to survey 1,200 people in shopping malls about how well they understand condoms’ effectiveness based on the current labeling and proposed new precautions, the agency said in a notice posted Thursday on its website.
WASHINGTON
Freddie Mac posts loss for first quarter
Freddie Mac, the nation’s second largest buyer and guarantor of home mortgages, reported a first-quarter loss of $211 million amid turbulence in the market and erosion in the value of financial instruments it uses to hedge against interest-rate swings.
The government-sponsored company said Thursday it lost 46 cents a share for the three months ended March 31. That contrasted with a profit of $2 billion, or $2.80 a share, in the same period a year ago.
