Monthly Archives: March 2010

Should you drive or fly in your travels?

Posted on by
3

There’s more to the decision to fly or drive somewhere than a simple calculation of gas costs versus airfare.

There’s the driving time, the drain of driving, car rental costs, car maintenance costs and baggage fees to consider.

But the money factor is a good place to start.

Consumer go-to guy Clark Howard says think of your drive time as being in a taxi with the meter ticking — at 50 cents per mile.

“The farther you’re going on your vacation, the more it pays for you to fly instead of drive,” Howard said last week on his Headline News cable network show.

If it’s just two people, however, driving is often the cheaper way to go, says Howard.

But, he warned, car rental rates are up. And money saved on a discount airline ticket can be canceled out with money spent on a pricey rental car.

“Your ticket could be extra cheap, but you’re car rental could be a fortune,” Howard said.

So find a good deal on a car rental before buying that non-refundable flight ticket, he recommends.
 

Clyde Park to open April 12… Really!

Posted on by
3

The opening of the long-awaited Clyde Park complex in Duluth’s Lincoln Park has been pushed back several times.

What’s one more time?

Now the opening is Monday, April 12. And you can write that date down in ink. It’s for sure, developer Alessandro Giuliani said today.

“It was always a moving target,” he explained of the opening of the complex’s restaurant, brewpub, bakery that will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily. “We weren’t going to accept opening until we were ready and putting our best foot forward.”

While management has been hired and chefs have been testing recipes for weeks, more needs to be done before the complex is ready for a public opening. Much of the wait, bar and kitchen staff still need to be hired. Artifacts and pictures are being set in place and custom-made tables need to be assembled.

“The tops have been made, we’re waiting for the legs to come in,” Giuliani said.

Happily complicating matters for a public opening is the second annual Symphony Soiree, a big gala fundraiser for the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra, that will take up the whole place on April 10 ($125 to $150 per person). The next day, a family event will be held there sponsored by the Symphony and Duluth’s Children’s Museum.

Why open to the public, Giuliani figured, only to close for the back-to-back private events?

“We wanted the gala to be our big coming out party,” he said.

Since construction began June 1, the interior of the 29,500-square-foot former Clyde Iron Works production plant at 14 S. 29th Ave. W. has been transformed into a restaurant, brewpub. bakery and entertainment venue for up to 1,500 people at a cost of $9.1 million. Athletic Republic, a sports training center, has been operating at the complex for three months. Down the road, a coffee shop will be added.

Getting the restaurant’s wood-burning ovens from France, installed and working properly caused earlier delays.

The restaurant’s signature foods will be cooked with those wood-burning ovens, while the brewpub will served craft beer made on site. Giuliani promises simple good food, pizzas and breads, pasta, pasties, hamburgers and more that are under $9 for lunches and under $14 for dinners.

Downers for the Google high

Posted on by
11

 

Not to burst Google initiative bubble here in Duluth… but did anyone see the article in the Wall Street Journal this month about the Internet search giant’s plans?

With the headline “Tough Road for Google’s Network,” it paints a less-than-rosy picture ahead as noted in the sub-head: “Plan to Build High Speed Internet Faces Infrastructure Hurdles, Lack of Content.”

According to the story, the super fast network Google plans to create in select communities, will be expensive to build, time-consuming and will require digging up roads. And that requires getting lots of right of ways.

To build it, Google would partner with a contractor. First, fiber-optic cable must be connected to individual homes and special electronics installed to handle the data at 1 gigabit per second. From the houses, the fiber would be connected to larger cables that would run through the neighborhoods, according to the Journal.
No mention of the cost to set up such a system in a community the size of Duluth-Superior, but for a city of 500,000, the estimated cost is $1 billion or more.

Oh, but there’s more.

Even with an ultrahigh-speed internet network, there’s currently little content for it. Moreover, since internet traffic passes through several networks to get to its destination, it can only travel as fast as the the slowest link. So downloading videos or other content will be as fast as the slowest network along the way, the Journal said.
 

Old DTA buses don’t die, they go to Peoria

Posted on by
2

Who wants Duluth’s old buses?

Peoria, Illinois, sure does.

The Greater Peoria Mass Transit District Board this month approved spending $105,000 for 10 used Duluth buses, the Peoria Journal Star reported.

Besides the purchase price, the $105,000 also covers the cost to transport the 35-foot buses from Duluth to Peoria, give them a paint job and to outfit them for use there. That comes out to just under $5,000 for each of the 13-year-old Duluth Transit Authority buses that have an average of 300,000 miles logged on them.

So what does Peoria want with our old buses?

Turns out, their transit system has an aging fleet. So they look for used buses to replace their defunct buses until they get the money to buy brand new buses. They also buy old buses for parts, according to the Journal.

It’s a temporary fix until they get 21 new buses, probably next year.

Peoria has looked to Duluth before for used buses. It bought six old DTA buses in 2007. 

Cirrus owner plays Cirrus executive in Google movie

Posted on by
6

When last weekend’s tryouts for the "Twin Ports Google Movie" failed to produce a convincing actor to play the part of the Cirrus Aircraft executive, producers looked to the Duluth-based company for the real thing.

They wanted an actual Cirrus executive.

Who better than Dale Klapmeier, the owner, co-founder and chairman of the board himself? The airplane manufacturer is all for the local Google initiative and Klapmeier was game.

The film crew was at Cirrus facility Thursday filming him.

"They are here right now, Todd Simmons, the company’s marketing director, said Thursday afternoon. "Dale is out there playing the role."

The Cirrus executive is one of seven speaking parts in the 20- to 30-minute movie being made to help convince Google to choose Duluth-Superior as a test market for its super high-speed fiber-optic service. But the part only has one line which discouraged many would-be actors to try out for the part.

Producter Jeff Reasbeck had contacted Cirrus last week about filming there. When he didn’t find an actor for the executive part, he again turned to Cirrus.

The company’s marketing department got involved, ready to help. But they wanted the person playing the executive to be authentic. The real McCoy. And Klapmeier willingly obliged.

"He was excited to be in it," Simmons said.  

 

 

State jobless rate holds at 7.3 percent

Posted on by
Reply

Minnesota’s unemployment rate in February held at 7.3 percent, the same as January. The numbers failed to provide the signs of a robust economic recovery officials were hoping for.

The state rate, however, is still well below the national rate of 9.7 percent which also is holding.

But while things were looking up in Minnesota in January with 17,200 more jobs, 3,400 jobs were lost in February.

According to numbers released Thursday by the state Department of Employment and Economic Development, most of the jobs lost last month (2,800) were in construction, followed by leisure and hospitality (2,300), government (1,900) and the financial sector (1,500).

It’ll take several months-in-a-row of job gains over 5,000 before officials declare a sustained economic recovery is underway, the Associated Press reports.

But the job loss situation doesn’t look so bad when you compare it to a year ago when Minnesota lost 14,000 jobs.

Officials are now looking to the jobless numbers for March to tell them whether a strong economic recovery can be expected.

Trashy ways

Posted on by
7

Now that much of the snow has melted, have you noticed all the litter along the roadways?

Instead of shaking your head and complaining, try this:

When you head out for a walk, grab a bag and maybe some work gloves and pick up some of that trash along the way. Toss it in a public trash receptacle or your own receptable when you get home. For extra credit recycle those cans and plastic.

Just image the difference if an army of us did this!

So what’s this got to do with business or consumer issues?

A community that cares enough to keep the streetscape clean and well kempt is more attractive to businesses.

More importantly, it makes for a more desirable place to live, one that’s safer for children, animals and the environment. It builds community pride and leads to more efforts to spiff-up the neighborhood.

And imagine, it can all start with picking up some trash.
 

Want to go to Russia?

Posted on by
4

If you’re in business in the Duluth area and always had a hankering to visit Russia, here’s your chance.

A few openings remain with the Duluth business delegation headed in June to Petrozavodsk, Russia, Duluth’s sister city.

Last year, Petrozavodsk Mayor Nikolay Levin invited a business delegation from Duluth to visit his city so both cities could become aware of economic opportunites that would benefit them both.

The deadline to be added to the delegation is April 1. The four- to five-person delegation will be in Petrozavodsk June 21 to 27. Delegates must pay their own way, about $2,600 for air fare, train tickets in Russia, hotel, some meals, their visas and a delegation fee.

Interested? Then call Melissa Kadlec, executive director of Duluth Sister Cities International at 727-8375 before April 1.

 

Starstruck in Duluth

Posted on by
4

It wasn’t George Clooney, Harrison Ford or a Dylan sighting that had stopped me in my tracks at the big GeaCom shindig down at the DECC.

Influencial people were gathering to celebrate Phrazer, the Duluth company’s multilingual medical communications device headed for production. It’s gonna be big, really big, it appears.

Anyway, during the press conference, someone announced that the company’s team of advisers were present – scientists, doctors, technical people. Among them was Art Fry, the inventor of the Post-it Note.

Did he say the Post-it Note inventor?

Instantly alert, I searched the crowd but failed to pick him out.

My mind was racing. What would life be without those handy little notes that stick to just about anything without doing damage? It was hard to remember back to life before the Post-it Note. My God, we had to attach notes with tape, paper clips and pins.

I had so many questions. How did it come about? Did he know his invention would become this big. And… I wanted to thank him.

After the official press conference wound up, the unofficial one began. That’s when TV people get individual camera time with key people, and those key people are usually quick to oblige them – first.

During this print-reporter-reduced-to-second-class-media-status period, I was biding my time. The PR guy steered me to various advisers whom I really didn’t need to interview for my story.

“… and this is Art Fry,” the PR guy said, referring to a kindly looking older gent.

“The man who invented the Post-it Note? I asked eagerly.

It was indeed. I zoomed in on my target.

“Thank you SO MUCH for inventing the Post-it Note,” I gushed.

Apparently he had been thanked before, hundreds of times.

“Most newspaper people think I did it for them,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Undaunted, I persisted.

I asked how the former 3M scientist came to create the sticky little notes, what it was like seeing his invention take off and did it make him rich?

Turns out, he’s from Duluth. I was even more thrilled.

He tried to steer the conversation to GeaCom’s revolutionary device which he says has endless applications. But I kept getting back to the Post-it Note until I felt I had enough for a story. Through it all, he patiently answered by questions. Questions he probably had been asked hundreds of times since sales of the Post-it Notes took off in 1980.

Before we parted, I couldn’t resist. I thanked him yet again for creating those handy little notes.

(The story that resulted ran in the March 15 Duluth News Tribune).

 

The Pickle Bill

Posted on by
1

Well, now, this one’s for a very select audience.

Pickling-for-profit just got easier in Wisconsin.

Thanks to a new state law, People who prepare and can pickles at home and sell them at farmers markets, bazaars and other community events in Wisconsin no longer need to have a license.

The new law applies to those who can pickles, jams, jellies and salsa and take in less than $5,000 a year from the sales.

When selling their goods, these pickle-packing entrepreneurs still must display a sign saying their canned goods are homemade and not subject to state inspection. And they need to label each jar with the name of the preparer, date of canning and the list of ingredients.

The new law even outs the playing field with Minnesota’s homegrown picklers. If they take in less than $5,000 a year in gross receipts, they don’t have to get a license, either. But the license break in Minnesota applies to more foods that are not considered potentially hazardous: cakes, cookies, fruit pies, breads, maple syrup and lefse.