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Local government in Wichita should establish a more stringent set of guidelines as it examines whether to support public-private development proposals in the city’s core, the city’s downtown development consultants said Monday.

As they laid out their draft master plan for downtown Wichita, Goody Clancy executives said the city should ensure that public dollars are spent on projects that have strong public-use components — such as parking garages and public parks. Government also should establish a point system to score potential projects and developers on whether their programs are viable and worth helping.

But the city should be ready with incentives to develop downtown sites, which often are plagues with land acquisition hurdles, environmental concerns and parking issues.

“If we don’t want to play that game, then we run the risk of stagnation and deterioration,” said Sarah Woodworth, a member of the Goody Clancy team.

The Boston-based consulting firm presented its draft plan on Monday during a public meeting at the Wichita Scottish Rite building. The meeting will be followed later this week with a series of public input sessions.

Goody Clancy executives said city capital should be used only for projects that have a strong public benefit so the money has a broader impact than just the private sector project itself.

The city also should establish a point system to rate projects, the consultants said. Criteria could be whether a developer has downtown development experience in the area, how financial solvent he is and whether his proposed development agreement would be fair to all parties.

On financing, Woodworth said, “We should not have any criteria that a bank would not have.”

The projects themselves would have to fit into the downtown master plan. The city should push for them to have a design and location that promotes downtown walkability — one of the key elements of Goody Clancy’s work. Projects also should include buildings at least two stories tall to fit with the character of downtown and shouldn’t come with surface parking lots.

“It doesn’t make for a very pleasant walking environment,” said Goody Clancy’s Ben Carlson.

Goody Clancy’s draft plan, which has been in the works for six months, also laid out a series of possibilities for different areas of town payday advance.

The consulting team laid out numerous potential development districts with their own identities, such as Old Town, Commerce Street Arts, Douglas-Delano, Douglas-Arkansas River, Century II-WaterWalk and the governmental center.

The consultants also made several proposals within some of those districts, offering up sketches for the sites to help people visualize what could happen there.

At the Broadview Hotel near Century II, the consultants suggested the city extend Water Street south to WaterWalk and create a new development site at Douglas and Water that could hold retail and dining. They also said a hotel could be established near the site. All of that would serve Century II and warm up a streetscape that today is wide and relatively unfriendly to pedestrians.

At Broadway and William, Goody Clancy consultants said the former Allis Hotel site could be converted to a park with a parking garage. The former Henry’s store could be converted to 50,000 square feet of office, and the Douglas building just north of there could be rehabbed as an apartment building. A parking garage could serve both the Henry’s and Douglas street buildings.

At Douglas and St. Francis, the consultants urged an improvement of the connection between Old Town and Intrust Bank Arena with more unique pavement styles for pedestrians. They also said Naftzger Park at that intersection could be improved and a hotel could be built just east of it near the Central Rail Corridor. New housing also could be built into existing buildings near that corner.

Just to the east, near Union Station, the city should install a stop light to make that intersection more pedestrian friendly, the consultants said. A parking lot on the northwest side of that intersection could be home to a new residential, office and retail building. The parking that currently is on that site could be moved south to a newly built parking garage.

The consulting team also had renderings for the site of the new public library, the site of the old Coleman factory near Old Town and the site of the 1st Street Bridge over the Arkansas River.

In some cases, the city owns land in those areas and could steer development in the way it chooses, the consultants said.

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The American Board of Internal Medicine sanctioned 139 physicians for soliciting or sharing confidential examination questions used to certify doctors in internal medicine and its subspecialties.

Officials at ABIM, which is based in Philadelphia, also said the board initiated legal action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania last week against five physicians who were among the most egregious offenders.

The sanctioned physicians participated in Arora Board Review, an independent test-preparation course provider based in Livingston, N.J., that purported to help physicians prepare for board certification exams. Participants in the course were allegedly encouraged to relay questions from memory to the company immediately after they took an ABIM examination. They were also allegedly provided with questions obtained by other physicians who had completed ABIM examinations.

Through an extensive investigation, ABIM established that the physicians being sanctioned shared or solicited actual ABIM examination questions — which it called a significant breach in the professional standards ABIM requires of all of its board-certified physicians and any physician taking the exam for certification bad credit payday advance. Hundreds of questions were compromised and immediately removed from the ABIM exam question pool.

“Physicians are, and should be, held to an exceptionally high standard of clinical skill and ethical behavior,” said Dr. Christine K. Cassel, ABIM’s president and CEO. “Board certification provides patients with assurance that the physicians they choose are competent and knowledgeable in their chosen field of practice. Through the actions we are taking today, we are telling patients that they can trust this process; and we are sending a very clear message to physicians. Anyone who seeks to compromise the integrity of our examinations will face swift and serious consequences.”

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Please remember that a payday loan is a rather expensive line of credit. Much like taking something to the pawn shop.

Severn Bancorp Inc. pared its loss in the first quarter, setting aside less money to cover potential losses in its loan portfolio.

The Annapolis-based parent of Severn Savings Bank (NASDAQ: SVBI) lost $528,000, or 10 cents a share, for the three months ended March 31. That was an improvement from the $1.3 million, or 18 cents a share, the company lost in the period a year earlier.

During first quarter 2010 Severn added $2.5 million to its loan-loss reserves, down from $4.5 million a year earlier and $5.5 million in fourth quarter 2009.

Severn’s capital levels exceed the requirements for federal banking regulators to consider the bank “well capitalized,” it said in a press release Thursday no faxing pay day loans.

“While we are not satisfied with the loss for the quarter, we are encouraged by the improvement in asset quality and the prospects for improved performance for the remainder of 2010,” Severn CEO Alan J. Hyatt said in a statement.

Severn Savings Bank has four branches in Annapolis, Edgewater and Glen Burnie.

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Travelers had a better overall experience on airlines in 2009, according to the annual Airline Quality Report.

Airlines improved in three of the four categories used to determine the rankings.

Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University, will present the report and overall airline scores in Washington, D.C. Monday.

He will be joined by Paul Bowen, a former professor at WSU who is now the head of the aviation technology department at Purdue University.

The AQR uses information the airlines report to the U.S. Department of Transportation regarding on-time performance, involuntary denied boardings, mishandled bags and customer complaints to determine an overall score for the industry and individual airlines.

The industry scored better compared to 2008 in on-time performance, mishandled bags and customer complaints. It scored worse in 2009 on involuntary denied boardings.

Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance, 92.1 percent, in 2009. Atlantic Southeast Airlines had the worst at 71.2 percent.

Fourteen airlines improved on-time performance in 2009, but only six of the 18 rated had on-time percentages higher than 80 percent.

American Eagle had the highest rate of involuntary denied boardings at 3.76 per 10,000 passengers.

Jet Blue was perfect in that category, scoring no involuntary denied boardings.

AirTran Airways had the best baggage handling rate at 1.67 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers. Atlantic Southeast scored the worst at 7.87 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers.

However, all 18 of the airlines rated improved their baggage handling scores in 2009.

Southwest Airlines had the rate of customer complaints at 0.21 percent per 100,000 passengers. Delta Air Lines had the highest rate at 1.96 customer complaints per 100,000 passengers.

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Don’t mess with Texas! Cities in the Lone Star State were among the fastest growing places in 2009.

Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston gained the most new residents of any city — netting more than 140,000 each — according to the Census Bureau’s annual metropolitan area population estimates released on Wednesday. Meanwhile, music center Austin posted the second highest growth rate among top cities — 3.1% — just behind Raleigh, N.C.

"Texas stands as the most prominent Sun Belt survivor of the last half of the decade because of its diversified economy, smaller run-ups in housing prices, and fewer foreclosures," said William Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank.

Overall, the population of the United States has grown more than 9% to 307,006,550 since the 2000 census. The population grew 0.86% since last year’s estimates.

These figures are an advance look at what to expect when the 2010 census results are released in December. The population figures determine how much federal money states and cities receive, as well their representation in Congress, among other things.

The Brookings Institute study estimates that federal program will dole out more than $500 billion a year to states and communities over the next decade based on data collected through the 2010 Census.

For example, since the 2000 census, the population in Provo-Orem, Utah, has jumped by more than 47%, according to the 2009 estimates. That puts the area in line for a boost in federal funding; in 2008 the area collected more than $300 million, according to the Brookings Institute

Plus, Utah stands to gain a fourth congressional seat, according to projections from the Virginia-based political consulting firm Election Data Services.

In the past decade the Dallas area has added almost 1 faxless cash advances.3 million people — more than any other city. As a result, it stands to receive quite a bit more than the $4 billion in federal funds it earned in 2008. And Election Data Services predicts that Texas will pick up at least three more seats in Congress. (It currently has 32 House seats.)

Biggest losers: Detroit, which was battered by the collapse of the auto industry and faces a 15.6% unemployment rate, lost more than 20,000 people in 2009, or 0.5% of its residents. The Youngstown, Ohio, metropolitan area, which includes parts of Pennsylvania, shed more than 1% of its population.

Over the past decade, New Orleans has struggled the most. The population held relatively steady prior to Hurricane Katrina but lost more than 300,000 residents between 2005 and 2006 and posted a net loss of more than 126,000 people, or 9.6% of its residents, since the 2000 census.

The Big Easy could see its federal funds come down from the $1.8 billion collected in 2008. And Louisiana could lose one of its seven congressional seats, according to Election Data Services.

Census 2010: Last week more than 120 million census questionnaires were mailed to residential addresses and workers continued delivering questionnaires to 12 million addresses in rural areas. The bureau will use the completed questionnaires and data collected through door-to-door visits to determine the nation’s headcount.

To ensure they get a fair share of federal funding, state and local officials are promoting the 2010 Census and pushing for residents to fill out forms. And the Census Bureau is spending $133 million to boost participation rates.  

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Add the Catskill District Off Track Betting Corp. to the recently formed coalition of Upstate OTBs that will be operating under a joint agreement to assist in marketing and operational expenses.

The agreement has already brought the Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. and its counterparts in Suffolk County and the Capital District together under the pact.

The Catskill OTB has 25 locations in 10 Hudson Valley and Southern Tier counties including Chemung, Broome, Sullivan and Ulster counties. The deal now puts 174 upstate OTB branches and satellite locations under the domain of the joint agreement.

With Catskill OTB joining ranks with its three fellow off track betting groups, only the Nassau County and the financially-beleagured New York City OTB have yet to take part in the agreement. Talks remain underway with both groups.

“These are difficult times and we have to look at all options,” said Donald Groth, Catskill District OTB president and chief executive officer. “We, the OTBs, have to take the bull by the horns unsecured personal loans.”

The OTBs are facing increased competition from casinos and the continued impact of the weakened national economy.

“We all need to find ways to reign in expenses and stay ahead of the curve,” Martin Basinait, Western Regional OTB president and chief executive officer and the designated administrator for the joint agreement, said earlier this week.

Among the potentially cost-saving measures includes the three OTBs running one, central Web site, operating a single, statewide racing television station as well as an Internet TV station, creating a statewide marketing campaign and running an upstate and downstate phone center.

While many of the areas covered by the new agreement are behind-the-scenes measures, the most visible aspect — the statewide marketing campaign — will start within the next two months, beginning with a radio campaign in the Capital district.

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New Zealand manufacturing sales increased the most since 2002 in the fourth quarter and home building surged, adding to signs economic growth accelerated in the final months of last year.

Sales volumes adjusted to remove inflation rose 3.1 percent from the previous three months, Statistics New Zealand said in a statement in Wellington today. Residential construction increased 7.4 percent in the same period, the statistics agency said in a separate report.

Stronger construction, manufacturing and retail sales suggest economic growth accelerated in the fourth quarter, buoyed by record-low interest rates and an expansion in Australia, which is the biggest market for New Zealand’s exports. The Treasury Department last week said the currency’s 3.7 percent decline against the U.S. dollar so far this year is providing more confidence for exporters.

“Construction and manufacturing look set to provide a positive contribution to gross domestic product in the quarter,” said Philip Borkin, an economist at Goldman Sachs JBWere Ltd. in Auckland. He estimates the economy grew 1 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31.

New Zealand’s dollar bought 70.01 U.S. cents at 11:55 a.m. in Wellington trading from 69.54 cents immediately before the reports were published.

Economic growth is accelerating after GDP increased 0.2 percent in both the second and third quarters of 2009, ending the nation’s worst recession in three decades. Fourth-quarter GDP figures are published on March 25.

Export Volumes

Economists will complete their GDP forecasts after a report on export and import volumes on March 10 and data on electricity generation due a week later. Retail sales rose 1 percent in the fourth quarter, according to a report on Feb. 12.

Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard has kept the official cash rate at 2.5 percent since April last year. He will leave the rate unchanged at his next review on March 11, according to all 13 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Manufacturing sales rose in the three months through December by the most since the third quarter of 2002, when volumes jumped 4.1 percent. Eleven of 15 industries recorded gains, the statistics agency said.

Meat and dairy sales advanced 4.6 percent, led by meat. That offset a fall in milk powder, butter and cheese volumes. More than half the meat and dairy production is exported, the statistics agency said.

Excluding those categories, manufacturing climbed 3.6 percent, the agency said. Analysts use the figure excluding meat and dairy as a guide for the contribution of manufacturing to New Zealand’s GDP.

GDP Contribution

“Adjusting for changes in inventory levels, we estimate that manufacturing production rose around 4 percent” in the quarter, said Borkin. “This emphasizes a turn in performance after a period of significant weakness.”

Before the latest period, manufacturing had declined for five of seven quarters.

Demand for exports is being buoyed by global growth, led by China and other Asian economies. In Australia, which buys 23 percent of New Zealand exports, growth was 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter.

The increase in home construction followed two quarters of declines, while non-residential construction fell 6.1 percent, the statistics agency said in a second report.

“We expect residential construction activity will continue to recover over the coming quarters,” said Jane Turner, an economist at ASB Bank Ltd. in Auckland. “Non residential was significantly weaker than our expectation.”

Construction lags behind home-building approvals, which surged 21 percent in the fourth quarter from the three months through September, according to a report on Jan. 29.

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The Colorado Business Hall of Fame inducted eight business notables Thursday night during its annual induction banquet at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the Colorado Convention Center.

Junior Achievement-Rocky Mountain Inc. and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce operated the event, and UMB Bank was the underwriter.

The Colorado Business Hall of Fame is in its 21st year, and has more than 100 members.

The 2010 laureates:

• The Gart Brothers: Nathan, Melvin, Jerry and Mickey Gart — In 1928, Nathan Gart founded Gart Bros. Sporting Goods Co. Melvin Gart joined the business in 1946 and oversaw all the advertising.

Nathan’s two sons, Jerry and Mickey, also worked for the company. Jerry Gart joined full time in 1953. He also opened the first branch store — a camera store at 16th Street and Court Place in downtown Denver — and built it into the largest photographic outlet in the Rocky Mountain West.

He added sporting goods to the upper level and took charge of the business. Eventually, that led to a highly successful chain of sporting goods stores, including the Sportscastle at 10th Avenue and Broadway.

The Garts also came up with “Sniagrab” — bargains spelled backward — and turned it into the largest ski sale in the world. It starts every year during Labor Day weekend.

• James B. Wallace — He’s one of four partners of Bownlie, Wallace, Armstrong and Bander Exploration. After 17 years working in the oil business in Texas, Wallace and his associates moved the company to Denver in 1970. Soon, Joe Bander joined the partnership.

Brownlie, Wallace, Armstrong and Bander was active in the Rockies in the 1970s. In 1980, they formed BWAB Inc. and Brownlie, Wallace, Armstrong and Bander Exploration.

Wallace served on the board of directors of Tom Brown Inc. until its sale to EnCana Oil and Gas USA Inc. He currently serves on the boards of Delta Petroleum, Ellora Energy and Savant Resources.

The Denver Petroleum Club named him Man of the Year in 1981.

In 1986, the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States named him Wildcatter of the Year, in recognition of his 30 years in oil and gas exploration.

The Colorado Petroleum Association named him Man of the Year in 1991, and the Rocky Mountain Oil & Gas Hall of Fame inducted him in 2004. He’s also a member of the All-American Wildcatters group and the 25-Year Club of the Petroleum Industry.

• Henry Bosco — His father owned the Denver Hotel in Glenwood Springs, and Henry Bosco worked at a variety of jobs there as he grew up.

In 1956, the owner of the Hot Springs property, Frank E. Kistler, decided to sell the property and retire. Bosco and his father, Mike, were two of the 22 investors who bought the property.

Bosco helped lobby for the location of Interstate 70's Eisenhower/Edwin Johnson Memorial Tunnel.

He served as general manager of the hot springs property from 1976-89. Today, he serves as president and board chairman.

The Glenwood Chamber Resort Association named Bosco Citizen of the Year in 2006. The Glenwood Chamber of Commerce has established the Bosco Tourism Business of the Year award, an annual award in honor of the Bosco family.

• Merle Catherine Chambers — In 1980, she founded and served as CEO of Axem Resources LLC, an independent oil and gas production firm. Chambers ran it for 17 years. She also became board chairman of Clipper Exxpress Co., a family-owned transportation business based in Illinois. Her father, Jerry Chambers, started that company.

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Today, Norty Cohen opens Buzz-hound Learning Lab in Maplewood, sharing space with Hatch, a focus group and research facility. Among its initial offerings, Buzzhound will offer classes on search engine optimization, the process of improving a website so it ranks higher in search engine results.

Cohen says he sees a strong market for the 10-member classes (prices range from $600 to $700 per person) at a time when there is so much emphasis on reaching customers through the Internet — particularly when research suggests it is critical to rank high in search results. By some estimates, 65 percent of all searchers will go to the first 10 sites they see.

It seems like we hear a lot these days about search engine optimization. Why is that?

There are 100 billion searches a month online. More and more people are using their cell phones to search and that’s where people are finding customers and businesses.

Even though Yellow Pages is still a $16 billion-a-year business, where everything is going is search. If you are in business or if you are in marketing, you need to understand search.

What is the most important thing one needs to know about SEO? And are there any big no-nos?

You need to understand how and why people are coming to your site. And how and what you need to do to improve your content. And to make more opportunities for people to find you online.

… There are people who will say that you can’t fool the search engine, that you can’t do this thing called black hat, where you put in some things that may not be true. I think the biggest no-no is not doing anything and assuming people are going to find you.

You have this lab set to open today low interest rate personal loans. What sort of response are you expecting?

We’ve had several major corporations commit to sending people to the classes. We tried to price it so that it’s incredibly reasonable, while at the same time, there is a ton of information that happens in one day.

There are two instructors, so it is a five-to-one student-teacher ratio. These people are experts much more than myself. Several major corporations have committed to sending several people, and that’s just in our first couple of announcements. We’re really going to start much more heavily marketing next week.

What prompted you to open Buzz-hound?

I’ve been trying to learn this subject for some time. And I found it to be incredibly hard. It was hard to follow webinars. It was hard to follow books. It was sort of like an advanced math problem that you just needed someone to show you how to do it.

And once you got into understanding it, it became very basic. And I realized we could create a business that could truly teach people how to help their businesses.

You’ve said you don’t think this is the sort of thing that can be taught or learned online. Why is that?

Search engine optimization is a language. It’s just like learning any other language. Someone has to show you and speak it for you so you can hear them.

If you go into the lab and you try the programs and the instructor shows you how to use them, it becomes very natural to you. But it’s the whole sort of foreign language aspect to it that makes it difficult to learn.

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As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, the Denver Business Journal is revisiting some of the biggest business-news stories of the last 10 years.

Here, we look at Joseph Nacchio, the one-time hard-charging CEO of Qwest Communications International Inc. who is now serving a prison term following his 2007 conviction on 19 felony counts related to insider trading.

The story: Nacchio was an AT&T executive when Qwest — a telecom founded by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz — named him CEO in 1996. He was granted millions of shares of Qwest stock in 1997.

In 2000, under Nacchio’s leadership, Qwest acquire the baby Bell U S West and became of the nation’s largest phone companies.

In 2001, Nacchio began selling off his shares before a write-down pushed the stock price downward. In August 2001, a class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court, accusing Nacchio and others of issuing "false and misleading" statements about the company’s financial state that had kept the stock price artificially high. Later, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department launched probes.

In June 2002, after Qwest stock cratered, Nacchio resigned, and the company later was forced to restate three years’ worth of earnings.

Nacchio was indicted on 42 insider-trading counts in December 2005. His federal-court trial in March 2007 garnered worldwide attention.

Following his conviction and a string of unsuccessful appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Nacchio reported to prison in Pennsylvania in April of this year.

Today: Nacchio remains behind bars while he awaits a resentencing on his original conviction, a date for which has not been set.

Click here for a roundup of DBJ coverage of this key story of the decade.

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