December 2, 2006

The Columbia metropolitan area has dropped significantly since 1999 in a ranking of economic strength, from 45th to 130th, in large part because earnings have failed to keep up with the national average, according to an expert on local economic development. “You’re not a bad economy, but your trend is going the wrong way, and […]

News of national declines in real estate sales and new construction appears to be mirrored in Columbia and Boone County. However, statistics provided by panelists at the Third Annual Economic Outlook Conference dispute the perception that mid-Missouri’s building boom is fizzling. In three presentations—illustrating construction costs and building permits; number and sales prices for building

The Pen Point co-owner Holly Burgess has been part of the downtown scene for four decades, since her family took over the half-century-old store she now runs on the 900 block of Broadway, and she’s optimistic about The District’s transition to an era of canvas canopies and historic designation. Aside from a short-lived “quiet time”

Do you sometimes feel that being a manager is like being a lone soul in a canyon yelling “Hello…is anyone out there?” and hearing your voice mocking you as your echo reverberates throughout the canyon walls? To quiet the echo, you must conquer this canyon divide by communicating with your employees in a way that

According to some reports, each year Americans spend about 7.65 billion hours filling out government-requested paperwork—a problem the U.S. government attempted to address in 2004 with the “Report of the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act Task Force,” a 38-page document. Given the government’s tendency to combat paperwork with more paperwork, small business owners might have

By Neal Gabler, Knopf, 851 pages, $35 Neal Gabler’s biography of Walt Disney is not the first and probably will not be the last. But it is difficult to imagine a more thorough examination of the dream-maker’s life than the one between covers of this massive book. Before his death in 1966, Disney had become

John Kleindienst of Capital City Construction Co. didn’t know he was walking a high wire as the national economy rode the housing resurgence to prosperity this decade. He had tried to build eight houses a year — six custom homes already under buyer contract and two spec homes that he sold on the open market.

Missouri Boulevard’s dominance in the growth of Jefferson City’s commercial real estate market may end — in the next decade or sooner. When commercial property broker Greg Bowman looks for future growth in Jefferson City, he turns east, toward the side of town long overlooked for both residential and business development. “The East Side is

When a campaign worker called Cynthia Schreen to place a radio advertisement, the sales director at Zimmer Radio Group had to turn down the request. After all, it was 3 p.m. on the afternoon of the election. “It’s been the biggest I’ve ever seen,” Schreen, a 20-year veteran of the industry, said of this year’s

The food pyramid suggests we eat five servings of fruits and vegetables daily. The hard sell comes in getting my two children to consume the recommended daily allowance. So far I’ve found that two things help widen their culinary horizon: 1) telling my 9-year-old son the end result of eating asparagus and 2) a tradition