| Bringing tourists to town
Long before prospective Stanford students started looking for acceptance letters in the mail, the city of Palo Alto had begun planning ways to woo the class of 2011. Students and their families arriving in town for Admit Weekend, which begins today, are the target of a collaborative effort by the city, the chamber of commerce, the downtown business improvement district and Stanford University. The second phase of "Destination Palo Alto," the joint effort between the city and Stanford to promote area attractions, hopes to lure the expected 800 students and their families to both the downtown and California Avenue areas of the city, as well the Stanford Shopping Center, over the next two nights. "Previously, it was quite evident that Palo Alto has some tremendous visitorship and hospitality resources, but no coordination (of those resources)," City Manager Frank Benest said.
UG responds to Indian Springs stories
In response to articles appearing this week in the Kansas City Kansan and other media outlets the Indian Springs Shopping Center, the Unified Government on Friday released the following response to the Kansan. The title given for the article by the UG was, "Setting the record straight on midtown redevelopment; Indian Springs blight is the real issue."For the past decade, the Unified Government has supported the revitalization of the Indian Springs mall in our mid-town corridor. Now, as we're finally about to achieve that vision, special interests from California, and even from within our own community, are trying to derail this effort.As part of their pending bankruptcy case, the owner of the Indian Springs Mall and his local real estate broker have launched an attack campaign based on misleading claims and alleged e-mail correspondence about Wal-Mart possibly building on the site of the rundown and neglected shopping center.The real estate broker, who has a vested financial interest in blocking any outside development, called the media about the e-mails that were produced by the Unified Government (UG) to the attorneys representing the mall owner as part of the legal process regarding a lawsuit filed by the mall owners in Wyandotte County District Court.
Digital Latinos Renew Love for Traditions
EDITORS NOTE: South Americans embrace of the digital age while still honoring their folkways has led to an interconnected nuevo global latino identity, observes NAM contributor Andrs Tapia, who writes on cultural, political and economic trends in the Americas. He grew up in Lima, Peru and recently traveled through the great cities of South America. RIO DE JANEIRO -- The Sambdromo in Rio shook with the throaty cheers of 90,000 spectators, the syncopated beats of thousands of percussionists, the kabooms of fireworks and the shimmying of 10,000 samba dancers in the all-night spectacle and party best known as Carnival. The globally diverse though mostly Brazilian crowd swayed with upraised arms to the melody of O Brasil, while waving cell phones and digital cameras like wands. In a digitally connected, globalized age that demands common platforms, protocols and processes, Carnival in Rio proclaims the counterpoint to individual expression with its timelessness and creativity.
Shopping mall Olympia Olomouc is for sale
The sale is expected to draw a great deal of interest, according to James Chapman, head of the capital markets group at consultancy Cushman & Wakefield in Prague, which is acting on behalf of the seller. Olympia Olomouc was developed by AM Development, now Multi Development Czech Republic, and the mall is jointly owned by Multi and Austrian property company Immoeast. Olomouc is the fifth-largest Czech city with more than 110,000 inhabitants. .
'Stars light up Sendai, knock Giants out of league lead
The BayStars, who have finished last in the Central League in four out of the past five years, are in third place--a half-game back of the Chunichi Dragons. The Giants fell to second, winning percentage points behind Chunichi. Saeki said it's too soon to worry about who they are facing or their first three-game winning streak this year. "The mood of the team is good, but we have to keep moving forward. We're not focusing on other teams so much, we're just trying to go out and play our brand of baseball," Saeki said of the BayStars, who are fourth in the CL in homers with 14. "Our team doesn't produce a lot of home runs. We have players who concentrate on putting hits together to score." But without closer Marc Kroon, who is out for the next three games to be with his wife during childbirth, the BayStars had to put together a makeshift crew in the bullpen.
Cell Phones, Cosmetics, Coffee: Russians Go on a Shopping Spree
IKEA, the Swedish furniture retailer famed for its affordable chic, is fanning out across urban Russia. Wrigley, the American chewing gum maker, has scooped up a Russian premium chocolate maker. Even Wal-Mart is said to be eyeing the country that was once synonymous with boxy Soviet suits and bearskin bomber hats. Pent-up demand for consumer goods is surging in Russia, thanks to seven years of oil-lubricated economic growth. Russians, who endured decades of privation under the Soviet system, now find themselves with rubles in their wallets. They are eager to spend them on all manner of consumer goods, homemade and imported. "Russia is unlikely to go through a political revolution anytime soon, but it is in the midst of a revolution in retail trade," says Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Moscow Center.
|
