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Ford adding 1,200 workers to build Explorers at Torrence Ave.
By: John Pletz Jan. 25, 2010
(Crain’s) — Ford Motor Co. plans to add 1,200 jobs when it begins making the Explorer sport-utility vehicle at its Far South Side factory on Torrence Avenue later this year, Crain’s has learned.
Gov. Pat Quinn is due to join Ford executives when they announce the Explorer production at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the plant near 130th Street. Plans to bring the Explorer from Louisville, Ky., to the under-utilized Chicago plant were first reported by Crain’s nearly a year ago. The move was helped by recent tax credits approved by Mr. Quinn.
Adding the Explorer probably will mean bringing a second shift back to the Torrence Avenue plant, which has been down to one shift for the past year. The factory now employs about 1,400 workers.
Ford’s parts-stamping plant in Chicago Heights, which employs about 750 workers, also would be helped by the arrival of another vehicle at Torrence Avenue.
Ford is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Illinois on launching the new Explorer model that will be built here. It has been retrofitting the plant for months.
The Explorer, one of Ford’s most popular vehicles, has been redesigned for a smaller, more fuel-efficient car platform that’s produced at the Chicago plant. The new Explorer is expected to go on sale in the new model year starting in August or September and likely would be the plant’s highest-volume vehicle.
It’s the latest good news involving the Torrence Avenue plant, which last year began making a redesigned Taurus. The new Taurus has been selling better than previous models, as Ford benefits from domestic buyers spooked by the bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler.
(Crain’s columnist Greg Hinz contributed to this report.)
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Pump Room to change forever at end of the month
DOWNSIZING | Chicago's cultural jewel out of time
January 21, 2010
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Sun-Times Columnist
The doors of time are closing on the Pump Room. The legendary restaurant has eliminated its dinner menu in a downsizing prompted by a pending sale of the restaurant and its Ambassador East hotel to New York-based Ian Schrager Co. And, after cabaret singer Nan Mason's final song on Jan. 30, the restaurant will no longer have live music.
The Pump Room is the cultural jewel of the Ambassador East hotel, 1301 N. State Pkwy. Schrager is eyeing a renovation that could bring the hotel into the 21st century. He was co-founder of the Studio 54 dance club before becoming a pioneer of the boutique hotel concept. Sources say the deal could close as early as late February.
The Ambassador East lobby entrance to the Pump Room was desolate during a mid-afternoon visit on Wednesday. Smooth jazz played in forgiving tones. An antique grandfather clock was stuck at 7:40. A steel gate barricaded the Pump Room. Breakfast is served until 11 a.m., and the room reopens at 5 p.m.
The Pump Room's classic photos were still on the wall. Talk-show host Tom Snyder is yukking it up with Papa Bear George Halas near the gate. Cary Grant is around the corner, eyeing the future through thick black glasses. A young Hugh Hefner is in a snow white suit with a tanned woman in a white dress. They are all actors on a forgotten stage.
Mason said business has been up since Jan. 4, when the Sun-Times first reported the changes in the Pump Room. "People are coming in to say goodbye," the singer said Wednesday. "The bar -- not the restaurant -- has done extremely well compared to past years."
The Pump Room opened on Oct. 1, 1938. It thrived on a celebrity culture that has vanished like Marshall Field's and Magikist lips.
Original owner Ernie Byfield recruited stars to sparkle in its dimly lit elegance. He saw the Pump Room as a spinoff of the 18th century spa of the same name in Bath, England. That pump room was where London aristocrats mingled with local showfolk, absorbing the cure of the waters by day and the roguish social scene at night. It was "Swimming with the Stars."
Chicago's Pump Room was a hit from the jump. Stars traveled to the city by train. More recent celebrities stayed over for a day or two instead of rushing to a private jet.
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The "Great Signature Book" of the Pump Room includes signings from Marlene Dietrich, Cole Porter and members of Led Zeppelin. Legend has it that actor John Barrymoore urinated on the book after being overserved on champagne.
The restaurant's lore is priceless. John Belushi ate caviar with his fingers. Sammy Davis Jr. sang for his supper -- for the help in the Pump Room kitchen. After pop star Phil Collins was refused entry to the Pump Room because of its dress code, he titled his next album "No Jacket Required." The dress code hasn't existed since the late 1990s.
The Pump Room is located on the north part of Rush Street, once known as "the Street of Dreams." The restaurant was a place where those dreams came true. Anyone could be like Bogie and Bacall. They stopped at the Pump Room en route to Hollywood the day after getting married in May 1945.
"Ernie [Byfield] invited [my wife] Essee and me to join the Bogarts at table No. 1," the late Daily News and Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet recalled in his 1988 memoir Kup (A Man, An Era, A City). "What I remember best was the lovelight in the eyes of both Bogie and Baby."
The Pump Room could do that to you.
"The Pump Room put Chicago up in a level not quite like New York City," said Peter Alter, curator at the Chicago History Museum. "That is significant. Every city wants a piece of stardom. The Pump Room was a place people could get that. It put Chicago on the map in terms of celebrity, the way the Bulls did during the Michael Jordan years."
Kup worked from Booth One in the Pump Room. The original booth is now in storage at the History Museum. "We don't have any immediate plans for Booth One," Alter said. "Booth One is a very large object. We don't have a lot of space in the gallery where Booth One would go."
The Ambassador East was built in 1926 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The hotel's ornate lobby was featured in Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest."
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Baseball Hall of Fame announcer Harry Caray resided in a suite in the 285-room Ambassador East. Iconic Pump Room maitre d' Arturo Petterino lived next door to Caray for 15 years. In a 1996 interview Petterino recalled his late 1950s glory nights at the Pump Room -- only after mentioning he owned 50 tuxedos.
"When I worked at the Pump Room, it was ultra-sophisticated," he said at Mondelli's Lounge off of Rush Street. "A 17-piece orchestra. The tables had to be four feet apart. A bellhop in a nice jacket would put your name on a French chalkboard and come by with a little bell [to notify a guest of a phone call.] That's all gone now. Today, they just scream over the crowd."
And this was before the ring-a-ding-dong of the cell phone.
Several of the hotel's 55 suites are named in honor of the celebrities who stayed in them: Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra for starters. The Rat Pack's 1988 reunion tour ended in the Ambassador East after a concert at the Chicago Theatre. Sinatra wanted to hit the town and Martin preferred staying in his suite to watch Westerns. (Martin was replaced by Liza Minnelli for the rest of the tour.)
The Rat Packers are included in the 725 celebrity photos that adorn the walls of the Pump Room. "Those are all the original pictures," Paul Lauritsen, general manager of the Ambassador East, said earlier this month. "Most people don't know that. That's foremost on my mind. I'm not sure if they will incorporate them into the new space."
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With Competitors Vacated, Retailers Eyeing Real Estate
National, Smaller Chains Betting Consumers Will Boost Spending This Year
By Natalie Zmuda Adage.com
January 18, 2010
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Even in recession, there's an upside opportunity. And there might be billions of retail dollars up for grabs for smart marketers able to expand their footprint by taking advantage of cheaper leases.
The downturn that began in December 2007 has been disastrous for companies including Circuit City, Steve & Barry's, Linens 'N Things and S&A Restaurant Corp. (which owned Bennigan's, Steak & Ale and Tavern restaurants), which have all filed for bankruptcy. Others, such as Sears Holdings, Foot Locker, Quizno's and Ruby Tuesday, have shuttered locations. In total, retail sales declined 6% in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
| Retailers and restaurants adding new locations in 2010 |
 |
| Dollar General |
600 |
| Zara |
450 |
| McDonald's |
150 |
| Chipotle |
130 |
| Sonic |
125 |
| Panera Bread Company |
105 |
| Rue 21 |
100 |
| Edible Arrangements |
87 |
| Pizza Fusion |
75 |
| Darden Restaurants |
55 |
| Boost Mobile |
50 |
| Jamba Juice |
50 |
| Kohl's |
50 |
| Lowe's |
45 |
| Jos. A Bank Clothiers |
40 |
| Pep Boys |
40 |
| Qdoba |
40 |
| Aldi |
25 |
| Dick's Sporting Goods |
24 |
| Costco |
23 |
| Best Buy |
22 |
| HH Gregg |
22 |
| Whole Foods Market |
16 |
| Bruegger's |
15 |
| Stevi B's Pizza |
15 |
| 99¢ Only Stores |
12 |
| Nordstrom Rack |
12 |
| Target |
12 |
| Charlotte Russe |
11 |
| Sam's Club |
10 |
*Does not account for store closures.
Source: Buxton, Company statements |
But in the coming year, economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect Americans will open their wallets once again and increase spending by 2%, the first gain since 2007. While not a stellar prediction, it's a start. And even though more retailers and restaurants will certainly close in the coming year, one retailer's misfortune could be the fortune of another able to snap up prime locations.
"There's going to be a lot of opportunity out there," said Charles Wetzel, president-chief operating officer of Buxton, a market-planning firm. "[Companies] are not as aggressive as they might have been in years prior, but, having said that, they're not being conservative either."
Prime real-estate and the ability to negotiate lease rates are attracting both national chains and smaller upstarts betting that better times are ahead (see chart). Kohl's, for one, is the "poster child" for gaining market share in the recession, said Bill Dreher, a senior retail analyst at Deutsche Bank. The retailer snapped up a number of Mervyn's locations after Mervyn's went bankrupt, solidifying its presence on the West Coast. Others growing their store base in a smart way are Target and Nordstrom, he said.
Local advantages
Mr. Dreher has been tracking what he calls "up-for-grabs sales" for over a year in the retail space and attributes about $21 billion in sales to retailers that have either closed or gone out of business. That breaks down to $6.4 billion in the apparel, footwear and department-store sector; $3.2 billion in the furniture and home-goods space and $11.8 billion in the electronics category.
Smaller operations are well-positioned, given that they can now entertain desirable locations that may have been out of reach just 12 months ago. "I firmly believe, if you're small and have a good brand that customers like, this is the year to exploit growth opportunities," Mr. Wetzel said.
Of course, there is still reason for caution. Darren Tristano, exec VP at Technomic, a Chicago food-industry consultancy, said he expects there to be more openings of limited-service restaurants, rather than full-service restaurants. Franchise organizations that are reliant on well-funded individuals also have more leeway to expand than company-owned operations.
Overall, Michael Niemira, director-research at the International Council of Shopping Centers, said he expects the vacancy rate could actually rise in the coming year. He said store closings are likely to moderate but store openings may be weaker, given that companies were faced with making those plans in the depths of the recession. The ICSC says 4,763 stores closed in 2009, much fewer than the roughly 6,913 closures in 2008 and on par with 2006 and 2007 closure rates.
"It has gotten a lot better, especially after a holiday season that was far more profitable [than a year ago]," he said. "But I don't think there will be aggressive expansion plans for 2010, industry-wide. At this point, retailers have to be innovative, nimble and continually rethink their strategy."
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Fast Manufacturing Rebound Offers First Surprise of US Economic Recovery
Manufacturing activity surged in the fourth quarter of 2009,and may post its biggest quarterly increase since 1983. We believe the manufacturing sector will play an important role in the recovery, both by helping to generate a faster-than-expected economic rebound and also by contributing to its sustainability.
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Film takes a look back at Chicago's financial markets
Viewers won't get bored with trade in documentary, which sadly sells the Merc short
January 8, 2010
BY DAVID ROEDER Sun-Times Columnist
It's a paradox of Chicago's financial markets that as they get bigger and more integrated into the world economy, they get harder for Chicagoans to understand.
Futures? Derivatives? Aren't those the strange concoctions that got us into trouble?
Yes, but not the types that are dealt at the Chicago exchanges, which long since have proven their ability to not only stoke market speculation, but to calm it. Some of trading is gambling, of course. But as Les Rosenthal, former chairman of the Chicago Board of Trade, described it, there's a key difference between the futures markets and Las Vegas.
As Rosenthal said in a film about the CBOT's history, the true gambler creates his own risk. In trading, the gambler assumes part of someone else's risk.
He made his point in the nearly half-hour film "My Word is My Bond," which will be shown at 5:30 p.m. Sunday on WTTW-Channel 11. The film, from Chicago-based Production Craft Inc., introduces the Board of Trade to anybody who's ever wondered what really goes on there.
It's an earnest telling of half the story. With a strictly chronological approach, the film traces the Board of Trade from its founding by a clutch of merchants in 1848, when the frontier city was a shipping point for the raw materials of nation-building. Producers and buyers needed to know the fair price for goods and the price they could expect in the future.
The Board of Trade was a financial pioneer, building on its legacy in the grain markets by developing a century later futures contracts based on a vital financial measure, interest rates paid on U.S. Treasury debt.
In 1973, Board of Trade members outsmarted the New York traders again by creating the first stock options market, the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Once regarded as suspect, options today are widely used as investor protection, and Chicago is No. 1 in the field.
But the producers were wrong to focus on the Board of Trade at the expense of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which has its own history going back more than a century. The Merc grew faster than the Board of Trade and bought it in 2007. Today, the two exchanges remain legally distinct but they function as one. Making the Merc just a character in the final act of this saga isn't surprising from a production company that has done Board of Trade promotional work. But it doesn't do the subject justice.
Still, the narrative adequately hits the highs and lows of Board of Trade history. Scandals are discussed in context, as are the exchange's finer moments, such as its role in upending the Hunt brothers' silver market scheme in the 1970s. The CBOT also kept its head during the 1987 market crash, staying open for trading and settling nerves when even the New York Stock Exchange was catatonic.
The film shows how this naked and rollicking form of capitalism serves a public good. The futures markets have a Chicago soul, contradictions and all.
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