Everest

News surfaced Wednesday that the college had leased 70,000 square feet on the Corporate Ridge Office and Technology Center campus.

Competition for the education provider’s new online division headquarters was intense. As many as 20 locations were considered before Colorado Springs was selected.

The news was welcomed by community leaders.

“Colorado Springs needed a win. This is an exciting first step, said Chamber of Commerce President and CEO David Csintyan. “This news shows that there’s healthy, future-oriented movement going on. Businesses are beginning to make decisions about the future.”

The Pikes Peak region’s growing higher education cluster may have played a role in the company’s choice.

“If you look at our world-class Pikes Peak Community College system, our outstanding 4-year public university at UCCS, a top Ivy-League level 4-year Colorado College and the United States Air Force Academy and other private schools, we were already attractive. Everest’s new division will add to an already impressive footprint,” he said.

“But best of all, it’s jobs – and I’m glad to see the first tenant is an educational institution.”

Pikes Peak Workforce Center spokeswoman Jeanne Cotter was equally upbeat about local hiring opportunities.

“We haven’t heard from the company yet, but we certainly hope they contact us. We’d be happy to work with them,” she said.

Along the Front Range, snow was expected to start falling late Thursday and into Friday, although warm temperatures this week might keep snow from accumulating early on.

Forecasters also expect heavy snow Friday in the upper Arkansas River valley, with up to a foot of snow possible for lower elevations and 8 to 18 inches above 9,000 feet. Winter storm warnings there, the Leadville area, and parts of El Paso County run from early Friday through early Saturday.

- Associated Press

Academy officials said this week they have received about 11,500 applications for the Class of 2014, which will enroll this year.

That’s 1,700 more than a year ago.

Applications from minority students are up by 36 percent, to about 4,030. Academy officials say they have stepped up recruiting efforts among minorities and in areas of the country that are underrepresented at the school.

A typical class at the academy is 1,300 students. Like all service academies, the school’s total enrollment is capped by federal law at about 4,000.

- Associated Press

Attorneys representing the former and current employees filed two lawsuits seeking class-action status Tuesday in Sacramento and Los Angeles. They follow a lawsuit filed in San Francisco last year.

The plaintiffs say the Atlanta-based franchise required them to buy their own uniforms, work off the clock and failed to provide lunch breaks as required by law. The lawsuits say managers skimmed money from tips.

San Francisco attorney Burt Boltuch says the employees are seeking millions in reimbursement and penalties.

The national restaurant chain and several locations in California are named in the suit. Hooters did not immediately return an e-mailed request for comment on Wednesday.

- Associated Press

Paul Cameron, chairman of FRI, which has an openly anti-gay stance, said the newsletters addressed to about 1,000 of their subscribers called for opposition to the President’s stance of allowing gay soldiers in the military, according to CSBJ media partner FOX 21 News.

In the newsletter there is an interview with a woman military recruit who talks about her experiences in basic training with a group of lesbians, analysis of gay historian Randy Shilts, and excerpts from a retired navy captain’s letter describing his experiences with homosexuals aboard his naval vessel.

Opinionated as the letter may be, Cameron argued it is not a call to rebellion, and does not contain any lewd pictures or words. However, Cameron said the Colorado Springs Postmaster refused to mail the letters because he felt the overall content violated the post office’s domestic mailing manual by containing “lewd or filthy matter” and “matter inciting violence.”

“We didn’t say we would not mail [the letters]. We just said it couldn’t go at the nonprofit rate and would need to go standard mail, which was a difference of about $15 for the whole thing,” said USPS spokesman Ron Perry.

The issue, argued Perry, was pricing and classification based on his interpretation of the domestic mailing manual, based on the nonprofit rate rules.

Cameron said it wasn’t the price he is upset about, but what he feels was censorship and a violation of their right to speak and publish. “The post office delivers everyday mail with a host of nudity. We had no pictures, no dirty words, no four letter words,” said Cameron.

FRI did appeal and had the decision overturned, but is waiting to get the latest decision in writing before the group mails the newsletters.

Personhood USA has a deadline of today to get enough valid signatures for a measure on the ballot this fall giving rights to fetuses. The measure would lead to a ban on all abortions.

The group needs some 46,000 signatures from state voters to get the question on ballots this fall. An earlier attempt failed because too many signatures were invalid, but organizers got a second chance.

Coloradans considered a similar amendment in 2008 and soundly rejected it. State officials say it could be more than a week before they determine if the abortion opponents have enough valid signatures to revive the question.

- Associated Press

While some western metropolitan areas were particularly hard-hit by the recession, notably Las Vegas, others, including Colorado Springs, suffered less.

The good news: the ‘gross metropolitan product’ (GMP) of the Colorado Springs metropolitan area grew an inflation-adjusted 2.3 percent from the 4th quarter of 2008 to the 4th quarter of 2009, tied for first among the 100 largest metros. The metro unemployment rate increased by 0.9 percent in the same period, third best among metros.

The bad news: according to other indicators, including employment, unemployment rate, housing prices, percentage of real estate owned (REO) properties, long-term employment growth, and years of lost job growth due to the recession, the Springs ranks only slightly above the median.

The Institute’s overall performance Index combines metropolitan rankings on four key indicators. Here’s how we ranked.
• Percent employment change from peak quarter to 4th quarter 2009 (-4.7 percent, 51st)
• Percentage point change in unemployment rate from December 2008 to December 2009 (+0.09 percent, 3rd)
• Percent GMP change from peak quarter to 4th quarter 2009 (-0.9 percent, 37th)
• Percent change in House Price Index from 4th quarter 2008 to 4th quarter 2009 (-5.1 percent, 42nd)

“More than two years after the Great Recession began,” the report states,”, the nation is in the midst of a slow and fragile - but jobless - economic recovery. Some economic indicators seem to suggest that robust economic growth will soon resume, while others point toward a “double-dip” recession and still others indicate little change in the economic situation.”

Several dozen workers - welders, carpenters and other subcontractors - were busy today converting the former manufacturing site into space for Everest College, a division of Corinthian Colleges.

“Almost every room had 25-inch pipe going through it so we’re removing it for the college — Everest College,” one welder said.

A rumored 70,000-square-foot lease has been negotiated, though the owner of the building, Los Angeles-based IRG, has so far declined to comment.

The building has sat vacant since early 2008, after Intel closed its operations.

In February, IRG said prospects for the facility were strong - and that they expected to have it 70 percent leased within three years.

IRG purchased the campus last fall for $15.1 million. The company specializes in what is known as adaptive reuse and historic preservation. It owns more than 70 million square feet of commercial property throughout the country.

IRG wasted no time in getting word out to prospective tenants, both national and local.

“We anticipate that a good portion of our tenants will come from local companies who already have a presence here, but just want to expand or add a new division,” IRG’s Bruce Haas told the Business Journal last month.

In marketing the site, IRG has met with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, among others.

The tenant improvements currently under way are taking place in Building 1 on the four-building campus, originally built in 1999 as a chip fabrication plant by Rockwell.

The property was eventually bought by Intel, which spent almost $600 million on expansion and facility upgrades in 2004 and 2005.

Signs of distress hit Intel in 2006. Two years later, the plant closed, forcing the layoff or reassignment of more than 800 employees. Until this year, the plant remained vacant, representing one of the grimmer illustrations of the Great Recession and its impact on the region’s economy.
Officials at IRG and Corinthian Colleges could not be immediately reached.

Check back to csbj.com for updates.

The company has agreed to provide supplies, food services, transportation, public works, community service, medical, safety, environmental, fire and postal operations support at the military base. The original contract is for one year, with options for four additional years.

ITT Systems has offices in Colorado Springs and White Plains, N.Y., and provides maintenance and operations support for U.S. government facilities.

She declined to comment about the nature of her absence.

Spokesmen for the division and Gov. Bill Ritter declined to comment because it is a personnel matter.

Earlier this month, her office disclosed that American Home Funding, which employs state Sen. Ted Harvey as a broker, was under investigation for allegedly sending out advertising fliers that resembled official tax documents.

The division later clarified that the Republican was not the target of the investigation.

On Friday, the Senate approved a proposal that would strip the real estate division director’s authority to regulate mortgage brokers and replace it with a board appointed by the governor.

- Associated Press