Archive for the ‘In Our Town’ Category

Thomas Hill, CEO of Summit Materials, and Thomas Dunne, Sr., continue to sharpen their pencils on a possible acquisition of some or all of Earth City-based Fred Weber, Inc. Summit has a $1 billion credit line with Blackstone Capital Partners VLP. . .The Rev. Larry Biondi is rarely spotted outside his own campus, unless a meal is involved.  Thus, a rare personal appearance Monday to testify in front of the St. Louis Preservation Board marked the seriousness with which St. Louis University’s president regarded a request to demolish four historic structures near the university’s medical center in order to accommodate a new $75 million outpatient center.  Biondi won approval to demolish two of the structures, but will have to return next year with a different plan (or find a willing judge to throw out the decision) if he wants the two other structures – an office building and a smokestack - demolished.  All four structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. . .To address what she calls “the growing speculation about whether Rep. Jamilah Nasheed will seek the newly redistricted 5th Senatorial seat” – speculation that she herself is fueling – Nasheed has sent out a media advisory announcing that she will make an announcement about her plans on Jan. 3.  In the meantime, we can only – speculate.

That new voice on KMOX news belongs to Allison Blood, known to friends as Allie, and she has lots of friends and admirers after covering statehouse news and politics.  Like many of the talented staff
at KMOX, the vivacious Mizzou grad arrives by way of the Missourinet. .  .There is historical irony here.  Missourinet’s founding and still hard-charging news director Bob Priddy was just starting out in the
business when KMOX legend Bob Hyland dangled a job with pittance wages. Father of a young family, an unimpressed Bob Priddy instead joined Clyde Lear and the late farm broadcaster Derry Brownfield in pioneering what became Missourinet and its parent company, Learfield Communications.  Nearly 40 years later, Learfield has more than 350 staffers, operates five state news networks, the leading agriculture radio network and manages multimedia athletics rights for more than 50 colleges and athletic associations. Learfield has grown into a multimedia power Bob Hyland could envy.  Learfield recently closing a large strategic investment by Shamrock Capital Growth Fund III, the
investment unit that originated with the Roy Disney family.  In Missourinet’s early years, Priddy received a job application from a young announcer at Lexington, Missouri station KLEX.  Priddy took the application to Clyde Lear, who put rookie sportscaster John Rooney to work on Mizzou basketball broadcasts, including a season alongside Bob Costas, who Hyland once hired as a wisp of a lad out of Syracuse University.  Now John shares the Cardinals broadcast booth with Mike Shannon and the meters keep moving.  Over the weekend on the Mssourinet, Alice Blood reported on the $100k Bank of America donation to help rebuild Mercy St. John’s Joplin Hospital.  That hospital became an iconic backdrop for news coverage of the May 22 Joplin tornado.  Its windows were shattered but the Stars and Stripes fluttered from the exposed windowsills.

Media relations wizard Scott Charton of Charton Communications fame: “I’m advising St. Louis clients to make any bad news announcements today – it’ll never get daily media attention amid the Pu-nami of Albert the Angel coverage.” Albert Pujols’ defection to the Angels got a ho-hum reaction from some guests Thursday night at the Covenant House fundraiser in the Khorassan Room of the Chase.  “The Cardinals could get three good players with the money offered to Pujols,” opined City Hall’s Jeff Rainford.  Red Schoendienst: “Don’t know why he left. He won’t get our town’s atmosphere there.” Jeff Aboussie, exec secretary/treasurer Building and Construction Trades Council: “The Cardinals’ should take the money it would have paid Pujols and start Ballpark Village tomorrow, putting to work 1,000 construction workers.” Other voices: “I wouldn’t run for office until 2016,” insisted former U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway, partner in the Ashcroft Group law firm. As for the firm’s business, she offered, “It’s too good!” Jack Martorelli, mainstay of Guns ‘n Hoses: “The recent event will bring in more than $300,000 for BackStoppers.”  Rex and Jean Sinquefield hosted the party of which Jean giggled and pointed out, “We’re giving the party and guests have to pay.”

Covenant House's Diane Compardo, Paul Kindl, Sue Wagener

Pay they did for Covenant House of Missouri, whose exec director Sue Wagener said that 5,300 youth were served last year. The non-profit agency empowers homeless, runaway and at -risk youth to become independent and contributing members of the community. With Wagener were board chairman Paul Kindl, finance chief Diane Compado.

Rex Sinquefield was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame for his promotion of chess.(a sport?) Gillian and James Harris were front and center.

Sharon and Kim Tucci with music maker Al Oxenhandler

Then, it was onward to Tucci & Fresta’s Trattoria & Bar in Clayton, where we found co-owner Kim Tucci coochie-cooing with diners including Barbara and Barry Beracha. former exec with Sara Lee (their son,Brad, owns nearby Araka Restaurant).

Barbara and Barry Beracha

Later, we learned that Lambert Airport director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge is no longer considered as a candidate to succeed Dick Fleming at the RCGA. On another note, St. Louis Ald. and mayoral hopeful Lewis Reed has just bought a new car, raising eyebrows at City Hall.

Ray Wagner and State Rep. Tim Jones

AT&T prez John Sondag and John TemporitiRay Wagner and State Rep. Tim Jones

Bob, Susan and Mike Kelley with Donna Wilkinson

Former Post-Dispatch reporter and food scribe Ellen Sweets is setting the cookbook world on fire with her cooking memoir,”Stirring It Up With Molly Ivins.“  Sweets’ roots are in St. Louis and her family once published the St. Louis American, but food writing took her to Texas where she became a friend of the raucously liberal syndicated columnist, who had a particularly pointed pen for the Republican puffery.  Sweets wrote the memoir with recipes after Molly’s death four years ago.  The tome is getting high praise from reviewers and is #87 among cookbooks in the Amazon.com rating.  She’s in town for a book signing at Left Bank Books at 7 p.m., Dec. 13.  She’s been on the signing circuit all over Texas, New Orleans and the Beltway.

Albert Pujols looked to Florida as he weighed in his options, and perhaps the University of Missouri will also cast its glance from the chilly Show-Me-State to the Sunshine State. “Now that is the guy Missouri needs to bring home to be our next university president,” said a wealthy Missouri booster after meeting U of Fla. president  Dr.Bernie Machen, visiting here from Gainesville. Machen spent part of his boyhood in St. Louis, went off to Vanderbilt for his undergraduate studies, but returned to SLU to earn his doctor of dental surgery. Machen has been UF’s president since Jan. ’04, by way of the presidency of the U of Utah.  That’s where the retired U.S. Army major served on the board of Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics.  Meanwhile, the University of Missouri board of curators met today in Kansas City and they quit for the day without announcing any presidential hire. The acting prez is Steve Owens,  the four campus system’s general counsel,who says he is not after the permanent job.  Not that such a high-pressure job is ever permanent.

State Sen. Jason Crowell, known as a brick wall on two spindly legs for his filibusters in the Mo. Senate when he opposes legislation, is term-limited, winding up his last year of legislative service and he is not seeking another office. So – why did Noranda Corp.of New Madrid donate $10,000 this week and two previous donations of $10k donations earlier this year – bringing to a haul of $30k from the aluminum smelter he has been protecting in the lagislatture? Not bad for a country lawyer from Cape Garagedoor. For those keeping score, Noranda is the largest consumer of electrical energy in the eastern half of Missouri – yet it pays a dramatically lower industrial power rate,even lower than the poorest customers of Ameren.  It’s probably a coincidence that Sen. Crowell’s filibusters historically blocked any legislation that could have  raised Noranda’s electric bill.

Tony and Linda Karakas

The ancient Greeks had a word for hospitality – “xenia.”  On Saturday night, there was an abundance of xenia at the sacrosanct Bogey Club in Ladue. That’s where business exec Tony Karakas was feted on his 80th birthday by his wife, Linda, and 70 dinner guests. Many of the guests, like Tony, had chosen careers in which they morphed into millionaires. Touches of Hellenic beauty abound with women

John Martin and Cheryl Stein

dripping in jewelry and sporting hairdos of St. Louis royalty. Most of the icons and ingenues were first-time visitors to the 100 year-old club that’s elegantly furnished with tufted sofas and darkened floors reminiscent of the late David Calhoun’s family home on that spot. The club has a limited membership of 65, who each pay an initiation fee of $65K and a quarterly assessment of $2,800. Brown Group, Inc. chairman, prez and CEO Ron Fromm is the current Bogey prez and husband of Cheryl, one of the first women inducted as members. (The others are Pat Whittaker and Diane Sullivan.)

Peter Vacarro and DeDe Catsavis

Drs. Session and Patricia Cole

Joan Wendt and Dr. Tom Manglesdorf

Dolores and Kevin McGinness

Josephine and Richard Weil

Brian Ulione and John Brereton

The columnist kicked off the day having lunch in the club-like Stan Musial Grill in the Missouri Athletic Club-West. If those walls could talk, they’d be sued for libel. All we seemed to be doing Wednesday was saying goodbye to old, dear friend, businessman and philanthropist, the late Eugene Slay. While chef Brian Stanton,, a master of miracles, plied us with the club’s signature dishes, we chatted about Slay’s wardrobe consisting of a black suit, dark tie and sunglasses. Once when he learned someone had commented that he resembled “The Godfather,” Slay was overheard to say, “Don Corleone looks like me!”  The subject turned to Gene’s Slay Industries, which owns 200 acres on the riverfront, north of its Cahokia Marine Service ‘neath the McArthur Bridge, Former Slay exec John Brereton said the company still wants to develop the parcel into commercial use. Nowadays, Brereton is commercial director at Kinder Morgan Terminals. Brian Ulione of Business Transition Specialists remarked about the vacant lot, Ballpark Village.  “Cordish Companies sought $50-$60 a square-foot from tenants, when it should probably be about $25 a square-foot,” he speculated. As to unemployment, Brereton insisted, “Jobs are not coming back. New markets must be created.”

Col. Leonard Griggs and Denise Griggs

Cloistered in a booth were Denise and Col. Leonard Griggs, retired Lambert National Airport director (and why does the media still refer to Lambert International Airport?) Griggs, 80, recalled his happiest years,when the TWA hub was there. “Gone are the days when companies bought blocks of airline tickets,” he bemoaned, while mushroom soup dripped from his handlebar mustache.