Volente Marina owner files for bankruptcy

May 5th, 2009 3:26 PM

A major Lake Travis marina and the owner of the land where a long time water park stands have filed for bankruptcy.

Volente Marina Real Estate LLC, the parent of the 148-slip Volente VIP Marina on the north shore of Lake Travis, and Volente Waterfront LLC, which holds about 20 acres adjacent to the marina, filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court’s Western District of Texas. Both companies are operated by Steven Adams of Cedar Park.

Volente Beach Waterpark, a popular destination for Central Texas families, sits on part of the 20 acres held by Volente Waterfront. However, the owners of the business itself say they hold a long-term lease and are not affected by the bankruptcy.

In addition to the boat slips, Volente Marina includes a store, boat and waverunner rentals, boatlifts, a fuel dock and other amenities.

Mark Taylor, an attorney with the Austin firm Hohmann Taube & Summers LLP, is representing Volente Marina and Volente Waterfront in the bankruptcies. Taylor said his client hopes to use the bankruptcy process to reorganize and restructure debt. Taylor added that his client hopes to continue to operate the marina as usual during the process.

According to the filings, the marina and real estate entities each have assets and liabilities of between $1 million and $10 million.

Jill and Rick Redmond purchased the Volente land 15 years ago and opened Volente Beach Waterpark in 1999. The couple sold the land to Adams a year ago but retained the waterpark business. Jill Redmond said the park continues to operate normally and is preparing for a busy summer season. She said they recently re-launched The Blue Parrot, a fine dining restaurant next to the park that offers regular live music.

Wells economist sees growth in second half

May 29th, 2009 3:30 PM

The worst of the economic downturn likely is over, and the U.S. economy may grow by about 3 percent in the second half of the year, a top Wells Fargo & Co. economist said Thursday.

“I am fairly optimistic that this thing is winding down,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Fargo Capital Management. “I’m also optimistic that the economy, at least for a period, will recover sooner and stronger than most have anticipated ... I think we’re going to be growing in the second half of this year.”

Paulsen made his remarks during a presentation at the Wells Fargo Theatre in the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. The event was hosted by the San Francisco bank (NYSE:WFC), which acquired Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia Corp. late last year.

U.S. stocks have been climbing since March, and consumer confidence is improving, Paulsen noted. Reassuring “healthy players,” so they will begin investing and spending money again, is key to stimulating the economy, he said.

“The most outstanding feature of what we’ve been through isn’t so much the fundamental problems that we have in the economy,” Paulsen said. “We do have those, they’re serious. But the most outstanding characteristic is how we reacted to it as a nation. Leadership, policy officials, investors, businesses — we just panicked. That’s what stands out about this more than anything.”

The credit woes the nation faces are no different from the savings-and-loan problems of the 1990s or the farm and oil difficulties of the 1980s, he said. “When you mix together the fundamental problems with fear, you get a crisis.”

A change in accounting rules a couple of years ago made credit problems look worse, he said. The new rules required financial institutions to value assets — such as loans — based on current market prices, a practice known as “mark-to-market” accounting. When credit markets froze up, the lack of bids for those types of assets meant they had to be written down severely, even if the bank hadn’t sold them and the underlying fundamentals hadn’t changed.

“What has made it seem so off-the-charts is not bad debts that are written off; we had a lot of that in other periods. It’s good debts that are being written down in price not because they’re not paying on time, not because credit analysis (says) they won’t pay off over time, but simply because of lack of current bids in the market,” Paulsen said.

In early April, the Financial Accounting Standards Board eased mark-to-market rules, which should help, he said.

Consumers and businesses also are sitting on vast amounts of cash, more so than at any time since the early 1980s, Paulsen said. Once they feel secure enough to begin spending it, that cash will accelerate the economic recovery.

Austin home prices up, still dropping elsewhere

May 29th, 2009 3:24 PM

Though the rate of decline is slowing in some regions, home prices continue to drop nationwide. But in Austin, home prices actually increased in March compared with the same month last year, according to research from First American CoreLogic.

According to First American CoreLogic’s Home Price Index, 33 states saw home prices decline at a faster rate in March. However in the major Texas cities, including the Austin-Round Rock metro area, prices increased. In the local area prices rose 2.2 percent in March compared with March 2008. That’s down slightly from the region’s February home price increase of 3.2 percent compared to the previous February.

Housing price declines are slowing in states that have seen the highest declines in the past three years, but prices are dropping faster in states that have seen only moderate decreases in that time period, the research found.

Nationally, housing prices fell 11.5 percent in March compared with the same month last year, down from an 11.7 percent annual decline in February.

The number of states with double-digit annual declines has doubled in the last year, according to the index, from seven states in March 2008 to 14 states this March.

Nevada remained the top-ranked state for annual price depreciation in March, with an average home price decline of 26 percent. California followed close behind with a housing price decline of 25 percent compared with the same month last year. Rhode Island, Florida and Arizona round out the top five.

Four Texas metro areas saw either the smallest housing price decline of the region’s in the study or experienced home price increases in March, according to the index. Those were San Antonio; the Dallas-Plano-Irving area; the Austin-Round Rock area and the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area.

New Austin site maps street closures for special events

May 29th, 2009 3:23 PM

A new city of Austin Web site helps residents keep track of special event street closures.

The site, available via the city homepage, will provide advance notice of street closures so drivers can plan the best traffic routes to avoid delays. The site was a key recommendation of the Special Events Task Force report to the City Council, and was designed to track and report permitted city events, such as running events and parades.

The site features an interactive map, or chronologically through a calendaring feature. The site also serves as a gateway to vital information for those planning special events, provides news releases about specific closures, and lists useful event contact information for the media.

“While most of this information is available on the city’s Austinroadworks.org in a word format, this site combines the visual map elements to quickly view a race or parade course,” said Robert Spillar, director of the Austin Transportation Department.

Other event venues that don’t include street closures, such as Parks and Recreation, Convention Center, Palmer Events Center and the Long Center have special tabs for their listings on the site.

Texas workers more confident, survey shows

May 22nd, 2009 4:25 PM

Texas employee confidence was up 6.1 points to 50.8 percent in April, according to the latest figures from Spherion Employment Report’s Texas Employee Confidence Index.

The report, which measures worker confidence in employment and the economic environment, also found:

• Forty-two percent of Texas workers believe the economy is getting weaker, down 23 percent from 65 percent in March.

• Nine percent of Texas workers believe more jobs are available, compared to 5 percent in the previous month.

• Seventy-two percent of Texas workers surveyed are confident in the future of their current employer compared with 68 percent in March.

“Compared to the U.S. jobless rate, Texas is definitely faring better,” Kim Lockhart, regional vice president for Spherion in Texas, said in a statement.

“Although clients are still being cautious about adding staff, we have seen some pick-up in the last few weeks. In fact, we are seeing stable demand for work in customer service, mortgages, health care, IT and collections. Because a larger pool of applicants are competing for fewer job openings, we are advising job seekers to use this time to sharpen their education and certifications. This will help candidates stay current and give them the competitive edge they will need when the market fully recovers.”

The monthly survey was conducted by Harris Interactive for Spherion Corp. (NYSE: SFN), a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based recruiting and staffing company.

Austin unemployment rate drops; region adds jobs

May 22nd, 2009 4:24 PM

The Austin metro area added 4,900 jobs in April, helping bring the unemployment rate down from 6.2 percent in March to 5.8 percent last month.

Austin had roughly 781,400 jobs in April, up from 776,500 in the prior month. That's also a 3,400-job increase from April 2008. The sector posting the biggest month-over-month gain was leisure and hospitality, which added 3,000 positions.

Texas’ unemployment rate remained unchanged in April at 6.7 percent and continued to trend well below the national rate of 8.9 percent. The U.S. rate was 8.5 percent in March.

Texas’ seasonally-adjusted nonagricultural employment fell by 39,500 jobs in April. Texas has recorded a net loss of 173,900 jobs in the past 12 months, compared with job losses of 5.2 million in the United States during the same period.

“While the Texas unemployment rate remains substantially lower than the national rate, it is of real concern that Texans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own are having a difficult time finding employment,” said Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken. “Continued unemployment claims remain much higher than a year ago.”

The largest over-the-month drop occurred in professional and business services with a loss of 20,100 jobs in April, followed by trade, transportation and utilities with a loss of 15,400 jobs.

Leisure and hospitality posted the largest industry gain in April with an additional 10,600 jobs. Education and health services added 4,500 jobs, representing an annual job growth rate of 4.5 percent.

Survey finds long-term optimism among world's small businesses

May 18th, 2009 3:44 PM

Small-business leaders worldwide remain optimistic about their long-term prospects despite the economic downturn, even though only 37 percent expect their companies to do better this year than last, according to a survey released Monday.

The survey, conducted in April, is by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business-information arm of the Economist Group, publisher of the Economist. It surveyed 328 owners and executives of small- and mid-sized businesses around the world, with 29 percent of the respondents from North America.

According to the survey, 83 percent of small business executives are optimistic about their company’s long-term ability to rebound when the economy improves, 65 percent expect their company’s market share to have increased by the time the recession ends, and 73 percent expect revenues to have increased.

Only 6 percent of the worldwide executives surveyed said they expect the quality of talent in their organizations to decrease once the economy improves; 38 percent expect it to increase.

Yet many of the business leaders surveyed say their governments are doing too little to support them through the worldwide downturn.

Forty-eight percent of those surveyed said local government is unsupportive of their business, and 39 percent say the same of national governments.

Asked to explain this lack of government support, small-business executives worldwide said smaller companies "do not attract enough attention" (39 percent), "the public at large perceives large companies as more important than small- and mid-size companies" (28 percent), and "small- and mid-size businesses have fewer advocates than large companies" (24 percent).

Centennial, Colo.-based Web-hosting company Verio sponsored the survey. Verio is a unit of Tokyo-based NTT Communications Group.

Click here to download the survey results on PDF format.

Forbes: Austin remains a bargain

May 18th, 2009 3:43 PM

Austin's relative affordability and number of job opportunities has helped it rank first on Forbes.com's list of the nation's best bargain cities.

To determine which U.S. cities are the best bargains, Forbes.com looked at the country's 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Researchers assigned cities points across four data sets: average salary for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher; annual unemployment statistics; cost of living; and the Housing Opportunity Index that measures the amount of homes sold in a given area that would be affordable to a family earning the local median income.

he other major Texas cities--Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Ft. Worth--were also among the top 10 best bargains. But none come close to Austin where the 5.5 percent unemployment rate is the best in the country and about half the national average.

Keller Williams offices across the country close for RED DAY

May 14th, 2009 4:10 PM

Dripping Srings Walgreens to open May 14th

May 13th, 2009 3:30 PM

Texas foreclosures down 9%

May 13th, 2009 3:27 PM

Foreclosure activity nationwide remained at record levels in April, but figures in Texas are falling, according to data released Wednesday by RealtyTrac.

RealtyTrac's U.S. Foreclosure Market Report found that 342,000 properties were at some stage of the foreclosure process in April, a year-over-year increase of 32 percent. One in every 374 housing units received a foreclosure notice last month, which RealtyTrac said is its highest monthly rate since it started issuing its report in 2005.

Total foreclosure activity in April ended up slightly above the previous month, once again hitting a record-high level," James Saccacio, CEO of RealtyTrac, said.

Texas had 11,314 properties in the foreclosure process last month, the report shows. And while that's one of the highest total figures among the states, it's also to be expected given the size of Texas' population and its number of homes. Moreover, the figure is down 9 percent from April 2008, an indication that Texas is performing better than other areas of the country.

The 10 states with the most properties with foreclosure filings in April accounted for more than 75 percent of the national total. California documented the highest total (96,560), followed by Florida (64,588), Nevada (16,266) and Arizona (16,245).

Hill Country Galleria files Chap. 11

May 5th, 2009 3:27 PM

Construction spending up slightly in March

May 4th, 2009 3:25 PM

Investors rushed into stocks on Monday, including those for many Austin-based companies, based on news of increases in pending U.S. home sales and construction spending for March.

After five straight months of declines, the 0.3 percent increase in construction spending represented the best news for that industry since last September.  But Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, preached a more cautious outlook for nonresidential construction.

“The increase in nonresidential construction spending for March … is a reminder that construction is often a lagging indicator of economic activity,” Simonson said in a statement issued by the AGC. “Increases in manufacturing construction are being propelled by huge refinery and steel mill projects that were begun well before the economic downturn. These large projects are eclipsing broader negative trends. However, as they are completed or scaled back in the coming months, we will get a fuller picture of how much nonresidential construction is being adversely affected.”

Simonson said that with declining hotel and vacancy rates, difficulties in retail and challenges in the credit market, it’s not likely that many office, hotel or retail projects will start soon.

“In coming months, stimulus money will flow in increasing amounts. But it is not likely to overcome the downturn in private, state and locally funded projects,” he said. “Given the broader economic trends at play, it is likely that nonresidential spending could fall by as much as 9 percent in 2009, even with stimulus funds.”

The National Association of Realtors’ index of pending sales for previously occupied homes rose 3.2 percent to 84.6. The report exceeded the 82.1 that economists had expected.

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