Citizen Staff Report

Citizen Staff Report

news@tucsoncitizen.com

AGM Container Controls Inc. was named the Small Business of the Year for 2009 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The award, presented Tuesday, honors the Tucson-based manufacturer for being a leader in the community, demonstrating intelligent business judgment and showing true commitment to its employees and customers.

“There is no secret to AGM Container Controls’ success,” Thomas J. Donohue, U.S. Chamber president and chief executive, said in a news release. “They continue to provide quality products and first-class service. AGM encompasses the attributes that any company needs to succeed in a tough economy – business judgment, customer service, and a commitment to their employees.”

AGM produces items used to protect missiles in transit or storage, and its Ascension division produces vertical and portable wheelchair lifts.

“We are highly diversified for a small company,” CEO Howard Stewart said in a 2007 interview with Tucson Business Edge. “It is hard to be good across a wide spectrum, but we do it much better than our competitors can or would. We are constantly asking ourselves how we can achieve more.”

In 1970, his father was given the opportunity to buy part of what was Arizona Gear Manufacturing. Howard Stewart became president of the family-owned business in 2000.

The business is 34 percent employee-owned, and AGM has serious roots in the community.

“To move would tear the social fabric of this business,” Stewart said. “There is a social contract between myself and my employee-owners and it would be selfish to move. It just wouldn’t make much sense.”

Citizen Staff Report

A. Bates Butler III, an attorney with Fennemore Craig’s Tucson office, was named to the 2009 Southwest Super Lawyers list in the Criminal Defense: White Collar category.

Nine nurses from the Arizona Health Sciences Center were among this year’s “Fabulous 50″ Tucson nurses honored during National Nursing Week. Nurses from University Medical Center were Marianne Ayers, Brady Burleson, Crystal Clark, Kathryn Grabenbauer, Christine Pasquet, Michael Teschner and Candace Urrea-Garza. Virginia Phillips from University Physicians Healthcare and Judy Doan from the University of Arizona College of Nursing were also honored. The Fabulous 50 nurses were chosen from among more than 200 nominees for their role modeling and mentoring of others, concern for humanity, contributions to the Tucson community and significant contributions to nursing.

The A List gives props to the Tucson business community’s movers and shakers. Send information to alist@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Photographer

Citizen Staff Report
IN BRIEF

Citizen Staff Report

Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc. has entered into a regional partnership with the Sierra Vista Economic Development Foundation to help promote southern Arizona and improve the local economy, the group announced Monday.

TREO and the Sierra Vista group will work together on economic development initiatives. One such effort will be to leverage the aerospace and defense strengths in Sierra Vista. They also will work to market the assets of the entire region, including major employers, specialized work force skills, natural resources and its strategic location.

Eurofresh’s production honored by UA center

Citizen Staff Report

Eurofresh Farms was honored by the University of Arizona’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center for developing “economically, ecologically and socially sustainable food.”

The company received the center’s 2009 Mission Award. Each year, a committee selects the award recipient for its contributions to CEAC’s overall mission – finding ways to develop controlled environment agriculture as a sustainable growing option.

Willcox-based Eurofresh filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month. The company grows tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in greenhouses.

Citizen Staff Report

Dr. Jeff Monash leased 2,000 square feet at 1845 W. Orange Grove, Suite 115, from Orange Grove Medical & Dental. Rajan Lal of PICOR represented the tenant. Dave Volk of CB Richard Ellis represented the landlord.

Clean Water Products leased 1,440 square feet at Exchange Place Business Park, 1870 W. Prince Road, Suite 3, from Presson Corp. Rob Glaser and Paul Hooker of PICOR handled the transaction.

Chariot Italian Bistro extended its lease for 2,100 square feet at Midpoint Business Plaza, 1835 S. Alvernon Way. Rob Glaser and Paul Hooker of PICOR handled the transaction.

Burger City leased 1,920 square feet at The Plaza at Williams Centre, 5350 E. Broadway, Suite 128/130, from Larsen Baker. The restaurant is scheduled to open in June. Andy Seleznov of Larsen Baker represented the landlord.

Heavenly Feet has leased 1,668 square feet at Tucson Place Shopping Center, 595 E. Wetmore Road, Suite J-101, from Larsen Baker. The salon is scheduled to open in July. Andy Seleznov of Larsen Baker represented the landlord. Rita Perez of Tucson Realty & Trust represented the tenant.

Real estate transactions run each Tuesday here and online at tucsonbusinessedge.com. Send your listings to edge@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Report

Ben White is the branch manager for Long Realty Co.’s Sahuarita office, 15920 S. Rancho Sahuarita Blvd. White was former sales manager for the company’s central branch office in 2008. As branch manager, White will oversee all operations within the branch as well as community outreach in the Sahuarita area.

David Welsh, senior vice president of strategic partnerships for Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc., and Curt Woody, president of InCite Consulting, are the new Tucson representatives elected to the board for the Arizona Association for Economic Development. AAED’s goal is to be the leading advocate for responsible economic development for all of Arizona.

The A List gives props to the Tucson business community’s movers and shakers. Send information to alist@tucsoncitizen.com

Freelance
TECH TALK

ROMI CARRELL WITTMAN

Tucson Citizen

Each evening, my 4-year-old daughter tells me, “I want lunch for dinner.” Translation: I want a grilled cheese or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And, in my bloated, still working full-time, eight-month pregnant state, oftentimes that’s exactly what we have.

It doesn’t help that my sister-in-law is like the Terminator of menu planning and shopping. Each Friday she plans a menu for the following week and each Saturday morning at 7 a.m. she goes grocery shopping for that menu.

So while her kids are happily eating their vegetables each night at a civilized family table, I’m lucky if my kids aren’t camped out in front of the TV, eating whatever we could scrounge up in 15 minutes or less.

I figure there has to be an easier way and I know I need to find it quick because Baby No. 3 is set to debut in less than a month. It’s not like things are going to get easier. And I know if I plan my menus in advance, we can save money each week on our grocery bill.

To me, easier means something involving my computer and the Internet. So I went in search of software that would help me kill the proverbial two birds with one stone: plan a decent, easy-to-make menu while also preparing a shopping list for me.

I checked out all the usual suspects – CookingLight.com, MarthaStewart.com and BettyCrocker.com.

While each had really great recipes, none had that magic combination I needed – menu planning with a tailored, not generic, grocery list.

Though it’s not interactive, the Martha Stewart site comes pretty close. It offers specific menus along with corresponding “grocery bags.” The problem is Martha’s recipes aren’t generally what one would call “easy.” Plus, many of her recipes aren’t budget – or kid – friendly. While my husband will love tuna steaks, I’d still be making PB&J for my kids.

The Betty Crocker site has a cool feature that lets you input the ingredients you have on hand as well as what type of meal you’re trying to prepare. It will return several recipes that meet your criteria. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t help you plan ahead and it assumes I would be able to get on the computer while two hungry children fight for space in my lap.

After striking out with the free online options, I checked out paid software options.

At $79.95, Dvo.com has exactly what I was looking for. As a bonus, you can purchase “plug-in” software, including Cook’n with Betty Crocker, to give you even more recipes to choose from. (You can also enter your own recipes.) It even has an on-board calculator to help you adjust for the number of people you’re serving as well as detailed nutritional information.

Menus4moms.com also has menu planning software and, at just $7.95 per month, it’s friendlier from a budget perspective. It has many of the same features as Cook’n, but the recipes are more limited.

Romi Carrell Wittman is a writer and the communication services director for Trico Electric Cooperative. E-mail: romi.wittman@comcast.net.

Freelance
Tech talk

QUINCEY HOBBS

Tucson Citizen

Family, friends and loved ones of soon-to-be high school and college graduates want to give them gifts that will aid them in the next chapter of their lives.

For some that chapter will include furthering their education. For others it will entail entering the job market. Regardless of the road ahead for these graduates, there are many affordable tech gifts to make that road a little smoother.

Whether on campus or in the corporate jungle, USB flash drives seem to be commonplace. A particular flavor of USB flash drives that don’t seem to be everywhere are biometric or fingerprint scanning USB flash drives.

These drives have been around for a few years, but haven’t really caught on in mass numbers. But the fact remains that these are among the best USB drives to own. Biometric USB flash drives allow access to the drive only after a user has been authenticated by running a fingerprint over a biometric scanner embedded on the drive.

The benefits of biometric USB drives are numerous, but among the top reasons for considering them as a gift for graduates is their security features. The information stored on them is not only secure, but the fact that the information cannot be accessed acts as a theft deterrent and may even serve to increase the odds of the drive being returned if it where lost. Biometric USB drives are more expensive than regular USB drives of equal storage capacity, but there are plenty of lower capacity biometric drives priced below $50.

If your graduate is heading into the work force, you may want to consider paying for a professional subscription as a gift. Careerstrides.com is one of many Web sites that offer a professional résumé service to people new to the job market. Popular employment Web sites such as Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com offer upgraded résumé posting, a feature that is supposed to give placement preference so employers will view them before the non-upgraded résumés. This, too, could help recent grads looking to test the job market. In the current employment environment, every advantage helps.

For those who are leaving the high school campus for the larger and much greener college campus, the Digimemo may be ideal. The Digimemo is a digital tablet that allows users to write notes, draw or doodle and save it all to the device. Having a device that can save 999 individual pages of notes without the need for special paper that some other devices require will lighten the backpack of any college student. At a cost of $99, it won’t lighten the gift giver’s wallet too much, either.

Quincey Hobbs is a team member at the University of Arizona’s Center for Computing and Information Technology and an instructor at Pima Community College. Send questions to quinceyresponds @yahoo.com.

Citizen Staff Report

Sarah Meadows has been named associate general counsel for the Tucson Airport Authority. Meadows will be responsible for assisting the general counsel’s office with all aspects of TAA’s legal needs. Meadows previously worked as an associate with Snell & Wilmer LLP, practicing in the commercial litigation and real estate and finance departments. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where she served as an Ares Fellow and as a member of the Arizona Law Review.

Dr. Dan Karsch was named medical director of Via Elegante, a luxury assisted-living community. Karsch is co-founder of Old Pueblo Urology, where he practiced for 31 years. Previously he served as chief of urology in the U. S. Air Force at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

The A List gives props to the Tucson business community’s movers and shakers. Send information to alist@tucsoncitizen.com.

Citizen Staff Report

Citizen Staff Report

Tucson-area bankruptcy filings in April jumped 85 percent from the same month a year ago, according to statics released Wednesday.

Arizonans, stung by particularly heavy job losses and housing weakness, are filing for protection at a much higher rate than Americans generally.

“People are throwing in the towel like we’ve never seen before,” said Brad Stroh, co-CEO of Freedom Financial Network, a firm with a debt-negotiation unit in Tempe that employs 250 people. “A lot of them are saying, ‘I need to hit the reset button.’ ”

There were 643 bankruptcy filings last month in the Tucson sector, compared with 348 in April 2008, according to the report by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona. Sixty-one percent of those filings were in Pima County. The Tucson sector also includes Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, Pinal and Santa Cruz counties.

The majority of the filings were Chapter 7, which is liquidation for individuals and small businesses. There were 532 Chapter 7 filings in April, a 105 percent increase over the same month last year.

Personal reorganization filings, Chapter 13s, were up 23 percent. And Chapter 11 filings, business reorganizations, jumped 40 percent over last year, though the total number is small: seven.

In the first four months of 2009, there were 2,023 filings in in the Tucson sector.

James Portman Webster, a bankruptcy attorney in Mesa, sees consumers pressured from several angles, including high credit-card debts and job losses. Even for workers who keep their jobs but face pay cuts or temporary furloughs, the income disruption can be enough to push some over the edge. “Any wiggle room some of these people had is just gone,” he said.

Webster attributes the April surge in part to the tax-return filing season, since refund money provides the cash for some debtors to pay attorney fees and other bankruptcy expenses.

Other factors might be at work, too. Stroh said he senses a shift in public attitudes toward bankruptcy, as filing for protection from creditors has lost the stigma it once had.

In years past, “People would do anything to avoid filing,” he said. “But from (General Motors) and Chrysler down to the neighbors next door, it has become the American thing to do.”

Stroh has noticed fewer people seeking to work out their financial woes through his firm’s Freedom Debt Relief unit by consolidating debt and negotiating with creditors outside of bankruptcy.

“Demand for our products is still high, but it’s off from the peak,” he said. “We often can cut their monthly payments by 50 percent, yet a ton of people can’t afford even that.”

The statewide total of 2,902 filings in April marked an 87 percent increase from a year earlier. For the entire U.S., consumer filings rose 36 percent in April from the same month a year earlier, reported the American Bankruptcy Institute, using data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center.

The overall April total of 125,618 filings was up 3.5 percent from March and puts the nation on pace for 1.4 million cases in 2009.

The Arizona Republic contributed to this report.

Citizen Staff Report

Danny Gasch will serve a second term as president of the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona Board of Trustees. Gasch has been on the board since 1988 and has served as vice president, treasurer and finance committee chair. He was named the 2009 Man of the Year by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. He is chief financial officer of Research Corporation and a past president of the Tucson Hebrew Academy and Cheder Scholarship Organization.

Also beginning their second terms in office are Keri Silvyn, secretary and vice president; Thomas Warne, treasurer and vice president; and Dr. Jerry Neuman, immediate past president. New trustees for 2009-2010 are Jane Ash, Karen Faitelson, Dr. Barry Friedman, Jeremy Lite and Jeremy Sohn.

Joyce O’Dea of Arizona Designs earned certification as an associate kitchen and bath designer from the National Kitchen & Bath Association. The certification recognizes achievement in the competencies necessary for both kitchen and bathroom design. To earn certification, a person must document a minimum of two years of industry experience, successfully complete 30 NKBA education hours, submit two professional affidavits and pass the written AKBD academic exam.

The A List gives props to the Tucson business community’s movers and shakers. Send information to alist@tucsoncitizen.com

THE A LIST

Citizen Staff Photographers

Public Involvement Specialist Angie Brown of Gordley Design Group has been elected president of the Grand Canyon Chapter of the International Association for Public Participation, an association of professionals who seek to promote and improve the practice of public participation at all levels of society. She will serve a one-year term. Brown is responsible for public involvement and community outreach for a wide range of projects, from transportation planning and design to construction.

The Southern Arizona Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America honored local professionals at the 14th annual PRimus Awards. The PRimus Awards recognize professionals in the communication field for their work on public relations campaigns and tactics. Jodi Horton, owner and president of IDEAS@WORK Inc., received the Lifetime Achievement award. Jan Howard, communications director at Strongpoint Public Relations, was named the Public Relations Professional of the Year. Lisa Lovallo, vice president and system manager for Cox Communication, received the The Meritorious Service award.

The A List gives props to the Tucson business community’s movers and shakers. Send information to alist@tucsoncitizen.com

Citizen Staff Report
IN BRIEF

Southwest Airlines will begin daily nonstop service from Tucson International Airport to Denver on Sunday.

The flight departs Tucson at 11:20 a.m. and arrives in Denver at 2:10 p.m. The return flight departs Denver at 1:25 p.m. and arrives in Tucson at 2.25 p.m.

Southwest Airlines also offers two daily nonstop round-trip flights to Albuquerque, N.M., two to Chicago Midway, five to Los Angeles, five to Las Vegas and three to San Diego.

Citizen Staff Report

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

NEW YORK – A group of lenders accused shopping mall operator General Growth Properties of including eight properties in its bankruptcy filing that do not need court protection.

The shopping centers, including Tucson Mall, are financially stable and do not need to be rehabilitated through a Chapter 11 reorganization, according to a filing Monday by ING Clarion Capital Loan Services LLC, a loan administrator.

The creditors claimed General Growth had “swept” the properties into bankruptcy to benefit from their slightly better financial condition.

General Growth filed for protection from creditors last month in the largest U.S. real estate bankruptcy case in history. The Chicago-based real estate investment trust has $27 billion in debts.

The malls in question are in San Francisco, Bakersfield, and Visalia, Calif.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Lancaster, Pa; Tucson; Bartlesville, Okla.; and Murray, Utah.

Citizen Staff Report

Ed Ackerley was awarded the ASUA Bumps Tribolet Award for his outstanding commitment, dedication and service to UA students. The award, presented by the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, is named in honor of Charles “Bumps” Tribolet, a legendary athletics and student services administrator at UA. Ackerley is a faculty member in the marketing department in the Eller College of Management as well as the School of Media Arts. He is also the faculty adviser for the American Advertising Federation UA Chapter. He and his family own Ackerley Advertising.

Michael Shriver was named manager of Presidential Pools & Spas, 12060 N. Thornydale Road. Shriver will oversee all day-to-day activities of the office and continue to manage the company’s satellite offices in Maricopa and Surprise. Shriver is joined in the Tucson office by longtime pool sales designers John Keller and Carlo Colombino. The Thornydale office is the company’s first in Tucson and fourth in Arizona.

The A List gives props to the Tucson business community’s movers and shakers. Send information to alist@tucsoncitizen.com.