NC State Homepage

NC State University News Clips for December 4-6, 2004

Compiled by North Carolina State University’s News Services, a part of the Public Affairs Office. Listed below are the current news clips. Click on the headline of interest to be taken to the full text. Click on “Return to Headline List” at the bottom of each clip or use the scrollbar to be taken back to this location.

 

IN-STATE CLIPS

Company raising money to develop eye surgery products
Brian Gilger, clinical sciences

NATIONAL & REGIONAL CLIPS

Click here to be taken to the CLIP ARCHIVES

Company raising money to develop eye surgery products

Dec. 5, 2004
Triangle Business Journal; MSNBC
By Jane Paige
© Copyright 2004

RALEIGH - HyperBranch Medical Technology Inc. is looking to raise between $2 million and $7 million in a first round of venture capital to further the company's effort to create new devices for eye surgery.

The company, which began fundraising in March, has received a term sheet from Durham-based The Aurora Funds. Company officials say they hope to have an agreement by the end of the year.

HyperBranch President Anthony Sherbondy says he expects Aurora to provide the majority of the funds, with money also contributed by the management team.

"So far, we have funded our work internally and from angel investors," says Sherbondy. "Now we are ready to seek additional funding in order to grow the business with product development."

Founded in 2003, HyperBranch is developing products that it hopes will help restore vision or prevent serious vision loss using principles from polymer chemistry and biomedical engineering. The company's technology is licensed from research conducted at Duke University.

Sherbondy, a co-founder of the company, was vice president of new business generation at Closure Medical Corp., a Triangle-based company specializing in tissue adhesive products. Mark Grinstaff, the other co-founder and the chief science officer of HyperBranch, is an associate professor at Boston University.

While working as an assistant professor at Duke University, Grinstaff and his research team invented the technology that forms the base of HyperBranch Medical.

The two co-founders have HyperBranch on the fast track in the medical device industry, says Andrew DiMeo, president of the newly formed North Carolina Medical Device Organization.

"It seems as if they are moving 100 miles an hour with their company," says DiMeo. "This is true evidence of the quality of the company, its leadership and its products."

HyperBranch's scientific advisory board includes Dr. David Epstein, chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Duke University School of Medicine, and Brian Gilger, professor of ophthalmology at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine.

With four full-time employees, the company has an office in north Raleigh and a laboratory in Research Triangle Park.

HyperBranch's initial products are an injectable endocapsular lens, branded DendriLens, and an ocular sealant, branded OcuSeal, for cataract and ocular surgery. Both products are in early-stage development.

DendriLens, which Sherbondy describes as a potential "big home run" for the company, is an injectable lens that is designed to serve as a replacement for the natural human lens. He anticipates clinical trials for this project to begin in 2006, with a commercial launch in 2009.

The product is intended primarily for those who are presbyopic, a population that Sherbondy says comprises most "everyone over 40. When people turn 40, their lenses get stiff and no longer accommodate. It happens to most everyone."

With the continued aging of the baby boomers, the market for such a product is expected to grow by more than 60 percent over the next 20 years, he says.

HyperBranch's other product, OcuSeal, is expected to reach the market by 2006. It is a pliable adhesive that is designed to close wounds and incisions in the eye faster and more easily than can be achieved with stitches, Sherbondy said. He wants clinical trials to begin in mid-2005.

Talks already are ongoing with large players in the ocular suture market, such as Fort Worth, Texas-based Alcon Inc., in search of a partnership, says Sherbondy.

"Right now, our goal is to have a major business partner early on, hopefully as soon as next year," he says. "It is not our intent to compete (head-on) against the larger companies in the suture market."

Similar to biotech companies, medical device makers often have to depend on outside funding or partnering with larger companies to bring a product to the marketplace. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates medical devices to assure their safety and effectiveness.

Local venture capital firms have invested more in life science companies than in medical device makers. While the risks are lower for medical devices, the payoff also is less than for biotech companies.

In early November, HyperBranch was selected as the Outstanding Early Stage Presenter during the sixth annual Southeastern Bio Investor Forum, or SEBIO, in Miami. It was the company's first investor conference.

"HyperBranch Medical did an excellent job of capturing the interest of the attendees at the SEBIO 2004 Conference," says David Gury, co-chairman of the event and former CEO of a Florida-based biopharmaceutical company.

Return to Headline List

Warren to decide new building sites

Dec. 5, 2004
Henderson Daily Dispatch
By MATTHEW E. MILLIKEN
 © Copyright 2004

Warren commissioners are likely to make at least one major personnel or construction decision when they gather Monday evening.

The first order of business is the organization meeting, and the first item on the agenda, after new commissioner Barry Richardson and re-elected commissioner Clint "T-Bone" Alston are sworn in, is electing the chairman of the board.

Current Chairman Ulysses S. Ross said he would like to retain his position.

"I spoke to maybe one" other commissioner about keeping the job, "but I don't know just which way it's going," he said in a telephone interview Friday evening.

Commissioner Jan Humphries suggested she might back Ross. "So far he's done a fairly good job," she said by telephone Thursday evening, adding that Ross is "pretty easy to work with."

Humphries said several people have lobbied for the job and she was not sure how the vote would go.

Luke Lucas said he was not among those vying for the post. He said he didn't know what decision might be made.

Interviews with Lucas, Humphries and Ross indicated that a site for the animal shelter is likely to be chosen Monday, and that it will probably be placed by the Cooperative Extension center off NC-58.

That was the location Lucas and Humphries voted for two months ago. Alston and Chip Capps, whose spot Richardson was elected to fill, voted against the proposal, and it fell to Ross to cast the deciding vote. The chairman paused for several seconds, one arm hanging in the air, before he brought his gavel down sharply and said, "Nay!"

"I would love to see the animal shelter at the landfill," Ross said Friday.

But he believes it's more important to begin construction than to quibble over the location: "I want to see this project go forward. I will compromise."

However, Ross emphasized that he wants to see the shelter go behind the Cooperative Extension building, not in front of it. He believes the site would be an ideal location for a new courthouse in perhaps 10 or 15 years. The same land already is home to the jail and the newly completed law enforcement center. The latter houses the sheriff, parole and probation department and state law officers.

County Manager Loria D. Williams provided the board with a memorandum last month partially clarifying the costs of putting a building at six different locations - three different sites by the Cooperative Extension offices, two sites at the wastewater treatment plant on U.S. 401 between Warrenton and Franklin County and a site at the county's former landfill, which is now a waste transfer station. The memo doesn't state how much would it might cost to clear the old pool site at the cooperative (the cost is not known) and the figures it provides don't include the estimated $15,000 cost of the passive methane venting system that would be needed at the waste transfer location.

The future of new or upgraded county administration offices and a county library might also be determined Monday, though this seems less likely.

Lucas and Ross both favor building a stand-alone library on the site of the former A&P supermarket on Franklin Street. Lucas has further proposed, and Ross also seems to favor, a new Department of Social Services building. County administration, tax and finance personnel would then move into the John Graham Building.

This plan could ultimately be capped by renovating the courthouse and its flanking buildings. Lucas said he has an old diagram that portrays the courthouse, the current library and the current tax and finance office as one unified structure devoted to judicial activities.

Lucas did not want to discuss where a new social services structure would go, but Ross said that too could be located by the Cooperative Extension site.

Lucas said a new social services building could save the county money in the long run. His proposal was spurred in part by e-mail from Williams that shows that the federal government pays about half of the costs of running the social services department, including renting space at the John Graham Building.

"The 50 percent that the federal government pays is more than covering the renovation costs of the John Graham Building," Lucas said. He believes this would hold true for a new facility.

He said he would work to convince his fellow board members "that it's a viable solution that will save millions of dollars of money."

But Williams cautioned Friday afternoon that federal reimbursements can vary and might not be a sound basis for funding a new building.

"Fifty percent may not always be 50 percent," she said. "It's not in our control."

She added: "It could increase or it could decrease. It's not something you would bank long-term debt on."

The Buck Spring Regional Leadership Excellence Center is also on Monday's agenda, in the form of a request from North Carolina State University that the county hire a site director for the project. The commissioners set aside money for the position in the current budget.

But the university would like the site director to be its employee, rather than the county's, reporting to the local Cooperative Extension head instead of the county manager. Assistant Vice Chancellor Mike Davis argues that there are several advantages to such an arrangement, especially since the site director is expected to manage other university employees once Buck Spring is established.

Williams acknowledged the benefits but noted that the site director has always been conceived of as a county position. Under Davis' proposal, the county would pay all of the director's salary but have minimal oversight.

What's more, the proposed arrangement means Buck Spring could evolve into a county department using annual county funds of $300,000 to $400,000 annually - which might make it Warren's third largest department, after social services and the sheriff's office - yet the commissioners might have very little authority over the site director.

One other major personnel decision might be made Monday, though it is not explicitly listed on the agenda. Williams said her employment contract has a window at the end of the year for discussing changes.

She said her contract automatically renews at the beginning of the year, although she is an "at will" employee who can resign or be terminated by the Board of Commissioners at any time. Williams said she has received no formal notice that contract renewal or negotiation or performance evaluation is going to be discussed.

Lucas said he would prefer "a highly trained management, educated in the field with some experience in public administration." But when asked whether he would vote to keep Williams as county manager next year, he answered, "I haven't made my mind up yet."

Humphries said Williams had "proven that working with us is not on her agenda" and complained that the county manager has not always provided information readily.

Yet she wouldn't recommend any action on Williams' contract at this point. "I don't expect anybody to be perfect," Humphries said.

Ross doesn't even want Williams' performance to come up Monday.

"I would hope that it would be discussed later on in the new year," he said. "We just got so many things that we need to focus on right now."

In other commission business Monday:

The commission will meet Monday at 6:15 p.m. in the Warren County Courthouse in downtown Warrenton. The organization meeting will be followed at 6:30 p.m. by a public hearing on the proposed no-wake buoys on Kerr Lake, at 6:45 p.m. by a public hearing on the county's hazard mitigation plan and at 7 p.m. by the formal board meeting.

Return to Headline List

NCSU Professor Is Named IEEE Fellow

Dec. 3, 2004
LocalTechWire
By staff report
© Copyright 2004

RALEIGH – Thomas Conte, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer.

Conte was cited for “contributions to computer architecture, compiler code generation and performance evaluation.”

Conte is director of the Center for Embedded Systems research at NCSU.

He earned his PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992 and joined the NCSU faculty in 1995. Conte received a National Science Foundation early career development award in 1996.

Return to Headline List

Startup Liquidia Targets Flat-Panel Displays, Nanotech

Dec. 3, 2004
LocalTechWire
By Rick Smith
 © Copyright 2004

CHAPEL HILL – The logo of startup Liquidia Technologies says a great deal about the focus of the new venture – a drop of blue water with a wall of bricks anchoring its left side.

Using technology licensed from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, Liquidia has developed a mix of fluropolymers that are liquid at room temperature yet “cure” to substances similar to Teflon – elastic but solid – when exposed to light.

“The enhanced material combines the appealing properties of silicones and glass, outperforming each individually and makes possible many exciting new applications,” the company said in a release.

Possible uses range from Nanotechnology to semi-conductor fabrication and flat-screens for TVs and other displays.

Liquidia is looking to form strategic alliances to develop various uses for its technology. The company will provide materials, collaboration and expterise to partners who will be granted licenses to commercialize products.

Bruce Boucher, the former chief financial officer at Magellan, is acting as interim chief executive officer for Liquidia.

The company’s technology is based on work done in labs run by veteran entrepreneur Joseph DeSimone and Edward Samulski. DeSimone is a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering and teaches at both UNC and NCSU. DeSimone, who helped develop CO2 technology that was turned into a new form of fabric cleaning as a counter to traditional dry cleaning, is also director of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes and is co-director of the Kenan Center for the Utilization of CO2 in Manufacturing.

Samulski is a professor of chemistry at UNC who has done much research in the area of liquid crystal displays.

On Friday, Liquidia announced that it had granted an exclusive license to CTI Molecular Imaging, a provider of equipment for positron emission tomography (PET), an imaging technology that is used in the detection and treatment of cancer, neurological disorders, and cardiac disease.

CTI also works with radiolabeled niomarkers. The company is based in Knoxville, TN.

The agreement will allow CTI to utilize Liquidia technology in production and use of fluoropolymer-based microfluidic devices for PET related disease detection and therapies.

The companies also will work together on a product development program for the synthesis of radioisotope-labeled biomarkers for disease detection and therapies.

“Our agreement with an industry leader like CTI speaks volumes about the significance of our technology for fabricating cost-effective, high performance microfluidic devices,” DeSimone said. “CTI represents Liquidia’s first customer in the multi-billion dollar microfluidic marketplace. This early adoption of Liquidia’s materials and methods by CTI will propel the development of our technology in the numerous other micro- and nano-fluidic application areas beyond biomarker synthesis and delivery.”

Ron Nutt, CTI’s chief executive officer, said Liquidia would provide the “base material” for use in production of microfluidic chps. These chips would contain “thousands of valves and pumps contained on a chip no larger than 1 centimeter square,” he explained. “These unique microfluidics chips are expected to make a dramatic impact on the development and cost of manufacturing of biomarkers for molecular imaging and we are looking forward to working with Liquidia in this important relationship.”

Terms were not disclosed.

“Liquidia is poised to bring breakthroughs in materials science to a wide range of companies in the chemical, life sciences, and electronic industries,” DeSimone said in a statement. “We believe that our liquid fluoropolymers provide an important solution to a whole host of problems being faced by these companies. Our materials will revolutionize and expand the multibillion dollar microfluidics industry.

“These same materials give rise to an unprecedented ability to mold discrete nanoscale objects, including particles useful for drug delivery and discovery and disease detection and mapping,” he added. “Intricate molding on the nanoscale immediately suggests other applications including fabricating semi-conductors, fuel cells, and flat-panel display. This discovery is broadly applicable and scalable for cost effective commercialization.”

The company said its materials:

Liquidia already has a high profile board of directors, including Bill Starling, who is chief executive officer of Synecor, and Lowry Caudill, one of the founders of Magellan Laboratories, which was later sold to Cardinal Health.

“Liquidia’s founders have a track record of entrepreneurial achievement that is hard to match”, Starling said. “DeSimone and his team are known throughout the world for their inventiveness in polymeric materials and the patent savvy protection of their concepts.”

Return to Headline List

Colleges face rise in bus fees

Dec. 6, 2004
News & Observer
By CINDY GEORGE
 © Copyright 2004

RALEIGH -- Two Raleigh colleges are months behind in payments for a program that allows students, faculty and staff to flash their school identification and catch free rides on city buses.

Contracts for the UPASS program with St. Augustine's College and Shaw University expired in August, though the city and bus drivers continue to honor the school badges on Capital Area Transit.

On Thursday, the Raleigh Transit Authority is to make a recommendation about both schools' participation in the program. That decision would then go to the Raleigh City Council for a final vote.

The UPASS program simplifies Raleigh's public transit by offering free rides to students or employees of area institutions, charging those institutions reduced fares per ride and thereby increasing bus use. There are UPASS agreements with N.C. State University, the city of Raleigh, Wake County government, state government, Shaw and St. Aug's.

Since January 2003, the program has proved increasingly popular with constituents from Shaw and St. Aug's.

Now, because of their high ridership, both schools face payments 10 times higher to maintain their bus-ride subsidies.

Under newly drawn contracts based on the last year's ridership, the monthly payment for Shaw would jump from $172.50 to $1,780.

For St. Aug's, the monthly installment would go from $183 to $1,683.

As of October, under the lower fees, Shaw was four months behind in its monthly payments; St. Aug's was six months delinquent.

When St. Aug's students return early next year, they won't have any more free rides courtesy of their college.

In an Oct. 29 letter to the city, Hellenna Terrell, St. Aug's vice president of student affairs, wrote that the college would not continue its UPASS partnership with the city for the rest of the 2004-2005 academic year.

Shaw officials said last week that they had not made a decision. But the city's acting transit administrator said school officials said they also plan to end their participation in the program.

Mike Kennon, city traffic engineer and acting transit administrator, said flashing a Shaw or St. Aug's ID to bus drivers still works, for now.

"There has been no interruption in their service even though we've had no contract with them since the end of August," he said.

The city based its original contracts with both schools on the number of monthly passes each school purchased. The schools then had the option to resell the passes at discounts.

Standard bus fare is 75 cents. UPASS charges employers and colleges less than half for each ride, 35 cents.

By the numbers

In September, as the school year opened, Shaw's 8,245 rides were nearly 3 percent of all CAT trips that month.

St. Aug's folks accounted for nearly 2 percent of all CAT riders in September, the latest figures available.

By comparison, NCSU's 23,264 rides that month were 7 percent of ridership.

With more than 30,000 NCSU students and employees compared with fewer than 5,000 for either Shaw or St. Aug's main campuses, both small colleges' ridership indicates a heavy dependence on bus transportation.

Both schools are on lines that go through Southeast Raleigh, the base of one-third of the city bus system's routes.

Contacted last week, Shaw student government president Daryl Garrett said he had not heard about the possibility of the program ending for Shaw students. Garrett said the program is popular with freshmen, who can't have cars on campus.

The city's former transit director encouraged both schools to consider adding a small "transportation fee" to tuition bills to cover the expense.

Without UPASS, St. Aug's freshman Eddie Kelly, 27, will pay 75 cents each way between school and his home near Southeast Raleigh. He has been using UPASS since the beginning of fall semester.

"The first couple of times I rode it, I was paying. I didn't know. Nobody told me. I was downtown with another student and they said, 'No, you can just show your ID and ride,' " Kelly said.

"That saves a lot of money right there, especially as a college student."

Kelly, a former Navy aircraft mechanic who attends St. Aug's on the G.I. Bill, said he wouldn't mind a few extra dollars tacked onto his academic fees.

"I could take that. Tuition goes up every year, so something like $5 isn't going to hurt."

And he thinks $1,700 a month footed by the college is worth it.

"For a student like me, every little bit helps. Everybody doesn't have money to pay $30 extra a month to get back and forth from school."

DECISION AHEAD
* Raleigh Transit Authority meeting

* 3:30 p.m. Thursday

* City Council chambers, 222 W. Hargett St.

UPASS AGREEMENTS
 ST. AUGUSTINE'S COLLEGE: The college is six months behind on $183.00 monthly installments. The expired contract also called for the college to provide UPASS in-kind marketing and advertising worth $75 a month. Based on ridership, a new contract would cost the school $1,683 a month.

SHAW UNIVERSITY: The university is four months behind on $172.50 monthly installments under a contract that also says the school will provide in-kind marketing and advertising for UPASS worth $70 a month. Based on ridership, a new contract would cost the school $1,780 a month.

STATE GOVERNMENT: Its renewal calls for a $33,068 annual payment -- or about $2,750 a month -- and in-kind marketing and advertising worth $12,000. In the 12 months of the program beginning in September 2003, state employees took 118,172 rides, or 3 percent of all bus ridership.

NCSU: The renewal includes an annual payment of $118,409 -- or about $9,868 monthly -- and in-kind services worth $18,000. In two years, the 482,944 rides were 7 percent of the bus system's ridership.

WAKE COUNTY GOVERNMENT: The program opened for county employees in July. The contract includes a $12,600 annual payment, or $1,050 a month.

CITY OF RALEIGH: City employees were offered free rides beginning in September 2003. Over the next 12 months, their 34,736 rides accounted for 1 percent of bus ridership.

Return to Headline List

Classroom on prairie

Dec. 5, 2004
News & Observer
By RICHARD STRADLING
 © Copyright 2004

Black snakes bed down in thick grass, and hawks hunt field mice at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences' new outdoor education center in West Raleigh. But there's no escaping the hum of city traffic.

The 38-acre center, called the Prairie Ridge Ecostation for Wildlife and Learning, lies just off Wade Avenue near the RBC Center, next to the headquarters of the N.C. National Guard. When the center is up and running next year, school groups and the public will learn how to be good environmental stewards in one of the busiest corners of the Triangle.

The state has long considered this prime real estate, part of a large chunk of state property between the Raleigh Beltline and Interstate 40. State officials eventually plan to sell or lease land next to Prairie Ridge for a private hotel and conference center.

But museum scientists and teachers thought the former cow pasture would make a good spot to teach people about solar power, conserving water and providing habitat for birds, amphibians and butterflies. Their plans include walking paths, a wind turbine, a pond with a bird-watching blind and a 40-person dormitory for visiting school groups.

"It's a great place for bird-watching and deer-watching," said museum scientist Alvin Braswell, standing in an outdoor classroom -- a big, screened room under a soaring roof overlooking a stream, completed this fall. Rain that falls on the roof goes into a cistern and is used to flush the toilets.

Science museum officials hope to complete the $2 million center in 2006; the museum has just begun seeking grants and donations to build the dormitory. It has spent $400,000 in federal grants so far, mostly on planning and to build the classroom and the pond.

On Saturday, volunteers gathered to plant white oaks, slippery elms and other types of trees in the bottom land along the stream. Jerusha Bloyer, a doctoral student in N.C. State University's parks, recreation and tourism program, said she liked the center's location.

"It's close to stuff," said Bloyer, 26, after tamping dirt around an American elm sapling. "It's easy to get to, and yet it's set away a little bit."

Volunteers planted at least two of each species of nearly every lowland tree found in North Carolina, so the trees would pollinate and produce fertile seeds.

"It's almost a little Noah's-arkish," said Jesse Perry, the museum's director of public programs.

Cows make room

Most of Prairie Ridge was pasture land used by NCSU's beef cattle herd. The center stretches out behind a laboratory and storage building that the science museum erected on a corner of the pasture in the late 1990s.

The building houses the museum's collection of dead fish, amphibians and reptiles -- nearly 2 million animals acquired over decades. They're preserved in jars of ethyl alcohol, a flammable liquid that's difficult to store safely at the downtown museum.

Braswell, a reptile and amphibian specialist, calls the collection "a combination of a library and a crime laboratory" that scientists use to study pollution and other changes in the environment.

The science museum's staff conceived of Prairie Ridge nearly a decade ago. But the project took off in recent years when a new leg of Edwards Mill Road cut through NCSU's pastures and forced the university to finally move the cattle herd to more remote land south of the city. With the cattle gone, the museum asked for the remaining pasture land behind its building.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources controlled the land. Bill Ross, the department's secretary, agreed that an environmental education center would fit in the mix of large institutions and open land in West Raleigh. Ross said walking paths will eventually connect Prairie Ridge with the N.C. Museum of Art's park to the east and with Schenck Memorial Forest and Umstead State Park to the west.

State officials have made ambitious plans for their land in West Raleigh, though few have come about. Before he left office in 2001, former Gov. Jim Hunt proposed using more than 200 acres off Wade Avenue for biotechnology research, an idea later abandoned when state universities made it clear they wanted their research to remain on their campuses.

Wildlife increase

Joe Henderson, director of the state property office, said the slow pace of change in West Raleigh left an opening for the environmental education center.

"It's an area in transition, and the transition is going slowly," Henderson said. "Probably that project might have been located somewhere else had there really been a stampede of development out there."

State maps still show a proposed hotel and conference center just south of Prairie Ridge, at the corner of Wade Avenue and Edwards Mill Road. Henderson said that project may get a boost from a commission the General Assembly created this year to identify property the state could sell.

Braswell is sorry the hotel land could not be part of Prairie Ridge, but he doesn't think the development will harm the environmental center. Prairie Ridge is designed to be self-contained, appealing to birds, rodents, insects and other species that can survive in a relatively small and isolated area.

Braswell is optimistic. Since the cows left and the grass has grown, he has seen a dramatic increase in wildlife, including fox, coyotes and a barn owl, among the first spotted in Wake County in 25 years.

Return to Headline List

Cabarrus' low jobless numbers deceiving

Dec. 6, 2004
Charlotte Observer
By ADAM BELL
 © Copyright 2004

Cabarrus County, epicenter of the state's largest mass layoff after Pillowtex Corp. closed last year, has just hit its lowest unemployment rate in three years.

But if you think that's cause for celebration, you're wrong:

The change reflects the growing number of ex-Pillowtex workers whose unemployment benefits finally have run out, local employment officials and others say.

The former sheet-and-towel-making employees no longer are counted in the unemployment ranks because they are not receiving benefits, said Carolyn Mays, who runs the state Employment Security Commission office in Cabarrus County.

The county's unemployment rate dipped to 4.6 percent in October, according to state data released last week. It was the same as the state's rate, and the lowest in the county since September 2001.

Pillowtex collapsed in late July 2003, and unemployment quickly reached 11 percent. Unemployment claims typically last a year or more, depending on whether a person returns to school for retraining.

But benefits began ending during the past summer for some, and they will end for hundreds of other ex-workers between now and the end of January, Mays said.

When asked what the options are for those people, she replied, "Hopefully find work." But hiring has been slow in the county.

Even if people land jobs, they likely make less than they did at Pillowtex. Pillowtex workers averaged $11.60 per hour, Mays said, compared with $8 to $8.50 for local jobs, mainly in service jobs .

They also may need additional training or consider whether they have to commute or move to get a job, N.C. State economist Michael Walden said.

The latest employment data show another worrisome trend for Cabarrus, he said: The size of the labor force -- people who are employed plus those listed as unemployed -- is shrinking.

It has dropped by about 4 percent since Pillowtex closed -- about 3,300 people from a labor force of 76,911. That reflects people who moved and those whose unemployment expired.

But Walden also saw some good news the slight increase in employed people in the past year. "That, at least, shows there's some economic improvement in Cabarrus County," Walden said.

Pillowtex was a textile titan for more than a century. Management turmoil, mounting financial pressure, overseas competition and a tough economic climate for textiles help doom it.

The Kannapolis company was the county's largest employer; and about 3,650 of Pillowtex's 4,800 N.C. workers were from Cabarrus. It had 7,650 total employees, many of whom had followed their parents and grandparents into the former Cannon Mills.

Kannapolis resident Butch Critz was a fourth-generation worker. He spent 32 years handling maintenance and safety for Pillowtex's predecessor companies, and later with the firm hired as a subcontractor at the mills.

After the plants closed and Critz lost his job, he said, "It was a long, hard time."

Unemployment benefits ended in October, but he praised the aid and encouragement from the local Employment Security Commission office. They helped sustain him, as did fellow employees.

"We just tried to stick together and help each other," he said. That paid off for Critz, who learned last week he got a maintenance and distribution job.

But more needs to be done for Pillowtex workers and others still seeking work, state Sen. Fletcher Hartsell said.

The Cabarrus Republican, for instance, would like to see programs that more aggressively match people with jobs.

He also said he is unaware of any funding available yet for his plan to help private businesses use public money to create jobs for displaced workers. That plan was approved as part of the General Assembly's budget bill.

Return to Headline List

Editorial: Big Business

Dec. 6, 2004
Winston-Salem Journal
By staff report
© Copyright 2004

The days when a college president was a full-time teacher who handled a few administrative details on the side have long passed. Modern university leaders are often more fundraisers, corporate executives and promoters for their schools than instructors.

That's clearly the lesson to be taken from Journal reporter Mary Giunca's recent story on Wake Forest University's search for Tom Hearn's replacement. Giunca noted that university presidents now must satisfy a great many constituencies: faculty, alumni, parents, students and trustees, to name a few. All have different expectations of the president, but one demand stands out: Raise money.

The growing demands that universities place on their presidents is but one indicator of how institutions of higher learning are changing. That broader change is evident in both Wake Forest's search and in news from other corners of the state.

Universities no longer exist solely to educate undergraduates. A first-rate university is expected to produce research that leads to new knowledge, products, services and treatments. It is expected to serve the community through institutions as various as a hospital, an indigent legal-defense center or an agricultural-outreach program. It is also expected to create high-paying jobs that will not pick up and move to China.

At the center of all this is the university president or chancellor who leads all of these missions.

So at N.C. State University, trustees are busy planning a new $3 million residence for their newly chosen chancellor. It's not that the lovely, cozy 1928 home on Hillsborough Street is inadequate living space for a prominent family.

It's that the house is too small and chopped up to serve the business and social needs of a chief fund-raiser.

N.C. State is following the lead of other state schools that have recently planned or built multi-million dollar homes for their chancellors. All are mansions befitting a king, or at least someone who entertains the kings of industries, foundations and grant-making government agencies.

Much is likely to be said about this rush to better living quarters for UNC-system chancellors at the same time that tuition is also rising. But the money comes from private donors, not from higher charges to students.

It would be wonderful if modern universities could house a president in a 1,500-square-foot campus bungalow so that he could play touch football each evening with students and teach the occasional philosophy course. No doubt, some small schools can offer that kind of life.

But in today's modern research universities like Wake Forest and N.C. State, home is not where the heart resides. It's where the money is raised.

Return to Headline List

Painter withdraws from world to focus on work

Dec. 5, 2004
Associated Press, Charlotte Observer; News & Observer; WCNC; Wilmington Morning Star; Winston-Salem Journal; WVEC, VA
By MARTHA QUILLIN
© Copyright 2004

At dusk on a Friday in early autumn, three dozen people are milling around the carpeted rectangle of Gallery C in a shopping center off Raleigh's Wade Avenue, at an opening of an exhibition of two dozen new paintings by Matt Cooper.

Men in suits and women in party dresses sipping white wine or ginger ale approach a painting, step back, move on to the next one. As they work the room, they catch up with neighbors they haven't seen in weeks, talking in worried tones about their children's school assignments, the new boss at work, when they'll ever find time to take the SUV in for service.

They look happy but distracted, exquisite but exasperated.

Do they realize Matt Cooper's paintings are of them?

Cooper, 44, has spent more than 20 years trying to portray the degrees of pain that afflict them, the affluent who could afford to — but probably won't — buy one of his paintings; the hourly worker, whose wages are spent on more mundane things; and the disenfranchised, for whom an evening of gazing at art is a luxury uncontemplated.

His paintings have been featured in nine solo exhibits at Gallery C, but also at the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, the Durham Art Guild, St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville, Va., and N.C. Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount. Cooper attends openings of the show, grudgingly.

"Fighting the good fight," he says of his decision to withdraw, hermitlike, from the world of his subjects and view it almost exclusively from a painter's perspective, in the hope of shining a healing light on what ails it. "I'm just trying to stop the war."

That's a metaphysical war, not the one in Iraq, although he has strong opinions about that as well. They are telegraphed through his paintings, especially the ones in this last show, which wrapped up a few weeks before the presidential election.

Some people betray everything they feel in their faces. Cooper empties his emotions out through tubes of oil paint. This is not a way to make a living; he is almost contemptuous of efforts to sell his work at any price. Painting, for Cooper, is life.

He considered a more normal one. An Army brat born at Fort Belvoir, Va., Cooper moved around with his family, living also at Fort Myer, Va., and in France and Germany. In the late 1970s, his father, Matthew Sr., retired from the military and the family settled in Littleton, about 65 miles northeast of Raleigh. It put Matt's mother, Delores, close to her Halifax County roots. Cooper spent his last year of high school there.

He went to the University of North Carolina, first as an art history major, then switched to journalism. He spent countless hours in the basement darkroom of the old journalism school, processing the images he had captured through the lens of a 35mm camera.

After graduation in 1982, he did a little stringer work, shooting occasional photos for The Associated Press and The News & Observer before taking a job at a small, black weekly in New Jersey.

As a photographer, he shot the truth, but newspapers can't always print the truth, Cooper says. They have to worry about offending subscribers, not all of whom want the pinched face of suffering served up with their orange juice.

"There is no work for crusaders," he came to believe. "This way, I can make up the story myself. I don't have to work around what's there."

So he came back to Littleton, to a studio-apartment fashioned from an outbuilding behind his parents' house on the edge of town, and traded 8-by-10 sheets of Kodak photo paper for the creamy white of canvas.

He has no phone, no television, no computer. If he goes anywhere, and he would rather not, he walks or hitches a ride with his parents. He's never had a driver's license. Except for occasional letters to friends, he lives in a sort of self-imposed exile, which provides him both the freedom to paint and, he says, the pressure to produce something important.

He listens to the radio, most often to public radio. He reads newspapers, novels and nonfiction. And he paints.

Cooper usually has two or three paintings in the works, often thematically linked. Each painting, or group of paintings, begins with a gut reaction to something he hears or reads, something that, to him, is contributing to the cumulative angst in the world. The result, in somber shades of blue, umber and the occasional flash of crimson, may be a rendering of the source of the pain or a sympathetic portrait of the one who feels it.

The show at Gallery C in September and October featured paintings inspired by recent events in U.S. politics: a cross-wielding George W. Bush as a ventriloquist doll of Dick Cheney and Bush as a court jester in a red argyle sweater and bell-tipped hat; a man in a business suit, crumpled in the corner of a tower, his pink slip on the floor beside him; a veteran, a woman, who has returned from combat with a Purple Heart, a severed leg and a bleak future living in the Pink Motel, Cooper's symbol for life on the way down.

The paintings of Bush are a deviation for Cooper, whose work rarely includes characters with recognizable names. Most of his paintings are populated with people whose faces are unknown but whose expressions and situations would be familiar to those who read the papers carefully, or do social work, or labor in law enforcement, or spend any time on the sidewalks of forlorn places like Littleton.

Most of his subjects are, like Cooper, sinewy; some look almost emaciated — or maybe just worn down, their rib cages and the muscles of their legs and arms like river rocks carved by a century of rushing water. They have been captured at a moment in their lives when their choices have collided with events of the world, sometimes cataclysmically. They are prostitutes, drug addicts, mothers who leave their babies in Dumpsters.

"He loves those people in his paintings," says Andrea Gomez, a Raleigh artist and longtime friend of Cooper's. "I mean, we should all be as loved as these figures are, and some of them are hard to love."

Since she took him as a client 14 years ago, Charlene Harless, owner of Gallery C, says she has watched Cooper evolve as an artist. When she first met and offered to represent him, she says, she was most impressed by his passion, both for his painting and for keeping his work unpolluted by commercialization. They finally found common ground in the desire for an audience for the paintings: They both wanted young people, especially those who feel alone in this world and tortured by it, to see them.

Their working agreement requires Harless to handle all the details of showing and selling the paintings, including pricing, which Harless says she does at a rate below what the paintings are worth. If Cooper had formal training, or if he had a longer resume of shows outside her gallery, or if he could cite collections of his paintings in museums or other corporate or institutional venues, she could demand more than the $600 to $4,000 she asks for each canvas.

To a degree, the prices are almost moot because the paintings are so hard to sell. These are not landscapes that add ambiance to the condo at the beach. They are what is referred to in art circles as social realism, and Cooper's role in the genre is a sort of cross between documentarian and muralist. His paintings have been compared to artists who made their names through the support of the federal Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and '40s.

"These are very potent paintings," says Harless, who has taken on the job of getting exposure for Cooper's paintings with the zeal of a missionary. "I think he is a visionary. I think he sees things with great clarity. And a lot of what he sees is what people don't want to see."

Some years, Harless doesn't sell any of Cooper's paintings. In good years, he earns a few thousand dollars.

During the exhibit, Harless sold five Coopers, including a series of three portraits. Of the two other pieces, one was a resale.

When she does manage to sell one of Cooper's paintings, Harless says, it often boomerangs. With greater frequency than any other Gallery C artist's work, Cooper's paintings actually come back, with the owner asking her to resell them. The paintings are beautifully composed, Harless says, and technically excellent, using light and shadow and color skillfully to tell their stories. But they're a little too raw for most people's living rooms.

Not that it matters to Cooper, who can always put a few more miles on his broken-soled work boots. If he has to, he can ask his parents for money to mail-order paint and canvas, which they are happy to give as payment for his taking care of the yard, planting all the flowers that adorn it, fixing the plumbing when something springs a leak. The arrangement keeps him painting. He has to keep painting.

Cooper doesn't like to talk about his paintings. It goes against some sort of artist's code. But when he does, he says it's not about art. It's about the truth: finding it, wrestling it onto the cloth in a way that is so plain and so eloquent that anyone who sees it has to say, yes, that's right, that's exactly how it is.

Michael D. Schulman has a Cooper painting that came that close to the truth. Schulman, who teaches in the sociology and anthropology department at N.C. State University, has studied rural communities in the state, especially mill towns whose residents were left struggling for jobs and identities as the textile industry began its slow-motion collapse in the 1980s.

Schulman says Cooper encapsulated the grief of such a place when he painted "Milltown," which shows a disabled man in a wheelchair, hooked up to oxygen, and a lanky woman smoking a cigarette standing on the porch next to him.

It hangs in his office on campus, where young people can see it.

Return to Headline List

Workers vent in Chapel Hill

Dec. 5, 2004
News & Observer
By MATT DEES
 © Copyright 2004

CHAPEL HILL -- For years, public employees in this college town have disrupted meetings, marched and shouted from megaphones to protest what they see as poor working conditions and low pay.

To hear them tell it Saturday, their efforts haven't done nearly enough for those on the lower and middle rungs of the employment ladder at UNC-Chapel Hill or at Town Hall.

The main reason, they told a panel of political and civil rights leaders Saturday, is a state law that prohibits collective bargaining for public employees.

Government employees can organize, but without bargaining rights they have no power, local members of the International Worker Justice campaign argued.

The three-hour Chapel Hill public hearing, which featured personal stories of mistreatment, is the third in a series of such events statewide. Similar meetings have been held in Rocky Mount and Durham.

At least four more are planned for next year. Those will lead up to a fall push to persuade legislators to repeal the law making collective bargaining illegal.

"We're going to be filing a complaint with the International Labor Organization," said Ashaki Binta, organizing director of Black Workers for Justice."The right to collectively bargain is an international right. We're going to put North Carolina on trial because of this issue."

David Zonderman, a history professor at N.C. State University who specializes in labor issues, said research he and other colleagues have conducted show that states with strong public unions have lower employee turnover. Avoiding the costs -- retraining, loss of productivity, etc. -- that accompany high turnover rates offsets what governments pay in union wages, Zonderman said.

"There's kind of a balancing effect," he said.

The complaints made Saturday are not new.

Members of UE Local 150, the union that represents public workers across the state, have long said supervisors threaten and harass employees.

William Shuler, a former housekeeper who was fired in May after complaining about a chemical he said caused respiratory problems, said Saturday that anyone who raises concerns is targeted by university officials.

University officials said Shuler was fired for failing, on several occasions, to do what a supervisor asked of him.

Shuler saw it as retaliation for blowing the whistle on a chemical that he said made some workers cough up blood.

The town of Chapel Hill also has come under fire this year.

A group of black public works employees filed nine grievances, saying black employees were passed over for promotions on numerous occasions and instructed to do dangerous work during an ice storm, among other complaints.

Town officials said they have addressed some of the allegations, though others are still being investigated.

Return to Headline List

Poinsettias bloom for Christmastime

Dec. 3, 2004
Rocky Mount Telegram
By Dorothy Y. Lewis
 © Copyright 2004

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, with all the colorful poinsettias and Christmas trees sparkling in Twin Counties houses and businesses.

Poinsettias are native to Mexico, said agricultural extension agents at N.C. State University. The plant was brought to the United States in the early 1800s by Joel Roberts Poinsett, former American ambassador to Mexico, they said. The plant may have become a Christmas symbol as a result of an old Mexican legend that a girl and a boy presented a poinsettia to the baby Jesus.

Poinsettias and live Christmas trees can be kept beautiful throughout the holiday season if residents take special care of them, said extension agents for the Edgecombe County Cooperative Extension Service.

"It is possible for a properly cared for poinsettia to remain beautiful in the home for two to three months," said Extension Agent Joe Dickens Jr. "Place the plant in a well-lighted area of the house to maintain good bract color and avoid leaf drop."

The term bract, which is a modified leaf of the plant, is used to describe the colorful part of a poinsettia, Dickens added.

"The yellow cyathia in the center of the bracts are the true flowers," he said. Bracts can be red, pink, white, salmon or bicolored, Dickens said.

During the day, a poinsettia needs to be in temperatures between 70 to 75 degrees, he said. At night, the plants should be stored between 60 to 65 degrees to maintain colorful bracts, Dickens said.

"Avoid letting the plant touch cold window panes because chilling can occur," he said. "Avoid temperatures above 75 degrees, because this will cause premature bract fading," he said.

Dry soil is the primary reason why poinsettias wilt and die, Dickens said.

The plants should be watered so that the soil remains slightly wet, but not soggy, he said.

"If the pot is covered with decorative foil, remember to punch a few drainage holes in the bottom," Dickens said. "Pour off any water which collects in the saucer. If the plant has been in your home for over 30 days, a half strength fertilizer solution should be applied monthly."

Poinsettias are not poisonous, but it some people may experience an allergic reaction to the plant, he said.

"Those who are sensitive may experience minor eye and skin irritations if they come in contact with the milky white, latex sap," Dickens said.

When buying a Christmas tree, there are tests for determining whether it is fresh, said James Pearce, Edgecombe County Extension director.

"First, check the condition of the needles by placing a needle between your thumb and forefinger; then bring your fingers together," Pearce said. "If bent gently the needle from a fresh tree should bend rather than break."

Lifting a tree a few inches off the ground and dropping it down on its stump is another way to determine a tree's freshness, he said.

"If outside green needles fall off in abundance, the tree may not fresh," Pearce said.

It is important to keep a live tree watered, he said.

"A live Christmas tree, when kept watered, will be as hard to burn as a damp leaf," Pearce said. "Be sure to keep it hydrated until the tree comes down."

The tree stand should hold at least a gallon of water, he said.

"A tree can absorb as much as a gallon of water in the first 24 hours and one or more quarts per day thereafter," Pearce said.

Avoid using combustible decorations to reduce the chances of the tree catching fire, Pearce said.

"Check all electric lights and connections," he said. "Do not use lights with worn or frayed cords and never use lighted candles."

Return to Headline List

Raleigh nursery hosts poinsettia trials

Dec. 4, 2004
News 14 Carolina
By Jamie French
© Copyright 2004

(RALEIGH, North Carolina)-- This time of year poinsettia sales are booming. Traditionally red is the most popular color, but what about strawberries and cream or lemon snow? One Tar Heel nursery is gaining worldwide attention for its unique varieties of the Christmas shrub.

Homewood Nursery owner, Joe Stoffregen said, "It's not your grandmother's poinsettia!"

'Typical' would be the traditional red poinsettia. Millions are grown in North Carolina each year. Red is by far the most popular hue of the holiday season. They account for 60% of poinsettia sales. But, what about a Santa Claus white poinsettia? Or, even hot pink for a change?

Stoffregen continued, “They are the part of the market that makes it fun for us as a grower. Anybody can grow a red poinsettia! For us, growing all of these unusual varieties, it keeps it interesting for us year after year!"

Interesting, alright. Check out some of the names- Plum Pudding, Flirt, Jingle Bells, Red Elf and Lemon Snow?!?!?

Stoffregen added, “It's sort of a yellowy, green poinsettia."

Yes, Lemon Snow.

The unique varieties are all part the national poinsettia trials. Homewood Nursery in Raleigh is the only commercial grower in the nation that takes part in these trials each year. The nursery works with NC State, Purdue, and University of Florida researchers, growing about 120 unique varieties of the poinsettia for breeders around the world.

Stoffregen continued, "It is just a coming together in an academic setting for them to evaluate new varieties and also in a commercial setting that's open to the public to also have the new varieties."

It's really a trial and error process. Some are winners, others- not so much. Nursery staff tries to get a feel for what the customer likes best. Folks can vote for their top five picks. Last year Plum Pudding took the honor.

German poinsettia breeder, Stefan Reiner said, "You need to look at the plants in the country you want to sell them. That's why trials at Homewood are very important. His opinion is always very appreciated because he's selling to consumers and can give you feedback that you normally would have to wait 2-3 years to get."

Stoffregen added, “That information is shared in trade magazine and at meetings that we have throughout the rest of the year. The results of what consumers in Raleigh and this area prefer goes out literally all over the world."

Garner resident, Kristen Newton said she's impressed by the trial poinsettias, but not quite ready to take one home yet.

She said, "I stuck with the traditional, but I did vote for some of the funkier ones- the pink ones and the spikey ones. I had no idea there were so many types of poinsettia."

It's a little known fact that the Tar Heel state is the second largest producer of poinsettias in the nation. Last year the state sold about 6 million poinsettias.

If you’d like more information on the Homewood Nursery in Raleigh, check out its website at: Homewood Nursery and Garden Center

Return to Headline List

Sound front park plans underway

Dec. 4, 2004
Outer Banks Sentinel
By JULIA LEDOUX
 © Copyright 2004

Work on developing a recreational park near the Wright Memorial Bridge is moving forward.

A task force comprised of representatives from the town, the Martin's Point Homeowners Association and Roanoke Island Commission charged with designing the site met Wednesday to discuss a draft goals and vision statement for the property.

"We wanted to build on the information we presented to the town council in the past with input from various segments of the community," said Roanoke Island Commission Executive Director Scott Stroh.

The effort to develop the 1.45-acre sound front tract near Martin's Point is a partnership project between the Roanoke Island Commission which owns the property and the Town of Kitty Hawk, which recently annexed the site into the town.

Kitty Hawk Town Planner Tricia Huffman said she was particularly pleased that a representative of the Martin's Point Homeowners Association serves on the committee.

"I believe it is important to involve all stake holders early in the process and keep lines of communication open so that accurate information is disseminated, and people have an opportunity to provide their input," she said.

Town council members conditionally approved a partnership agreement between Kitty Hawk and the Roanoke Island Commission in August which allows the site, near the Wright Memorial Bridge, to be developed into a park complete with a kayak launch, crabbing dock, public water access and restrooms.

Huffman stressed that the park's amenities and structures -- whatever they may be -- will be well maintained, environmentally sensitive and neighborhood friendly.

"We are fortunate that the design process will be led by professionals from N.C. State University experienced in the field of landscape architecture," she said. "I am confident the result will be a place the community will use often and be proud of. After all, this is the gateway to the Outer Banks. Personally, I can't wait to watch the sunset."

Under the agreement, the Roanoke Island Commission retains ownership of the property and the town serves as the lead agency for grant applications for funds needed to support the planning, permitting and development of the site.

According to the draft statement, the park is meant to provide the community and visitors to the Outer Banks with a "publicly accessible, multi-use, sound-front park that includes recreational and educational opportunities for people of all ages."

The commission acquired the property in 1997 with the goal of turning it into a multi-use and publicly accessible sound front park. However, plans to develop the property have not been without controversy. Council members, in a 3-2 vote March 1, agreed to annex the tract following a public hearing in which several residents spoke out in opposition to a proposed water taxi service that would connect the park to Manteo.

The draft goals and vision statement appear to leave open the possibility of some type of water taxi service at the site.

"Sound front walking pier for recreational and educational use and for the possible use of a water transportation vendor," it reads.

The town will provide fire and police protection for the park and handle the basic maintenance of its grounds and facilities. The commission is responsible for the long-term upkeep and repair of all park infrastructure, including its docks, educational and informational signage and buildings.

Stroh said the next step in the process is the hiring of consultants to design the park.

"We hope to begin meeting with interested consultants in January," he said.

The task force anticipates that work on the park itself could begin sometime next spring.

"We don't want to rush into it without getting a consensus from the community," Stroh said.

"Everybody's excited about moving ahead," he added.

Return to Headline List

Flagging leaf prices cloud farm futures

Dec. 4, 2004
Associated Press; News & Observer; Gwinnett Daily Post, GA; Myrtle Beach Sun News, SC
By staff report
© Copyright 2004

Tobacco growers dealing with big changes in their industry got a grim economic forecast this week: sharply lower prices for next year's crop because of the end of price supports and a glut of leaf from Brazil.

"We are in a transitional stage," said Harnett County's Benny Lee, among the farmers at a N.C. State University conference on tobacco market conditions. "Farmers are undecided about what they can do in the future."

Growers were told that prices already are reflecting the $10.1 billion federal quota buyout approved this year.

The cost of renting quota -- the federal license to grow tobacco -- was part of the formula for tobacco price supports. Economists say they expect the tobacco prices to fall by the 40 to 60 cents a pound that many farmers paid to rent quota from others who no longer farmed.

Leaf that sold for roughly $1.85 a pound this year will sell for average prices ranging from $1.35 a pound to $1.50 a pound in 2005 under the contracts cigarette-makers and leaf dealers recently began offering, said Blake Brown, an agricultural economist at N.C. State.

Farmers will decide over the next six weeks whether to sign contracts for those prices.

The sudden price adjustments by tobacco companies appeared to surprise even Brown, who had projected a decline in prices to $1.42 to $1.49 a pound over three years after a buyout.

Brown said Brazil is affecting the prices because of its large crop of 1.6 billion pounds of flue-cured tobacco this year, which is three times the size of the crop in the United States.

"I think prices have adjusted fairly quickly in this period of transition," he told the Winston-Salem Journal. "Perhaps the reason for that is that there's just a lot of flue-cured tobacco in the world right now."

Brown said he expects that total flue-cured tobacco acreage will decline in 2005.

"We're going to have a lot of farmers who exit this year. We have a lot of farmers who are of retirement age and have been waiting for this buyout," he said.

Return to Headline List

Job growth falls short after gains of October

Dec. 4, 2004
Charlotte Observer
By Kerry Hall
 © Copyright 2004

Job growth falls short

after gains of October

U.S. employers slowed their hiring and workers' incomes fell last month, sharply contrasting October's robust job growth, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Retailers in particular hired fewer people than expected despite the holiday season, something Wachovia Corp. economist Jason Schenker called "an oddity."

Employers added 112,000 jobs in November, well below the 200,000 some economists had forecast. Economists believe the economy needs to create between 100,000 and 150,000 jobs each month to keep pace with population growth.

The nation's unemployment rate dipped to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent. It has hovered around these levels since July. Average weekly wages for private-sector workers fell $1.25 to $533.47, the drop fueled in part by a decrease in workers' hours.

"It was disappointing after that very encouraging release we'd seen in October," said Lynn Reaser, chief economist with Banc of America Capital Management, referring to the 303,000 jobs created that month.

Still, Reaser and others say signs point to the economy continuing to grow -- slowly.

"There's no fear of a recession," said Wachovia's Schenker. "Jobs are being created."

Nationally, the fastest job growth came in health care and hospitality, professional and technical services, and computer-related, engineering and architectural services. Hiring in manufacturing, a mainstay of the Carolinas' economy, was flat.

Compared with the rest of the nation, the Charlotte economy continues to lag in its recovery. But Friday's jobs report, and another survey released earlier this week, point to potential bright spots for the region.

North Carolina's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in October, the latest month for which data is available. South Carolina's unemployment rate that month was 6.5 percent.

Industrial leasing -- particularly of warehouses -- is on the rise in the Carolinas, especially in metropolitan areas, according to the Federal Reserve's latest survey of business conditions, known as the Beige Book.

Wachovia chief economist John Silvia called that news, released Wednesday, "very positive."

"We're not building new, but we're making more efficient use of space," Silvia said. "That means the trucking business is hauling a lot more goods to different places and storing them in warehouses off I-77 and I-85."

Real estate market analyst Melanie Sizemore of Carolinas Real Data agreed industrial leasing activity is up locally.

"It's a hopeful precursor to growth throughout the local economy," she said.

Construction spending remains strong, Silvia said. And Michael Walden, an economist at N.C. State University, said tourism will pick up as people's fear of domestic terrorism subsides.

Kenny Colbert, president of the Employers Association, a human resources consulting firm in Charlotte, said many companies continue to "selectively hire." But some have told him they are thinking of significantly boosting staff.

A few companies recently told Colbert they may hire as many as 30 to 50 new workers.

"I haven't heard that in years," Colbert said.

Retail Sales

Sales at stores open for more than a year rose 1.7 percent last month, compared with a 3.7 percent gain in November 2003, the International Council of Shopping Centers said this week.

Return to Headline List

Christmas tree farmers having a jolly season; strong demand outstripping supply

Dec. 4, 2004
Asheville Citizen-Times
By John Boyle
 © Copyright 2004

When it comes to real Christmas trees, the American consumer just can't get enough.

"We sell mostly to mass merchandisers like Lowe's and Home Depot, and we've pretty much sold everything we've got," said Phil Leaman, who works his family's Christmas tree farm in Avery County.

That's more than 200,000 trees his farm has shipped. It's indicative of the huge economic impact Christmas trees have in North Carolina, which annually sells about 6 million trees, generating more than $100 million in sales.

"It's been an excellent season for Western North Carolina growers," said Jeff Owen, area Christmas tree extension specialist with N.C. State University's research station in Fletcher. "It's certainly been a sellers' market for the past couple of years, and that could go on for a couple more."

Although the remnants of hurricanes Frances and Ivan damaged hundreds of thousands of seedlings in Christmas tree country - mostly the northern mountains of Western North Carolina -the high winds and water spared most of the more mature trees. And this year's heavy rainfall - nearly 50 inches through early December - boosted tree growth and appearance.

Artificial trees have made major inroads into the industry - since 1999, the number of households that display real trees has dropped by 33 percent, from 35.4 million to 23.4 million. The number of households with fake trees increased nearly 40 percent between 1990 and 2000, from about 36 million to 50 million, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. Many artificial trees now even come pre-lit and decorated.

But local growers aren't worried. A survey conducted for the National Christmas Tree Association projects U.S. consumers will buy about 24 to 24.5 million real Christmas trees, up from 23.4 million trees last year.

"They say this is the year of the artificial tree, but it's sure not showing from all the people we sell wholesale trees to," said Paul English, who owns a Christmas tree farm with acreage in Avery and Mitchell counties.

Mountain growers are enjoying strong demand for their product, the Fraser fir, sometimes called "the Cadillac of Christmas trees" because of its soft needles, durability and wonderful scent.

Local growers have to compete more with farmers in northern states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, which use their colder climates to grow Fraser firs, the mainstay here in the North Carolina. But overall, the market remains strong.

Competition from up north

Doug Hundley, an agent with the Avery County office of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service who works with Christmas tree growers, says trees from northern states are a factor in the market, but not a huge one. Fraser firs, which are indigenous to the southern Appalachian mountains, grow best above 3,000 feet, although farmers in the North can grow them because of a cold climate.

"Over the past 20 years, states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin - even up into Canada - they have learned to grow them and they have the climate to grow them," Hundley said. "But whether that's having a significant impact on our market is very debatable. They're here, but it's generally accepted that the trees grown in that area are not the quality of ours because we have more favorable weather and soil conditions. So I don't think we're at great risk of losing our market."

Owen said some local growers have partially filled big orders with Frasers from Northern states but those states are not making major inroads outside their own region. North Carolina's Fraser firs, on the other hand, are sold in all 50 states and several foreign countries.

North Carolina Fraser firs dominate the markets in the Southeast and much of the Midwest. Noble firs, grown primarily in the Pacific Northwest, dominate the Western market and some of the Midwest.

Big trees the hottest trend

Particularly hot this year are big trees - those 8 feet and taller. It's a trend driven by bigger homes with high ceilings.

"I have a friend who I sold a load of big trees to in Savannah, and he said, `If you'll let me have them next year, I want every big tree you've got,'" English said.

That vendor sold two trees, 14 and 16 feet tall, respectively, for $260 apiece.

Brevard resident Beth Pickelsimer is one those big tree fans. She was buying a 10-foot tall Fraser fir from English's stand at the WNC Farmers Market Wednesday afternoon. She and her family always buy real trees for "the smell and the natural beauty."

"We've always grown up with natural trees," Pickelsimer said. "We have little artificial trees for the kids that they decorate, the ones that already have the lights on them."

But they wanted a big, real tree for the main room and didn't mind paying $100 for it. Many tall trees go for $130 to $150, so Pickelsimer felt she got a great deal.

Avery County tree grower Charlie Cantrell puts it this way: "Cathedral ceilings are good for business." Like a lot of growers these days, he's trying to hold onto his six or seven-foot trees to allow them to grow to the next - and even more lucrative - level.

"I've started growing bigger trees for the Asheville market," Cantrell said. "There are a lot of bigger homes here."

Demand booming overall

Christmas tree growers are working to keep up with demand for the standard size 6 and 7 foot trees, too.

"For about the last five years, we've been running an undersupply - there's been more market than trees," Hundley said. "We've had very favorable market conditions the last five years, and that's allowed for some slight price increases. That's been fortunate, because throughout the '90s there were virtually no price increases."

The growers cost can easily run to about $12 a tree, Leaman says. Most of the trees on the market, those 6- and 7- footers, are about 13 years old.

Buyers typically will be looking at about $6 a foot for Fraser firs up to 7 feet, so an average retail tree will go for about $35 to $45. The bigger trees like the one Pickelsimer bought for $100 "grow exponentially in value," Hundley said.

"They require a lot more work, and a lot more time," he said. "As far as the price, it's what the market will bear. There are not that many bigger trees available."

Contact Boyle at 232-5847 or JBoyle@CITIZEN-TIMES.com

Facts about North Carolina Christmas trees

Source: N.C. Christmas Tree Association

Choose-and-cut tree farms growing popular

If you're like Vicki Tingen, you like to choose your own tree right there on the mountainside and watch as it's cut down.

"It's a blast," said Tingen, who splits time between homes in Hickory and Burke County and bought a tree at Sam's Nursery in Avery County this week. "It was really fun because you do the hayride and they take you out there where you can pick a tree. We just enjoy the view, the camaraderie, family time together."

Christa Poore, who runs the operation with her husband, Sam, says business is booming, an indication of the growing popularity of choose-and-cut farms. Many families, like Tingen's, have made it an annual tradition.

"We run over 600 families through our tree farm every year," she said. "The Friday after Thanksgiving was really busy, and this coming weekend is going to be good, too."

North Carolina has about 400 choose-and-cut Christmas tree farms, with many of those concentrated in Avery, Ashe, Mitchell and other mountain counties.

About 25 percent of all trees sold in North Carolina are from choose-and-cut operations, and annual sales are estimated at $6.5 million, according to the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Prices run about the same as trees sold at stores - about $6 a foot.

"It's been growing hugely," said Jeff Owen, area Christmas tree extension specialist with N.C. State University's research station in Fletcher. "A lot of growers are selling out, in terms of the trees they have available."

Frequently asked questions about Christmas trees

Question: Is it OK to buy a tree that's losing its needles?

Answer: Some natural drop of older, interior needles is normal. However, if the color is faded, the bark of the outer twigs is wrinkled and the green, or exterior needles easily fall off at a gentle touch, it is excessively dry.

Q: Do real trees present a serious fire hazard?

A: The National Fire Protection Association tracks fires and their causes. According to their data, of all residential fires, Christmas trees, both real and fake, are ignited in less than one-tenth of 1 percent (.1 percent) of all the home fires. Trees that are kept fresh during the holiday season using the care tips are extremely difficult to ignite.

Q: Is a fresh cut really necessary before putting a tree in a water stand?

A: Always make a fresh cut if possible. After time, the cut stump gets a crusty sap seal and air in the water vessels, which lessens a tree's capacity to absorb water. A fresh cut will reopen the pores that take up water. Only a half-inch cut is necessary.

Q: What if I forgot to make a fresh cut off the base of the tree before setting it up?

A: If a fresh cut was not made the tree will still take up water, but at a reduced rate. Hot tap water in the tree stand increases water uptake in some trees.

Q: Should I add bleach, aspirin, fertilizer or other things to the water to make trees last longer?

A: No. Research has shown that plain tap water is by far the best. Some commercial additives and home concoctions can actually be detrimental to a tree's moisture retention and increase needle loss. Water holding stands that are kept filled with plain water will extend the freshness of trees for weeks.

Q: How large should my water stand be?

A: Choosing a large capacity stand is one of the most important steps to maintaining tree freshness. Check the water level frequently since trees can drink large amounts of water each day, particularly pre-cut trees during the first week of display. Generally, a tree can use up to one quart of water per day for each inch of stem diameter. For instance, a stand that will hold a 4-inch trunk should hold at least one gallon of water with the tree in the stand.

Q: What kind of tree stand should I use and how big should it be?

A: The most important characteristic is water capacity. You should also make sure the stand "fits" the tree - if it is too big or too small it might cause the tree to tip over. Do not trim the sides of the trunk to fit it in a stand - trees drink from the sides near the trunk.

Source: National Christmas Tree Association.

Return to Headline List

Voices From the Triangle's Sports World

Dec. 5, 2004
News and Observer
By staff reporter
 © Copyright 2004

George Williams, St. Augustine's College athletic director and Olympic coach

'There's a lot of pressure on everybody right now, and I'm trying to put my hand on it, the fact that everybody is so temperamental. In the '70s, '80s and '90s, this was such a relaxed country, but everybody is so tense now; I don't know if it's from 9/11 or the war or what, but it's carrying over to everything else, sports in particular because it's a marquee event. Just like a plague, you have to stop it before it gets worse. We are going to have to start controlling our fans. If we have to videotape the fan section all the time, it might have to come to that. You have to punish them just like you punish the athletes. We just have to send the people involved up town.

'I go to basketball games, and I see fans calling officials names, calling players names. We should have enough monitors to say, "You've got to go out. We don't tolerate this." I'm meeting with my coaching staff on Dec. 6 and am going to articulate all this. We've had very few problems. We had one with St. Aug and Shaw getting into a confrontation, but I want to make sure that never happens to us again.'

Jason Brown, senior center for the UNC-CH football team

'You're supposed to be mature in everything you do, especially on the field with football players. The coaches tell us every week to handle ourselves maturely. We represent not only ourselves but our organization and our university. We have to uphold that. We have to be gentlemen and uphold that in everything we do.

'In past experiences, I've gone up against very tough, opposing crowds. They've thrown bottles, spit at us, called us every single name in the book. I have never retaliated, no matter how much they might have slandered or scorned me. As far as fans approaching or attempting to inflict danger or bodily harm on you, I don't know exactly how to confront that. I hope no athlete would ever be placed in that situation where he would have to defend himself. In most cases, players are larger than fans. If a player retaliates, he's looked negatively upon, simply because of his size and stature. When a fan doesn't act maturely, it's mostly a losing situation for the player.'

Bucky Waters, former N.C. State basketball player and Duke University coach, now a TV sports analyst

'The media's partly to blame. You guys report the sensational; we do, too. Just a few years ago, a fan in Baltimore was legend for his insults, and he would sit right behind the visitors bench, and the media made him a hero for trashing visiting players and officials. ... If the camera's on it, we've gotta talk about it. That's a story, and we are consumed with sports. I turn around when I'm broadcasting and watching these guys in $800 suits screaming and yelling -- you think they're gonna have a cardiac. I say, "Get a life. These are kids. Lighten up. So he made a dumb foul or missed two free throws."

'In [pro] basketball, you have people paying $1,000 to sit on the floor. They can reach out and touch a player throwing the ball inbounds. The players' faces, their emotions, you get the sweat on you in these seats. Maybe it's too close in a volatile game, and basketball is a volatile game. These are the world's greatest athletes, and they're on a high wire, and they're vulnerable to peaks of anxiety. I don't think we ought to be in a cage, but in Europe and many places around the world they do play in cages because the nature of basketball gets people lathered up. [The violence] is still going on, but at least the players are protected.'

John Silva, professor of sport psychology at UNC-Chapel Hill

'It was just a matter of when something like that was going to happen in athletics since it's happening in many s