By: Tim Rausch on July 11, 2012 - 9:56am - Add new comment
The first half of the summer home sales season is a slight improvement compared to the last two years.
The greatest number of homes are bought and sold between May and August. And the Greater Augusta Associaton of Realtors released its June data on Tuesday, giving us a look at May and June, which tend to be the hotest months for homes changing hands.
This year, agents have sold 1,008 homes in those two months, up from 955 last year and 1,000 in 2010. Because of the Great Recession, 2009 is really low – 779 homes in May and June.
By: Tim Rausch on June 20, 2012 - 12:28pm - Add new comment
Kimberly-Clark Corp. is trying to come up with a greener Kleenex.
Pun intended.
Kimberly-Clark, which makes diapers and paper towels in Beech Island, has instituted a new environmental plan that is supposed reduce the amount of wood it uses from forests by half by 2025.
By: Tim Rausch on June 14, 2012 - 2:15pm - Add new comment
Trees are coming down and that means the journey to erect a Starbucks plant is underway.
Land preparation work started in the Augusta Corporate Park off Mike Padgett Highway for the coffee company’s $172 million facility.
Walter Sprouse, executive director of the Augusta Economic Development Authority, said it will take a year to get the plant finished.
Starbucks said that it is aiming for a January 2014 start for making ready-to-drink beverages and some of the ingredients for Frappuccino for North America and Europe.
By: Tim Rausch on June 7, 2012 - 8:28pm - Add new comment
Spending is an economic indicator. One way to measure spending in the Augusta area is through the sales tax receipts coming back to the city.
With four months of 2012 in the books, the city is 1 percent ahead of last year.
Year-to-date to April, Augusta collected $12.40 million in local sales tax, and $12.76 more in SPLOST.
In 2011, it collected $12.29 million in LOST and $12.59 million in SPLOST.
By: Tim Rausch on May 31, 2012 - 7:48pm - Add new comment
An Augusta technology firm landed a big fish.
The California Emergency Management Agency picked ESi’s software to replace its current emergency response information system.
ESI, headquartered in downtown Augusta, has software called WebEOC which is a disaster dashboard that lets fire, police, hospitals and anything else involved in an emergency to communicate. The company announced Thursday that it was successful in the state’s competitive procurement red tape.
By: Tim Rausch on May 24, 2012 - 10:56pm - Add new comment
Change is coming for Cytec in North Augusta.
By the end of the year, it should be a new owner.
The New Jersey-based chemical company started the process of selling off its coating resins business – chemicals used in paint.
The North Augusta facility and about 16 others across the globe make coating resins, which is Cytec’s largest business segment, but one that has been struggling due to weakness in housing and manufacturing.
By: Tim Rausch on May 17, 2012 - 8:21pm - Add new comment
For the first time in its 15 year history, First Bank of Georgia’s parent company issued a dividend.
Georgia-Carolina Bancshares paid out 4 cents per share on Tuesday.
Dividends are payments made by a corporation to its shareholder. Up until now, profits have been re-invested in the company.
Now, why do you pay out a dividend when you’ve never done it before?
By: Tim Rausch on May 10, 2012 - 8:23pm - Add new comment
A Michigan company’s acquisition of Solo Cup is now complete, months before anticipated.
The buyout by Dart Container is valued at about $1 billion. The companies thought it would be summertime before the merger got through the red tape, but it happened this month.
The new owners of the Solo Cup plant in Augusta say that they don’t have any changes in mind this year. Integration of the companies is going to be done in a “thoughtful and analytical manner.”
By: Tim Rausch on May 4, 2012 - 9:35am - Add new comment
Augusta State University reports slight improvement in the tourism industry for Augusta in the months before the Masters Tournament.
The business college’s tourism index was 0.8 percent higher for the first quarter.
ASU says hotel occupancy was 54 percent. Employment was close to 21,000. And revenue per rooms was near $50.
The numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Smith Travel Research.
By: Tim Rausch on April 27, 2012 - 9:19am - Add new comment
A snapshot of the economy in 2010 came out this week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the county-level personal income data.
The average wage per job was an eye-opening number. You would think that by virtue of the large collection of big homes in Columbia County, it would rule the wage department in our six-county metro area. Nope.
Aiken County had an average wage per job of $46,561. (It could be the effect of the Obama administration stimulus funding for Savannah River Site, because the number of jobs shot up from 2009 to 2010.)
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