Author: NH Business Review Staff

The Last Word

Have you ever noticed that politicians almost never come right out and tell us they’re not going to answer a question? They generally avoid one by pretending to answer it — which has, I’ll admit, a certain entertainment value, like…

Off the Clock

Most people know about the wonderful art collection at Manchester’s Currier Museum of Art, but unique to its collection is the Zimmerman House. The Manchester home — designed by world-renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright — is considered one of the…

Manchester fractional aircraft operator meets new FAA ruling

Alpha Flying Inc., a Manchester-based fractional aircraft operator, has met the new 91K FAA regulations that allow fractional operators to continue to do business under private, rather than commercial, charter rules. “The new Part 91 rules avoid onerous, airline-like restrictions…

Downtown dining guide a hot commodity

Downtown Manchester’s dining scene has grown tremendously over the last few years, so to help you eat your way down Elm Street and beyond, Intown Manchester has created “Downtown Dining in the Queen City,” a dining guide featuring 67 restaurants…

A new sign of redevelopment rises at Baldwin’s on Elm

Award-winning cuisine helped Baldwin’s on Elm make a name for itself, and now that name shines even more brightly above the restaurant’s entrance at 1105 Elm St. in Manchester, thanks to a new facade purchased with the aid of a…

N.H. nurse training program exceeds expectations

Results of a $3 million nurse-training program has exceeded all original expectations and created new partnerships to upgrade the skills of New Hampshire’s nurses, according to the Workforce Opportunity Council. The Nursing Workforce Partnership Project is completing its three-year program…

Debate over logging takes root in North Country

Is logging threatening the future of the Great North Woods? That’s the question two key industry groups will try to resolve with a study of recent timber-cutting patterns. The New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association and the Society for the Protection…

Q&A with: Tourism guru Dick Hamilton

The White Mountains of New Hampshire have more visitors each year than Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks combined, Dick Hamilton notes proudly. Both the numbers and the natural beauty of the region are impressive to the 69-year-old North Conway native,…

Is a severe labor shortage in the cards?

By 2010 the number of U.S. jobs will outstrip the number of workers by 10 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And by 2030, the agency reports, that number may jump to 35 million. But some economists…

Trademark owner should be master of his domain name

More than 15 years ago, Magic Johnson, the Hall of Fame basketball player, assigned his trademark rights to the “Magic Johnson” name to June Bug Enterprises Inc. At the time, JBE registered the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark…

VC funding pace in N.H. continues to slow

Editor’s note: Beginning with this issue, New Hampshire Business Review will present a review of quarterly venture investing trends for companies located in the state. The research and analysis for this information has been provided by Howard Smith of Chartworth,…

N.H. exporters set a global pace in 2004

With solid gains in foreign demand for locally made goods at the tail end of the year, state exports were much stronger overall during 2004 than in recent years. Foreign sales of goods from New Hampshire’s companies, adjusted for seasonal…

Farm stand’s competition: Grafton County inmates

Daryl Grasso has enjoyed her surroundings in rural New Hampshire since she and her partner Harold Brown bought a 35-acre former dairy farm in the Woodsville section of Haverhill a few years ago and began growing vegetables for sale at…

I-93 widening project picks up speed

The New Hampshire House last month approved borrowing the money to widen Interstate 93 from Manchester to Salem in six years. Senate approval is likely, and Gov. John Lynch favors the legislation. Meanwhile, the feds may issue a favorable record…

Norton on Real Estate

Last month this column was titled “An upbeat outlook for 2005, with some key caveats.” It concluded that office job formation, jobs which will fill up vacant office buildings, would be the keystone for successful investment in the office sector.…

Commericial Notes

Q. I am a successful single-family homebuilder and have an opportunity to acquire a parcel of land that can be approved for a 20,000-square-foot office/warehouse building that I would like to build, lease out and retain for long-term investment. What…

Legal issues unclear in gambling case

Technology and the growing pari-mutual pool The January indictment of two officials of the Lakes Region Greyhound Park in Belmont on federal charges relating to participation in an allegedly illegal offshore Internet and phone gambling operation raises several questions about…

Top Shelf

You’ve got a little place on the Cape, but the inconvenience of all the airport hoopla leaves you spent before you even touch down on the tarmac. Try a timeshare. No, not as in a condo — as in a…

UNH students get a real-life look at marketing

There’s a reason an upper-level course at the University of New Hampshire - formally known as Marketing 762 - has been nicknamed by students who take it “Marketing Boot camp.” The course has been part of the school’s curriculum for…

Know your child in choosing a ‘good’ college

Parents often ask me what they can do to get their child into a good college. They ask the question as if it was a secret pass code, and as an insider I have the answer. When I’m asked this…

Improving Performance

The Patriots and the Red Sox are at the top of their respective sports. How did they get there? Practice, practice, practice makes champions and championship teams. Do you ever practice or are you so good at what you do,…

PR Flashpoint

Getting publicity for your business, product or services doesn’t have to be hard — and it can actually be fun. I know that many editors will tell you that most news releases end up in the round file, but if…

Brass Tacks

Q. I’ve got a great idea for a new business and I can’t wait to get started. What’s my first step? A. The fortunes of any firm are determined by its lead entrepreneur’s ability to focus his or her proprietary…

Why are some pols afraid of teaching civics?

Patriotism. We’re all for it, aren’t we? Some New Hampshire legislators think if the state forces all students to just recite the Pledge of Allegiance (with its not uncommon recitations of “for Richard Stands, invisible...”) an obedient army of patriots…

New deferred compensation rules have immediate effect

The American Jobs Creation Act - signed into law last October by President Bush — imposes new restrictions on a wide range of compensation arrangements. The act adds a new Section 409A to the Internal Revenue Code that applies to…

The Lynch plan falls far short of the hype

Amidst great bipartisan fanfare, the Lynch education funding plan was rolled out last month. Among the accolades that have been showered upon it are that it is a “new paradigm,” that it is a “permanent solution” to the Claremont case,…

Independent voters are not second-class citizens

In passing a bill last month to make it more cumbersome for independent voters to vote in a primary, the leadership of both political parties in the New Hampshire House of Representatives have declared that nearly 40 percent of New…

Thanks for your support

To the editor: On behalf of the Bow School to Career Partnership, our sincere appreciation is extended to the many business leaders who partnered with the Bow School District to offer Junior Achievement programs to our students. These business leaders…

Utilities Watch

Efforts to place liquefied natural gas terminals along the East Coast have run into opposition, but that has not stopped companies from continuing to seek approval to build the facilities. LNG is expected to fill an anticipated U.S. shortfall by…

Cook on Concord

In the last couple of weeks, the temporal and immediate crises have taken a back seat to passages of more historic moment. Two significant state lawmakers and citizens have died. Their effect on New Hampshire and contributions to our state…

The sky is no limit for business recruitment effort

The New Hampshire Business Resource Center has joined with Independence Air in an unprecedented partnership aimed at stimulating business expansion in the state. The airline, which flies out of Manchester Airport, recently presented the center with 10 free airline ticket…

Insecurities

The state Bureau of Securities Regulation is seeking at least $17.5 million in penalties from American Express Company, alleging its American Express Financial Advisors unit illegally rewarded financial advisers who steered clients toward underperforming in-house mutual funds. The bureau said…

SB 110 under the knife

Gov. John Lynch and a bipartisan group of 13 state senators have announced a compromise that they say will reform the controversial Senate Bill 110 insurance law. The governor at a press conference said the compromise will reverse the spike…

Flotsam & Jetsam

Just visiting His name is on everybody’s short list of potential GOP presidential candidates in 2008, so it won’t take anyone by surprise when former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani shows up in New Hampshire a couple or 50 times…

Targeted aid plans perpetuate funding ‘gap’

A number of proposed targeted education aid plans under consideration claim to help “needy” or “property-poor” communities by providing additional funding to them and not providing funding to “property-rich” communities. The New Hampshire Citizens’ Voice Project analyzed the effect of…

Last Word

One of the eternal battles that unite New Hampshire Republicans and Democrats is the preservation of New Hampshire’s status as the first primary state in the presidential nomination season. In-state and out-of-state pundits talk about our primary as part of…

Don’t make it easy for employees to steal from you

“If you make it easy to steal from you, chances are someone will,” observes security consultant Frank W. Abagnale. He should know. Abagnale, who devotes himself these days to educating the public about fraud risks, is the one-time con artist…

Design work begins on Blue Cross building

Engineers and architects from The H.L. Turner Group Inc. in Concord have begun working on the designs of the long-awaited retrofit of the former Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Hampshire building in Concord. The six-story, 120,000-square-foot structure has…

RE/CON Briefs

Landlords blame taxes for rent hikes Landlords in Laconia have told the Laconia Citizen that steadily rising assessments that have their tax bills going up 25-30 percent each year are among the major reasons local rental rates are becoming harder…

Is there a bright side to a shipyard shutdown?

For years, conventional wisdom has had it that if either Pease Air Force Base or the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard closed, the world as we know it would end. It didn’t happen when Pease closed, and now, some are predicting that…

Talkin’ baseball at Manchester dinner

Concord resident and former major league pitcher Bob Tewksbury got a standing ovation and an award for his many years of service to the Boys and Girls Clubs of New Hampshire, Red Sox hurlers Bronson Arroyo and Lenny DiNardo were…

Cook On Concord: Educational funding, one more time

In the early 1990s, after approximately 20 years of avoiding, remanding and hoping that education-funding cases would go away, the Supreme Court issued its famous Claremont I decision, which declared that it was the state’s obligation to provide for an…

Flotsam & Jetsam

Parsing the sentence The only thing missing were the violins playing softly in the background when Allen Raymond, the former Republican consultant, was sentenced to five months in jail for his role in jamming Democratic telephone during New Hampshire’s 2002…

Voters to decide Merrimack outlet proposal

The Merrimack Planning Board has voted 5-2 to send to voters a zoning amendment that would allow the development of a controversial premium outlet center in town. Roseland, N.J.-based Chelsea Property Group Inc. has proposed building a 650,000-square-foot, 135-store premium…

‘Critical access’ label aids rural hospitals

Nearly all of New Hampshire’s rural hospitals have become certified as critical access hospitals, a designation that could save them as much as 30 percent more in Medicare payments — increased reimbursements that may well mean the difference between life…

Tax Issues: Corporate loans can be a taxing proposition

The Internal Revenue Service is increasingly scrutinizing loans between corporations and shareholders. Many of these loans are undocumented, don’t call for payments, don’t provide for interest and probably won’t ever be repaid. If this happens to be the scenario for…

Utilities Watch: Multi-state broadband system eyed for North Country

According to a recent Associated Press report on rural broadband and regional economic development efforts in northern New England, economic development officials are concerned that rural areas without broadband Internet access are being left behind as governments and companies across…

Franklin firm helps companies conquer world markets

Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. But Larry Harper, president of Ballantrae International Ltd., will tell you the world may need a little help in hearing about your mousetrap…

Organization expert Kathleen Kendall-Tackett

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire’s Family Research Laboratory and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. But before she got inside people’s heads, she got into their trash -- literally.…

Filling the vacuum

Patience appears to be paying off for the city of Manchester, as the construction of a $40 million residential/retail development continues on what had long been its most conspicuous vacant lot. “The marketing of it, finding the right fit for…

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Education, Government, Health, News, Politics

NH’s rankings reflect the good and the bad

There are any number of reports, surveys, and rankings that show how well — or how poorly — New Hampshire is doing on a range of issues. Everything from education funding to safety to having a baby to business opportunities to student loan delinquency — it seems everything can be measured in one form or another, often as a yardstick against other states.

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Opinion

Don’t stop at yellow lights

While major economic indicators are serving as caution tape for many organizations that are hesitant to make investments or take on risk right now, there is a very bright green light out there. There is also a fast-moving vehicle on the road: AI, and the frenetic adoption pace at which people now use it to find essential information. Organizations need to adapt to be seen and referenced by these tools.