Local Economy

What would Buck say?Here's a wake-up call for supporters of Kansas City's Negro Leagues Baseball Museum:

The city fathers in Baltimore are backing a $4.1 million plan to build a Negro League museum there to draw tourists and rejuvenate a section of the town.

Revenue rebound From Greg Hack and the Associated Press
The U.S. casino business, hit by double-digit revenue declines in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J., hopes it’s on the road to recovery.

Workplace columnist Diane Stafford filed this report:

A sampling of 44 Kansas City area employers shows that their total health benefit costs
for their employees rose 5.6 percent this year.

The primarily large workplaces spent an average of $8,376 per employee on health benefits, according to a survey released Wednesday.

The relatively modest increase followed four years of cost increases above 6 percent

One of the Kansas City area's main economic engines continues to run in low gear.

Practically every major indicator tracked monthly by the County Economic Research Institute was trending worse in September, according to the latest report.

Here are some of the key stats compiled by CERI, which then compares the data with the average for the same month over the previous five years.

Unemployment:

Stone Canyon Pizza Co. is expanding with a third location set to open in Zona Rosa in early March.

Kevin Heaton, who owns the restaurants with Joe Gallagher, said he likes Zona Rosa’s traffic and promotions.

Dos Hombres

After three-and-a-half years of operations, Dos Hombres closed Saturday in the River Market.

Owner R.J. Samuels blamed the economy saying sales dropped more than 30 percent since the recession.

By Suzanne King
Special to The Star

Lenexa-based Rush Tracking Systems has been acquired by Pharos Capital Group, a private equity firm based in Nashville and Dallas, the companies said Monday.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the companies said the deal includes a capital investment that will allow Rush, which specializes in outfitting warehouses with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, to grow at an accelerated pace.

Sergio Acosta, left, and Steven House

Midtown’s retro Lava Room is going retro again — moving from a hippy to a hip Mad Men vibe.

When it opens at 5 p.m. tonight the space at 3810 Broadway will be known as The Gusto Lounge, the "bar that made Midtown famous,” playing off the Schlitz slogans.

After more than 36 years of operation, the metro's only Waldenbooks will close in Crown Center by late January.

Parent company Borders Group is closing 200 of its small-format bookstores to focus on its more profitable superstores.

Life in the pitsThe Kansas City Board of Trade has sold a membership for $360,000.

The Class A membership allows an owner to trade all of the exchange's contracts, including the hard red winter wheat futures contract.