Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 24

Asbury Park Press CI INSIDE Trouble Shooter New owners of restaurant in Belmar don 't need a steady diet of rain. page C4 10.72 Close 1,240.15 13.04 Close 5,966.77 2.70 Close 700.64 1 .4 4 Stocks: Listings begin on page C6 Wednesday, Oct. 9, 1996 5 Toll 1 1 Coecerreet will sell tonuMdim Company to stay on as tenant operation with 40 to 50 workers and has signed a lease to use 40,000 square feet, Gross said. Gross said negotiations are under way with other companies and that he expects the building to be fully occupied, with up to 800 workers, by the first quarter of 1997. "It was a natural for us," Gross said.

"We had plans to build additional buildings on our property, and we saw this as an opportunity to expand." G.B. in business since 1975, owns 11 office buildings and 11 shopping centers in New Jersey, Gross said. The firm's partners are Gross of Monmouth Beach and Henry H. Bloom of Rumson. Among the company's properties are the across the street from the Concurrent property.

Upon completion of the sale by the end of the year, Gross said the company will make the Concurrent property an extension of the complex, renaming it Monmouth Park Corporate Center II. Some tenants have already been lined up to occupy the facility, Gross said. Programmer's Paradise, a software wholesaler and retailer based in Shrewsbury, has signed a lease to use 31,000 square feet and will be relocating to the building by the end of the year, he said. Officials at Programmer's Paradise could not be reached for comment yesterday. Concurrent, which used to employ hundreds at the site, will keep a manufacturing 1 flJ IH1U 1 1 Stocks move lower NEW YORK: The Dow Jones industrial average made another short-lived move above 6,000 yesterday as stocks, particularly technology shares, fell on some profit-taking in advance of the quarterly flood of earnings reports.

The Dow dipped 13.04 to close at 5,966.77, having quickly surrendered an early 30-point gain that had lifted the blue-chip average just above 6,010. The Nasdaq composite index fell 10.72 to 1,240.15 as bellwether technology issues, the dominant force behind the Nasdaq's rebound from July's sell-off, suffered some heavy profit taking. Standard Poor's 500-stock index was off 2.70 to 700.64. Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 4-to-3 margin oh the New York Stock Exchange, where volume totaled 434.66 million shares as of 4 p.m., up from Monday's pace. More stock sold PHILADELPHIA: Campbell Soup Co.

heir John Dorrance III has sold another $320 million worth of stock in the Camden, N.J., food company, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday. Combined with his sale of $244 million worth of stock in September, the sale has reduced his stake to 7.8 percent of Campbell's outstanding shares, according to a filing Monday with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Dorrance said he might sell additional shares. One of Dorrance's attorneys, Tycho H.E. Stahl, said he had no comment on the sale.

Even with the reduced holdings, Dorrance and eight other family members control more than 50 percent of the company's stock. Dorrance is one of three children of Jack Dorrance, the longtime chairman of Campbell until his death in 1989. Analysts said the sale would have little effect on the company. "I don't think he has any real say at the company so congratulations to him," said Timothy Ramey, who follows Campbell for Deutsche Morgan Grenfell in New York. I Dorrance, 52, has renounced his U.S.

citizenship to live in Ireland, where estate taxes are much lower than in the United States. Motorola plans cuts SCHAUMBURG, Motorola Inc. plans to take a large fourth-quarter charge to implement a cost-cutting plan that could include layoffs, company officials said yesterday. The cost-cutting will result in a fourth-quarter charge of "tens of millions of dollars," said officials, who declined to be more specific. Most of the cuts likely are to be made on the semiconductor side of the business, which apparently contributed most to the 58 percent drop in third-quarter earnings.

Motorola's stock, oneof the most actively traded issues on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, fell to The company early this year began cutting costs by halting building expansion and new Construction. It also reduced employee work schedules and began some layoffs, said Ed Gams, Motorola director of investor relations. Yields on notes fall WASHINGTON: Yields on 10-year Treasury notes fell in yesterday's auction to the lowest level since February. The average yield was 6.502 percent, down from 6.535 percent at the last auction on Aug. 7.

It was the lowest rate since 10-year notes sold for 5.649 percent on Feb. 7. The notes will carry a coupon interest rate of 6V2 percent with each $10,000 in face value selling for $9,998.50. By RAYMOND FAZZI BUSINESS WRITER OCEANPORT The former headquarters of Concurrent Computer Corp. a once bustling place that has been nearly emptied by corporate downsizing is on the verge of being sold to a company that wants to fill it with up to 800 workers.

The owners of Concurrent announced yesterday they have signed an agreement to sell the building to G.B. L.L.C., a real-estate investment and management company in Freehold. Concurrent said the sale price for the 2 Crescent Place facility is $5 million, but Carl P. Gross, one of two partners in the firm, said the figure is "not even half of our investment" when renovations and costs are considered. G.B.

Ltd. owns Monmouth Park Corporate Center, a complex A. Sonia Concepcion checks school bus '13 '1 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ORANGE Rocco Meola sits at his cluttered desk, paging through want ads and financial publications. He's looking for jobs lots of jobs. Meola wants employers with high worker demand and low requirements for education and experience to move people off-the welfare rolls into the working world.

His diligence has paid off for hundreds of people like Sonia Concepcion. A 27-year-old high school dropout from Puerto Rico and mother of four, Concepcion was on welfare for a decade before coming to Meola's First Occupational Center of New Jersey. She had few job skills but she did have a driver's license. After completing the center's six-week course to earn a commercial license, she began driving a school bus part-time for $9 an hour. "I'm going to be able to buy my girls what they want and need and be able to pay my bills and not have to wait for the welfare check to pay them," Concepcion said.

"I don't like to be on welfare, but sometimes you can do nothing else, and you have to stick there until you get an opportunity, WW WW 9'fl im 111 liifi ifr Mi 1 1 y'iJlfMM ffUMiiim- she drives in West Orange, thanks to the First Occupational Center of New Jersey. Pathmark and Rickef Home Centers shopping center on Route 9 in Freehold Township, and Town Center, a shopping center at Route 35 and West Park Avenue in Ocean Township. Monmouth Park Corporate Center is currently fully occupied, Gross said, with about 15 businesses and more than 800 workers. Among the tenants is which re-, cently renewed its lease on 80,000 square feet of space. The Concurrent site, Gross said, consists of foiir interconnected buildings, each of 1 1 1 1 1 wmcn was uuiu over a penou sireiuwig uuni the 1960s to 1983.

The complex sits on 31 acres, while Monmouth Park Corporate Center covers 43 acres. Together, the sites make up a significant ratable in a municipality that over the years Please see Concurrent, page C3 New law cuts into profits at 2 thrifts BYSAMALI BUSINESS WRITER A NEW FEDERAL law aimed at replenish-' ing the saving and loan industry's badly-depleted deposit insurance fund is taking a bite out of third quarter earnings at two thrifts that operate in New Jersey. Under the law, signed by President Clinton on Sept. 30, agreed to pay a one-time $4.7 billion charge to recapitalize the Savings Association Insurance Fund, or SAIF. The SAIF insures customer deposits up to $100,000.

Wyomissing, Sovereign Bancorp, said this week it expects to report a one-time, after-tax charge of about $17 million when it releases its third quarter earnings on Oct. 21. And yesterday Egg Harbor City-based Collective Bancorp. reported a one-time charge of $16.65 million following the announcement of its third quarter profits for the period ended Sept. 30.

Collective re- ported third quarter earnings of $4.37 million or 21 cents per share, a nearly 66 percent drop compared to the same period last year. The thrift blamed the drop largely on the onetime charge. Without the onetime charge, Collective said its earnings were $14,878 million, or 73 cents The earnings of Sovereign Bancorp and Collective Bancorp are reduced to help bail out the saving and loan industry's deposit insurance fund. per share, compared to $13.19 million, or 65 cents per share, for the same period last year. Collective, which has branches in Monmouth and Ocean counties, reported total assets of $5,252 billion this quarter, up from $5,026 billion one year ago.

Total deposits increased to $3,343 billion, compared with $3,186 billion in 1995. As a result of the one-time charge, the premiums Collective pays to SAIF for deposit insurance should fall by 76 percent, from the current $7.6 million to $2.1 million as of 1. The bank estimates the reduction in insurance premiums will result in increased annual earnings of about 14 cents per share, meaning the bank will recoup the one-time charge in about 3.5 years. Yesterday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. voted unanimously to adopt rules to revive the SAIF.

The thrift deposit insurance had been weakened over the years due to a declining number of and large payments thrifts were paying on rescue bonds. Despite the insurance fund's problems, the financial nightmare of the 1980s has largely ended. The industry now is healthy Please see Thrifts, page C3 Associated Press pi ple on welfare the people considered unplaceable, who don't have a high school education, don't have work experience and I'm still getting them a job in eight weeks and that's like magic," said Kris Retlin, the agency's program coordinator. The agency targets its training toward three jobs it knows are available home health aides, commercial drivers and boiler operators. It is looking to expand into other areas such as security and warehouse work.

"I think we've made believers out of people," said Meola, president and chief executive of First Occupational. "Especially when you say you can find jobs for $10 or $12 an hour." First Occupational has enrolled 275 people since 1993 in its three welfare-to-jobs programs. Of them, 28 washed out, 86 are still being trained and 161 graduated. All but one of the graduates is working. In that time, an additional 225 people entered other programs at the center for lower skilled work; about 90 of them now hold steady jobs.

"First Occupational is certainly one that's going in the direction that is absolutely Please see Work, page C3 the state Ratepayer Advocate Division, endorse a continuation of the way area codes have always been expanded in New Jersey, splitting the areas geographically. The BPU also has raised the possibility of putting off any changes at all by revising the way telephone numbers are distributed to. telephone companies. A Bell Atlantic spokesman said the company wants a decision as soon as possible because the supply of numbers in the 201 and 908 area codes could run out by the middle of next year. "The urgency is real." Bell Atlantic spokesman Tim Ireland said.

V. si 4 We work with the toughest group of people on welfare the people considered unplaceable, who don't have a high school education, don't have work experience and I'm still getting them a job in eight weeks and that's like magic, Kris Retlin FIRST OCCUPATIONAL CENTER OF NEW JERSEY like I did." Meola's center is a success story as the nation undergoes -wrenching welfare reform, ending six decades of open-ended assistance to the poor. Last August, President Clinton drastically changed the welfare system, signing into law a lifetime limit of five years on welfare benefits and a requirement that able-bodied adults go to work after two years. The center had a long tradition of working with the developmental disabled and physically handicapped when it expanded its program in 1993 to train welfare recipients for jobs. "We work with the toughest group of peo numbers and strategies for minimizing the negative impacts" of the proposals, BPU spokeswoman Wendy Kaczerski said.

The BPU is confident it will make a decision at its Oct 23 meeting, she said. The area code issue has been a source of controversy all year. Bell Atlantic-New Jersey, the state's local telephone monopoly, maintains there is a telephone number shortage in the state of crisis proportions. The company wants to overlay new area codes in the 201 and 908 area codes, which would force people to dial 10 digits on all their calls. Emerging competitors of Bell Atlantic, and State puts area codes decision on hold ZD NEW YORK Money rates for yesterday as reported by Dow Jones Telerate as of 4 p.m.: Telerate interest rate index 5.31 0 Prime Rate 8.25 Discount Rate 5.00 FEDERAL FUNDS MARKET RATE High Low Last 5.125 5.0625 5.0625 T-BILL RATES 3-month as of Oct.

7 4.96 6-month as of Oct. 7 5.07 T-B0ND RATES 30-year 6.79 MERRILL LYNCH READY ASSETS 30-day average yeld 4.88 By RAYMOND FAZZI BUSINESS WRITER WILL MILLIONS of New Jersey telephone customers be forced to dial three extra digits on all their calls? Or will they have to cope with having their numbers changed? For the answers to these and other questions, the state is going to have to wait. The state Board of Public Utilities, which had been planning on making a decision today on proposals to add to the state's area codes, has decided to put the issue on hold again. "It's just that there are some final discussions under way regarding ways to conserve i i.