Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 74

ST. PETERSBURG TIMES THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1995 BUSINESS DIGEST Pinellas officials DUDOve to imrnpirove anopoGi: ff adities -ST" 7 UV DOW DOLLAR YIELD ff ISf pi IT 30 INDUSTRIALS VS. JAPANESE YEN 30-YEAR U.S. BOND 4404.62 83.91 7.00 13.84 0.46 0.06 MarketsEconomy The $8-million project would include covered walkways and more parking to help the airport grow. Times files The most common complaint from passengers at St.

Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport is about the lack of covered walkways. County commissioners informally agreed Wednesday with a plan to build covered passenger walkways, a feature that Air South a major carrier at the Pinellas airport has said it wants. Air South has threatened to move to Tampa International, saying surveys show people prefer the bigger airport. Commissioners took no vote, but agreed at a work session with airport director James Howes' plan for an $8-million upgrade. If commissioners formally approve the idea, the money would come from By NED SEATON Timet Staff Writer Howes last month traveled to the Columbia, S.C., headquarters of Air South, to tell the company the county could build the walkways and kick in $200,000 to promote the airline.

Please see AIRPORT 6E bonds repaid by airport revenues. Four walkways would be built by the end of next year, Howes said. Other improvements would include additional parking. "It looks like a wise move," Commissioner Bruce Tyndall said. CLEARWATER Pinellas County officials want to fix up St.

Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport to make sure it won't lose airlines such as Air South. After 33 years, judge still lays down the law Looming trade war worries home front American dealers who sell Japanese luxury cars say tariffs could put them out of business. DuPont faces a judge tested by many tough, and controversial, cases. Bloomberg Business News sS Wall Street Journal 1 1 1 1 F4 11 1 V-'i I I -M' 1 I Dow breaks 4,400 Blue chip stocks rose to record levels Wednesday for the third consecutive session, but the broad market turned lower as bond prices softened, pushing interest rates higher. The Dow Jones industrial average finished 13.84 higher at 4,404.62, passing 4,400 and breaking its record high set just the day before.

In other economic reports: The economy is growing at a slower pace than last year in most regions, the Federal Reserve said in its closely watched periodic survey of business activity. The survey released Wednesday also showed inflation pressures were benign, even though the prices of goods in early stages of production are rising. High mortgage rates and a slowing economy dampened demand for existing homes during the January-March quarter and kept the value of American residences virtually unchanged from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. TREASURY YIELDS FALL. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes fell in Wednesday's auction to the lowest level in 15 months.

The average yield was 6.61 percent, down from 7.54 percent at the last auction on Feb. 8. The notes will carry a coupon interest rate of 6V2 percent. A total of in notes was sold out of bids totaling NOTE TO READERS. Prices for some mutual funds were unavailable for today's listings because of problems experienced by the agents who calculate prices for some funds.

Some companies had technical problems and missed the deadline for reporting their prices to Nasdaq. Tampa BayState EXEC SAYS GRACE WON'T BE BROKEN UP. The new leader of W.R. Grace Co. said Wednesday he's committed to selling its health care business quickly but has no intention of leading the company's breakup.

Albert Costello told the annual shareholders meeting in Boca Raton that a offer last week for Grace's National Medical Care Inc. from the subsidiary's top executive "forced my hand" on that issue. DISNEY TO BUILD AMPHITHEATER. A amphitheater will be built near Kissimmee by Walt Disney World, Osceola County and international developer Nederlander, officials said Wednesday. The facility for concerts, stage productions and community events is to be completed in time to celebrate Disney's 25th anniversary celebrations beginning in 1996.

PHOENIX SIGNS UP AIRLINE. St. Petersburg-based Phoenix Information Systems Corp. will operate a reservations center for Eastwind Airlines a start-up, low-fare carrier based at Trenton-Mercer County Airport in New Jersey. The reservation center being set up in Clearwater will employ 10 people, all of whom have been selected.

Nation CBS NOT FOR SALE. Despite widespread speculation to the contrary within the media industry, CBS Inc. chairman and chief executive Laurence A. Tisch said Wednesday the company is not for sale. Tisch, whose family is CBS' biggest shareholder, made the assertion to reporters after telling the annual shareholders meeting he would stick to the company's policy of declining comment on rumors about a takeover.

DENNY'S CLEARED. Denny's did not discriminate against four women involved in a racial confrontation at a Denver restaurant that touched off arrests and protests, a report prepared for the U.S. Justice Department concluded. The report is a step forward for the restaurant chain, which is being monitored by the Justice Department because of discrimination complaints. Earnings COLUMBIA-HCA HEALTHCARE CORP.

The nation's largest for-profit hospital chain bucked a national trend of declining hospital admissions, helping it to $358-million in first-quarter profits, 24 percent above the $289-million earned before one-time expenses in the same period of 1994. Net earnings in the year-earlier period were $95-million, including expenses related to Columbia's purchase of HCA-Hospital Corp. of America. FEDERATED DEPARTMENT STORES INC. The company said Wednesday it lost $57-million in the first quarter because of in expenses for merging with R.H.

Macy Co. Inc. and consolidating two store divisions. The net loss per share was 31 cents for the quarter ended April 29, compared with earnings of or 25 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Best Mortgage Rate The best 30-year fixed mortgage rate in the Tampa Bay area as reported Wednesday was 7.750 percent with 0 points offered by Sun Bay Mortgage (813) 796-7040.

The rate is based on a $100,000 loan with a 5 to 1 0 percent down payment. For additional mortgage rate information, see the list of rates offered by some area institutions in Saturday's Home Garden section. The information is supplied by National Financial News Services in West Chester, Pa. COLUMBUS, Ga. Pretty much every day for the past 33 years, Judge J.

Robert Elliott has followed the same lunchtime routine. He puts on his wool hat same one, summer or winter shuffles from the federal courthouse above the post office over to Rosemary's Restaurant and eats half a chef's salad. "Once in a while I have soup," Elliott said. "But only if it's not too spicy." Lunch may be the only bland thing about the 85-year-old Elliott. In more than three decades as U.S.

district court judge for the Middle District of Georgia, he repeatedly has drawn attention to himself, whether by rulings in civil rights cases that embarrassed the president who put him on the bench or by freeing Lt. William Calley, the soldier convicted of massacring Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War. Now Elliott, the oldest full-time federal judge in the country, is in the spotlight again. He has ordered DuPont Co. to prove it didn't suppress key evidence in a trial he presided over in 1993.

A fraud finding by the judge could cripple DuPont in 230 pending cases involving its controversial herbicide Benlate and end up costing the big chemical company billions of dollars. The unusual hearing is in keeping with the judge's bent for moving things through his Columbus, courtroom with dispatch. Puffing his pipe as he sits in his chambers before a portrait of Robert E. Lee, Elliott seems to wonder what all the fuss is about. "I'm not a controversial judge," he said.

"I've simply tried controversial cases." The son of a Methodist minister, Elliott taught high school chemistry to pay his way through Emory Law School in Atlanta. After graduating in 1934, he set up a private practice in Columbus. He later served a dozen years as the Georgia House floor leader and stumped for Herman Tal-madge when he was running for U.S. Senate. When Talmadge won, he rewarded Elliott by recom- If President Clinton winds up punishing Japan by slapping a huge tariff on imported luxury cars, Lexus dealer Ronald Salhany of Tampa has a final request.

"I want (U.S. Trade Representative) Mickey Kantor and President Clinton to look at my 102 employees in their eyes and tell them what he is about to do," the 45-year-old Salhany says. "Bill Clinton and his company are about to put us out of business." It's the same story across the country for American dealers who sell Japanese luxury cars: They worry that they are about to become casualties in a trade war. The specific dispute over access to the Japanese market for U.S. auto and auto-parts makers has nothing to do with such dealers or their customers.

Yet the administration is expected to announce sanctions later this week that could all but slam the door on imports of Japanese luxury cars. That's because the Clinton administration is weighing punitive tariffs of 25 percent to 100 percent on such cars. (Wednesday, Clinton ordered an unfair-trade complaint filed against Japan with the World Trade Organization and authorized publication of a list of punitive tariffs against Japanese automobiles and parts. Clinton said the administration was finalizing a list of Japanese goods that could be subjected to U.S. trade sanctions.) Five years ago at Salhany's dealership, Lexus of Tampa Bay, the mainline Lexus luxury sedan, the LS 400, sold for about $35,500.

Since then, inflation, a 10 percent U.S. luxury tax on expensive cars and the skyrocketing yen have raised the price for an LS 400 to about $50,000. A tariff of 25 percent to 100 percent thus would push the sticker price to somewhere between $62,500 and $100,000. "Would you buy a $100,000 Lexus?" Salhany asks. "In 60 days we would be out of the new-car business.

In used cars, we'd sustain two or three years, and we'd be out of business. This would be the most devastating thing that could happen to this country." Or at least to Salhany, who has invested more than $20-million in his luxury-car franchise since 1989. About 250 Lexus dealers, 150 Infiniti dealers and 280 Acura dealers operate in the United States. Many of them argue that it will be American employers and employees whose jobs are on the line, even if the AP Judge J. Robert Elliott, wearing his trademark wool hat, leaves the federal courthouse in Columbus, in 1993.

Now 85, he is the oldest full-time federal judge in the country. mending that President John F. Kennedy appoint Elliott a federal judge. Elliott remembers what a Su- J'm not a controversial penor Court judge told him on the day in early 1962 he was sworn in. Judge.

1 Ve SUTlply tried "I was told then that I was more ntroyciol pocm U.S. District Court Judge J. Robert Elliott ujuiai 111aL via Limit v. uv. again," Elliott recalled.

The Superior Court judge was right. Not long after Elliott donned Please see JUDGE 6E Please see TRADE 2E Home Shopping offers its shareholders hope Busch Gardens silent on expansion plans By MARK ALBRIGHT Times Staff Writer earnings by this fall. The flashy presentation showed new logos and new products and how more scheduled programing would be phased into HSN's 24-hour-a-day Home Shopping Club, which is beamed into 65-million homes around the country. The company also showed slide after slide of new merchandise buyers who were recruited in the past year, name dropping all the familiar department store, designer and mail-order-catalog names where they used to work. "We have built a world-class merchandising organization in the past year," said Gerald Hogan, Home Shopping's chief executive officer.

"Wheth- Please see SHOPPING 6E open in the summer of 1996. The site plans may have been filed, but "they are still in development" and could be changed, said Busch Gardens general manager Joe Fincher in a prepared statement. The building permit, which is for site improvements, not rides, envisions a $5-million project. Busch did confirm that another roller-coaster thrill ride is "being considered." Officials also said a museum, train station and shopping area are under consideration for what could end up just inside the park's new main gate. Busch has gotten a big attendance boost over the past two years from the arrival of Kumba, a world-class steel roller coaster touted as the fastest in Please see BUSCH 6E The theme park may have something to say in June about the addition, which may include a fourth roller coaster.

By MARK ALBRIGHT Times Staff Writer TAMPA Busch Gardens has filed plans for a new themed area called Egypt that may be anchored by the park's fourth roller-coaster thrill ride. But officials at the park, which uses African themes for its attractions, were mum Wednesday on just what the park's latest expansion will contain. They are planning a June announcement for the addition, which would ST. PETERSBURG They railed about executive perks. They wondered why competitors were doing better.

But Home Shopping Network Inc. shareholders mostly wanted some assurance that the company's stock will pull itself out of the gutter. "My investment is sitting there like dead money," said Jean Irwin-Newell, who in two years has watched the value of her HSN stock sink to half what she paid for it. Company officials obliged at the company's annual meeting Wednesday, offering the hope that a broad revamping of Home Shopping's merchandising and programing that begins in June will reward shareholders with improved.