Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 23

PAGE B5 INSIDE vijy Stock listings: B7-9 Wednesday, June 6, 1990 Austin American-Statesman Revco to sell Austin drugstores to Eckerd account for 64 percent of its business. The first round of store sales was announced in April when Revco agreed to sell 221 stores to Reliable Holdings Corp. of Fort Worth. Reliable Holdings was formed by Acadia Partners LP and the management of Reliable Drug Stores a 112-store chain based in Indianapolis. The stores expected to be sold to Reliable are in Tennessee, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan and Missouri.

The U.S Bankruptcy Court is expected to rule on that pending sale next week. The sale to Eckerd would involve 220 stores in five states: Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Of those, 138 would be in Texas. Revco spokeswoman Diana Lueptow said Eckerd was not interested in acquiring its remaining 57 stores in Texas, located primarily in the Amarillo, El Paso and Odessa areas. One Revco in the Austin area, an outlet in Giddings, is not expected to be sold to Eckerd.

Lueptow said each store has an average of 10 to 12 full- and part-time employees. She referred questions about the fate of the employees to Eckerd officials, who could not be reached for comment. press information released Tuesday by the Jack Eckerd Corp. The release said the stores will be remodeled in the "Eckerd format" over the next year. The release made no mention of possible store closures, and Eckerd officials did not return calls Tuesday.

There are about 20 Eckerd stores in Austin, Round Rock and Georgetown. The purchasing firm, Eckerd Holdings II was formed by Merrill Lynch Capital Partners and the management of Eckerd. The purchase price was not disclosed. The Jack Eckerd Corp. operates 1,575 drug stores in 13 states as well as 233 Express Photo Labs, 33 Visionworks and 57 Eckerd Optical Centers.

Revco, one of the nation's largest drugstore chains, filed for bankruptcy protection in July 1988. The firm was weighed down by debt incurred in a $1.5 billion management buyout in 1987. Based in Twinsburg, Ohio, the company has annual sales of more than $2.7 billion. Revco's restructuring calls for the sale of a total of 712 stores in 17 states, largely in the Western and Southwestern parts of the country. The company would then focus its growth on its stores in 10 Eastern states, where sales now By Michele Stanush American-Statesman Staff Ohio-based Revco D.S.

Inc. said Tuesday it has agreed to sell 220 of its retail drugstores, including 18 in the Austin area, to a company operated by Jack Eckerd Corp. of Clearwater, Fla. The sale, part of Revco's restructuring under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, must be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

A hearing is expected in Ohio in late June. The Revcos are expected to be converted to Eckerd Drug Stores in late July and August, according to IT IT EU1 Jtl ancocK mi is sold; owners set to renovate TTT If I 5i MsA Today's digest Store closing Bloomingdale's said Tuesday it will close two of its poorly performing locations. The Dallas store will close Sept. 8 while the Stamford, store will go out of business Aug. 18.

The New York-based department store operator has been under intense pressure to generate sales and income. Its parent company, Campeau Federated Department Stores is trying to reorganize under bankruptcy court supervision. The Dallas store in Valley View Mall has 229 full-time, 176 part-time and 27 management employees. Buy Austin works The Buy Greater Austin program is apparently working. More than 70 percent of the area's residents have heard about the program, according to a recent survey conducted by Austin-based NSI Research Group.

This compares with 20 percent awareness in a baseline study conducted before a publicity campaign was started last fall. More than 40 percent of the respondents in the random sampling of 250 persons said the Buy Greater Austin program had an effect on their buying habits. This compares with 9 percent in the initial survey. In addition, 80 percent of those surveyed said they believe they had helped the area's economy by buying locally. At the program's onset, less than 2 percent responded positively to this question.

The program is coordinated by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. Notes auction About $21 million of secured and unsecured notes from failed banks in Texas and Oklahoma will: be auctioned in Dallas on June 28 by Commercal Financial Services Inc. of Muskogee, Okla. The notes were bought from the FDIC, which acquired them when the rescuing bank declined to bid for the consumer loans as part of a failed bank's assets. Commercial Financial Services buys the notes from the FDIC at a discount of about 25 to 78 cents on the dollar, according to spokesman Bill Bartman.

Bank's winery Officials from Plains National Bank in Lubbock have reopened the doors to the Teysha Cellars Winery in Lubbock, a little more than one month after the bank bought it in a bankruptcy auction. Established in 1988 by Texas Winery Products Teysha became the first publicly held winery in Texas. It filed for bankruptcy protection in September 1989 and operated under Chapter 11 protection until late April 1990. Th6 move left creditors and shareholders out millions of dollars, according to the bank. Plains National Bank, which had first lien on the winery, paid $2.5 million for it the amount Teysha owed the bank.

Sortie estimates have valued Teysha at more than $5 million. nounced a major remodeling of the center in 1988 but the work was never started. Hancock was one of the city's first suburban shopping centers when it was built in 1963 at East 41st Street and Interstate 35 by Homart Development, an arm of Sears. "It's a total revitalization of a center that's kind of dead at the moment except for a couple of anchors," Olson said. "Right now we've grappling with a layout," Olson said.

The new design will give the center about 460,000 square feet of retail space and provide tenants more visibility from the street. Enviroplan Architects has been hired to design the new look of the center. Olson said she expects Sears, H.E.B. Food Store, Bealls Department Store, Wyatt's Cafeteria and Radio Shack, as well as several smaller existing tenants to remain at Hancock. Some stores, however, may move to new areas in the center.

Jerry Quick, the broker with Henry S. MillerGrubb Ellis who handled the sale of the center, estimated about 70 percent of the Hancock center is now leased. Staff photo by Tom Lankes The new owners of Hancock Shopping Center plan $10 have a tenant occupy part of the 88,000 square feet va-million in renovations and expect by Thanksgiving to cated by Dillard's. around Austin that posed major competition for the older suburban shopping centers such as Hancock. Olson said Interstate Equities has considered the purchase of other centers in Texas, including the New tenants expected to be attracted to the center will help distinguish it from nearby Highland Mall, Olson said.

Highland Mall, completed in 1971, was the first of several shopping malls built Austin area. "We're focusing on Austin and San Antonio and several border locations," she said. Its parent company is now building three shopping centers in Dallas. City, Southwestern Bell team on minority aid MCC plans hard look at expanding research Computer graphics and imaging considered By Kim Tyson and Michele Stanush American-Statesman Staff Hancock Shopping Center has been sold to a Maryland company that is planning a $10 million renovation of the 27-year-old outdoor mall. The work is scheduled to start later this summer and be completed by spring 1991.

An anchor tenant, to occupy part of the 88,000 square feet vacated earlier this year by Dillard's, is expected to move to the center before Thanksgiving. The center was quietly purchased in mid-April by Interstate Equities a privately held firm based in Bethesda, whose parent company owns or controls 13 million square feet of real estate nationwide. Meredith Olson, president of Interstate Equities, declined Tuesday to disclose how much her firm paid for Hancock. The center was purchased by Interstate under the name Interprop Hancock Limited Partners. Hancock had been owned for more than 10 years by Kingsmere a Delaware-registered firm controlled by a Dutch pension fund.

Kingsmere officials had an- House OKs bill to aid competition Measure would limit liability for antitrust By Martin Tolchin New York Times Service WASHINGTON The House of Representatives Tuesday approved a bill intended to enhance the competitiveness of American companies by limiting their liability for antitrust violations, over the objections of foreign investors who would not receive the legislation's benefits. The bill was passed by a voice vote after a 40-minute debate in which House members expressed concern over the ability of American companies to compete in the global marketplace. The measure, which had bipartisan support, would relax antitrust laws for joint ventures in manufacturing, a condition that already exists in joint research and development projects. By removing triple damages for antitrust violations in manufacturing, joint ventures would appear less risky to American companies, in the view of the bill's supporters, who say that the threat of costly damage awards has inhibited many such ventures, even though they would not have violated antitrust laws. Foreign investors, however, had asked that the bill, the National Cooperative Production Amendments of 1990, not be considered, saying that the measure would prove counterproductive because it would discourage foreign participation in research ventures at a time when the United States was seeking access to foreign technology.

Rep. Bill Frenzl, saying that "we are trying to remove investment restrictions around the See House, B8 The market day mann, director for economic development in Southwestern Bell's Dallas office. Southwestern Bell has used its own certification program to qualify minority and women-owned businesses as vendors. But vendors on the City of Austin list will now be able to circumvent the time-consuming task of becoming certified by the telephone company. Edelmann said Southwestern Bell gives about $1.5 million in business to minority and women-minority owned firms in Austin.

As part of the program, Southwestern Bell also will co-sponsor such activities as a "marketplace" for the company's buyers to meet certified vendors. Other programs could include events to bring together businesses that are not certified but want to do business with both the City of Austin and the telephone company. This is not the first time Southwestern Bell has teamed with the City of Austin. In 1987, the telephone company helped launch a business retention and expansion program to determine the obstacles facing Austin-based companies that might prompt them to move elsewhere. By Michele Stanush American-Statesman Staff In an effort to expand opportunities for both minority and women-owned businesses, the City of Austin is making available its list of certified vendors to private firms.

Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. is the first corporation to team with the city in the project, tagged the Building Partnerships Program. "It provides an underpinning to give small and local businesses an opportunity to do business with a very large corporation," Mayor Lee Cooke said at a press conference Tuesday. Through the program, Southwestern Bell will have access to the city's list of almost 500 minority and women-owned businesses. Those firms are certified through the city's Office of Minority Business Affairs.

Southwestern Bell will add those vendors to its own directory of minority and women-owned businesses. The telephone company taps those contractors and suppliers to purchase goods and services in its five-state territory. "We will greatly expand our number of vendors from 80 to about 400," said Mike Edel- Dow industrials process of looking to see what's out there" in emerging computer-related technologies, Knight said. "We've had our nose to the grindstone (since MCC was founded in 1983). Now let's look up and see what's happening." One thing that's happened is the development of a new buzzword visualization to cover the generation and manipulation of images by computers.

Computer graphics can involve much more than using your Macin- tosh to whip out some nifty-looking designs and graphs. An airline pilot who practices landings and takeoffs in a flight simulator, for example, is making use of sophisticated computer image processing system. Such simulators are presently very complex, "hand-crafted" models, Knight said. One research area might focus on how to build these computer simulators more quickly. Visualization may also become a tool for computer researchers in studying such complex subjects as parallel processing, where several processors in a computer may be crunching different information at the same time.

Because of their complexity, proposed parallel processing machines See MCC, B6 By Kirk Ladendorf American-Statesman Staff The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. will spend this summer looking at whether it should expand its research efforts to include computer graphics and image processing. The Austin-based research consortium announced it is launching a strategic survey of "visualization technology" the still emerging field of turning data into pictures and other images. Potential applications are broad, including education, entertainment, training and simulation, scientific research, engineering and medicine. The study represents a new and hard look by MCC at expanding its core areas of research, said Gary Knight, the director of the study.

MCC's basic research fields at the moment are advanced computing technology, software technology, computer chip packaging, computer-aided design and superconductivity. The consortium's technical advisory board suggested the visualization technology field as one of several that MCC should explore in search of potential new research projects it could lead. "This is the first step in the new 2,925.00 Down 10.19 2.950 2.750 TWThF TWThFM NYSE 199.93 down .28 Up: 755 Down: 811 Unchanged: 470 Volume: 199.72 million 500 366.64 down .76 Dollar exchange Dollar In (orelgn currency, N.Y. prices Frl. Thu.

Britain .5933 .5984 Japan 152.40 152.90 Mexico 2,833 2,833 W. Germany 1.6885 1.6955 Gold New York Comex $359.60 $1.20 Rep. Nat'l Bank $359.00 $1.60 Oil West Texas Intermediate $16.68 per barrel, down $.46 (July delivery) Ned Snead elected publisher of 4 Austin Weekly' the Dublication'8 distribution man Georgetown businessman Ned Snead has been elected publisher of the Austin Weekly. Snead, a major investor in the general-interest tabloid, replaces Ralph and Alan Dodd. The father and son publishing team, who founded the publication two years ago, will continue to own stock in the company but will no longer be part of the management team.

The publication, which bills itself as Austin's largest weekly, is available free at newsstands and other locations throughout the city. The circulation reached a high of 60,000 last week. Snead's selection came at a meeting of the publication's board of directors last week. Walt Peters, town Railroad which operates a railroad between Georgetown and Round Rock. He made an unsuccessful bid two years ago for the Republican nomination for the U.S.

Snate. Snead said Tuesday that there were no plans for significant changes in the editorial content of the publication. ager, was named general manager. Former City of Austin communications director Glenn Cootes remains as editor. Peters, Cootes and company controller Pat Wilson, were named as a management team to oversee the publication's operation.

Snead is president of the George.