Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 153

Lo 1.11S.72 uow ones Closed Industrials Indecision is manager's biggest liability osioess June 25-29 1.33 Pages 1110-13 Page 115 Sunday, July 1, 1984 Au.tin American -Statesman Section 1.140 Kirk Family' channel seeking license 11 "JIJl 1 1 in uiuui m4mmmmmummmi firm hit 1 I By KIRK LADENDORF American-Statesman Staff Austin's sixth broadcast television station has moved another step closer toward becoming a reality. Ailandale Baptist Church Is backing an effort to offer family-oriented and religious programming on Channel 54. The church has founded Capitol City Community Interests, a company that successfully petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to have that channel allocated to the Austin area. Now, the company is seeking FCC approval to build and operate a station that would offer 16 hours of programming a day by next year. "We will be billing it as The Channel You Can Trust' said David Ferguson, church administrator and president of the television company.

"You will really be able to count on it for consistency seven days a week. You will know what you can expect' The approval process is expected to take several months to compete. Competing companies can also file applications for the channel. EVEN THOUGH THE church has invested in the television application so far, Ferguson stressed that the church expects to limit its ties to the new channel once It is in operation. "It's something the church hopes will live on its own," Ferguson said.

The church will probably seek private investors to finance the station's startup. The station will sell commercial time to finance its operating budget which Ferguson estimates will exceed $1 million a year. Ferguson's company has not conducted any market research on its potential audience, but Ferguson believes a major segment of the city is tired of viewing fare on the broadcast networks and on much of cable television. The startup of The Playboy Channel on Austin CabieVision just emphasizes the need for a family-oriented Grove Drug building about to get face lift to its original look I in billions of dollars 1 1 $25f I Urn II- 5ir programming alternative, he said. "We think there is a market out there or we wouldn't be charging ahead." he said.

"You'd be surprised at how many people just don't watch prime-time programming." Ferguson believes many of Austin's church members, including an estimated 45,000 Baptists in the city, may be looking for more programming stressing positive values something he finds lacking in many modern programs. "I THINK YOU see a great deal of anti-morals, anti-values of any kind. I think you see a lot of anti-family (attitudes in television programs) and a lot of anti-religion," he said. "I don't think you see any portrayal of the clergy in any positive sense." The arrival of The Playboy Channel in Austin is "a sign of the times that many people wish hadn't come upon us. It's kind of an indication of which way the pendu-Se Station, H14 I Sf 7 I Vs." 1 1 -fti! 1 hn' Rendering shows Grove Drug as It will appear after its renovation.

hopes to attract a first quality restaurant for the second floor. Artists, dance classes and a computer firm have inhabited the second and third floors in recent years. But in its past Wukasch said, the upper floors were rumored to have housed a storehouse for liquor during the Prohibition and the office of a local abortionist Wukasch plans include installing the original tin-plated ceilings and keeping an atrium skylight that lets light in from the roof through the second and third floors. He has also already added five panels of stained glass windows in one of the bay windows commemorating the building's past 1 ill 1 4 Business Editor City develops tunnel vision Americas Bank and two building owners downtown have agreed to build a pedestrian tunnel for more than a block along West Sixth Street that would link the bank with the Scarbrough Building and with the bank's second downtown location In Rust Properties' One American Center. Such downtown tunnels are common In Houston, where staying out of the summer heat and downtown traffic is a top priority.

The two developers and the bank figure the tunnel would be heavily used by bank employees, bank customers and retail shoppers moving from one building to another. American Bank President John Tolle-son said the bank has been considering a tunnel project for more than two years since it agreed to become the anchor tenant In the Rust Building. "We have an opportunity to start a downtown tunnel system," Tolleson said. Other developers in the downtown area may eventually want to build tunnels to connect to this first tunnel, he said. The cost will be hefty an estimated $2 million to $214 million to be split among the three partners.

The bank Intends to renovate Its basement area at the western entrance to the tunnel for retail stores and a cafeteria. The development partners still need permission to tunnel under the State Comptrollers' office building downtown. Scarbrough Building owner Jack Mou-ton is reportedly delighted with the project Mouton is is renovating the lower floors of that building into a retail center and the tunnel would link his retail center with Rust's planned retail area and with the mammoth parking garage at One American Center and parking at the American Bank Tower. The Scarbrough Building has no parking of its own. Bank officials estimate the project will take between nine months and a year to complete after it is started this fall.

American Bank plans to move part of its operations into the Rust building in late September or early October. The bank will maintain full customer operations In 60,000 square feet of leased space there with tellers, loan officers and account representatives. The bank's Investment operations, Including the trust department, the bond Investment department, the Mpact Securities investment advisory service and the Mpact Brokers discount brokerage operations will all move to the new building. Tolleson and some other bank executives will have offices in both buildings. That may explain part of his enthusiastic backing of the project Developer Walter Vackar has contracted to sell to Linear Properties a prime development site at MoPac and Tamarron boulevards just north of Barton Creek Square.

Vackar received city approvals to build five office buildings, a retail center and a luxury hotel on the 35-acre site. About half the site would be left undeveloped. The reported price of the sale was $26 million, but the sale is not expected to close until the end of this year. Vackar would not comment on his profit on the land transaction, estimated by some real estate industry observers at $18 million. Bob King, a partner in Linear Properties along with Eduardo Longoria and Shelby Longoria, said his group hopes to begin construction on the first phase of the site early next year.

Vackar said he is working with land investors David Shiflet and Keith Cunningham on the master planning of a 400-acre tract at VS. 183 and RR 620. Rust Properties has scheduled the grand opening of its 32-story One American Center project for Oct 26. Early in the project Rust executives were sensitive about just how tall the tallest building in the city would be. It's now officially 399 feet tall.

Estimated cost of the project is $86 million, with a good bit of that pricetag devoted to interest expense. The building include an athletic and dining club called the Metropolitan Club to be operated by Club Corp. of America from Dallas. Athletic facilities will include a running track, five racquetball courts, a half basketball court elaborate men's and women's sauna areas, Nautilus exercise equipment and a medical evaluation center. Electronic love affair Consumer spending leaning to television gear 1 By KIM TYSON American-Statesman Staff Work has started to revive the historic Morley Bros.

Drug Building, the last of 19 original structures to be renovated in the National Historic Registry District on Sixth Street Owner Eugene Wukasch, a local architect said he will be putting $250,000 during the next year to restore the three-story brick Victorian building at 209 E. Sixth St The building, with its distinctive copper bay front windows, was built in 1874. Betty Baker, historic zoning administrator for the city, credited the business community with reviving the now popular downtown area. "It was private investment that anchored it and kept it going," Baker said. "Really the city has done very little- in terms of capital investment" Wukasch, who worked on renovation of Symphony Square and the Caswell House, has owned the building since 1973.

BUT HE SAID he has delayed a a restoration because he couldn't find cast iron columns from the same era needed to rebuild the original facade. Four months ago he said a local wrecking firm found the columns in town. "This entire front is going back to exactly how it was first done," he said. The front is now sagging from the weight of the 1 -ton Grove Drug sign that has been attached to its front since the 1930s, Wukasch said. He said because of the close identity of the old Grove Drug Co.

with the building he intends to keep the sign but will be adding supports to the front of the building. Vernon Grove, who owned The Grove Drug Co. until the 1960s, bought the drug store business from the Morley brothers after their business went into receivership in 1931. THE DRUG STORE, known locally for its old-fashioned soda fountain that still sells cherry phosphate sodas, is operating on the first floor. Wukasch said he wants the drug store to remain in renovated quarters and he Staff Photo David Ferguson, president of Capitol City Community Interests.

1 ft. I Consumer electronics U.S. shipments in millions of units Video cameras L-J Videocassette recorders Home computers Color televisions 15.8 70 J.J 4 1 48 1983 1984" "Estimate Chicago Tribune Graphic. Source. Electronic Industries Association said, "Adults will be buying toys for themselves." The Chicago show was jammed into every available corner of three McCormick Place sites, the Conrad Hilton Hotel and hotel demonstrations suites around the city.

The more than 90,000 people who attended were jammed into hotels as far away as Aurora, Joliet and Merrillville, Ind. "WHERE'S WEST DUNDEE? Has anyone heard of West Dundee?" cried one lost soul, yet to make the long shuttle-bus ride to the far northwest suburb. With hotel rooms scarce, people were more interested about where you spent the night than where you stood on the merits of 8mm video or on the future of the video-disk. Unless, that is, you were Jack Sauter. The RCA consumer electronics chief said his firm stands among the uncommitted on 8mm video products, which are videocassette recorder-camera combinations Sm Electronics, H14 By CHARLES STORCH and CHRISTINE WINTER Chicago Tribune Service CHICAGO The consumer-electronics Industry, said RCA Jack Sauter, "has never looked better.

We believe the love affair the American public had for the automobile has shifted to consumer electronics." Still-robust auto sales might suggest that Detroit at worst is in danger of being two-timed. For the giant International Summer Consumer Electronics Show early this month in Chicago, firms such as Sauter's indicated that they are out to make U.S. consumers as enamored of high-performance, high-ticket and high-profit-margin electronic products as they have been of option-laden, expensive cars. "We think the mass market has extended itself into the high end of the electronics field," said Sauter, group vice president for RCA. "High-end TVs, high-end VCRs have become something for everybody." RCA, which claims to be the U.S.

market leader in color television sets and video-cassette recorders, displayed some of those high-end products at a Chicago hotel. There were TV sets equipped for stereophonic or multilingual broadcasts and high-fidelity videocassette recorders programmable for up to a year. Some models carried suggested retail prices of $1,600 and more. RCA THINKS CONSUMERS are willing to pay for high performance. It cites a recent market study showing the average retail price of $750 for a VCR, the hottest of video products.

But some believe low-priced, no-frills VCRs, priced at $300 to $400, are perfectly acceptable to most consumers. A big test could come next year, when Taiwanese and South Korean firms, some of them notorious for price-cutting in small TV sets, are expected to begin shipping VCRs, especially low-end models, to the United States. Harold VogeL an analyst at Merrill Lynch predicted that higher-priced, higher-end consumer electronics products would do well this Christmas. Unlike Christmases past when parents were buying video games and low-priced computers ostensibly for their children, this year, he 'Boomers' help economy NEW YORK (AP) When students of demographics assess the outlook for the VS. economy these days, they see some very positive trends.

The changing shape of the population, they say, points to lower unemployment rates and strong demand for many kinds of consumer goods and services in the next several years. The most important single development leading them to these conclusions is the fact that the fabled "baby boom" generation born after World War II has reached adulthood. Many baby boomers already have been absorbed Into the work force. They are reaching ages where people typically make many Important consumer purchases and investments. And at the same time the number of new jobseekers is dropping.

"The youth population is declining and, even allowing for a continuing increase in female labor force participation, the labor force is expected to grow only 1.5 percent per year from 1984 to 1988," writes economist Courtenay Slater in the July issue of American Demographics magazine. Fred E. Wintzer an analyst at the securities firm of Shearson Lehman-American Express, says the baby boomers are expected to have increased spending power as the 1980s progress because they are much better educated than previous generations, many of them live in two-income households, they are moving into the stage of working life when income most commonly grows significantly and they are having fewer children per household than prior generations..