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Backers of the proposed Hillside neighborhood development are considering purchasing the troubled 144-unit City View Apartments to provide low-income housing within the expansive project. The move would serve to blunt [...]

A former Iowan is working out a game plan to bring Arena Football to Des Moines, but he wants good protection from sponsors and an able receiver before he begins [...]

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Des Moines has offered to buy the American Federal Building at 601 Grand Ave., with tentative plans to use it for the church's main offices. [...]

The way Firstar Corp. of Iowa President and Chief Executive Officer James Lang sees it, a successful bank is one that keeps customers happy. 'It's not a rocket-science business,' said [...]

A Des Moines insurer has agreed to contribute up to $38,500 to dedicate bricks in the names of inner-city schoolchildren and boost the endowment of the new Forest Avenue Library. [...]

The walls are falling down at the Iowa State Fair. Concrete is crumbling and much of the wood in the turn-of-the-century buildings is infested with termites. The fair directors have [...]

Norwest Bank Iowa's decision to offer free checking has competitors responding with everything from praise to charges of gimmickry. Norwest, a subsidiary of Norwest Corp. of Minneapolis, announced it would [...]

MID-SIZED BANKS ENDANGERED In the mid-1980s Iowa banks, facing increased competition from financial brokerages, the aftershocks of a farm crisis and customers demanding more products and services, decided they could [...]

COMPETITION INTERSIFIES Insurance companies, dogged by economic conditions they say they can't control, have customized their products to fill niches in a highly competitive market. Life insurance companies, which have [...]

Evelyn Davis once said the former Mid City Library at 1305 University Ave. looked more like a mini-storage warehouse than a library. She wrote in a letter that it reeked [...]

Broadcast Partners, a satellite agricultural information service based in Urbandale, will begin transmitting summaries of articles from USA Today to its 13,000 subscribers this fall. The company has signed an [...]

A BANKER WITH A SOCIAL AGENDA In 1977 J. Michael Earley, a 32-year-old bank trust officer, was sitting in a Cedar Rapids bar one evening with two friends when the [...]

MINORITIES DON'T FEEL WELCOME Des Moines law firms are driving away talented minority attorneys by not recruiting them or making them feel welcome, according to some Des Moines lawyers. No [...]

CONGLOMERATE, NOT STUDENTS, PLANS SHOWS Iowa State University decided concert management was big business, so it hired a professional organization to handle that task four years ago. But concert organizers [...]

A Davenport entrepreneur hopes mixing old-style country flavor with some modern amenities will be the right formula for the $4 million hotel he's building near the Iowa Machine Shed Restaurant [...]

BANK HOPES TO TURN CORNER When J. Michael Earley arrived at MidAmerica Savings Bank of Waterloo five years ago the bank was losing nearly a half-million dollars a month. Last [...]

FISCAL YEAR BEGINS JULY 1 New businesses will have the option of forming limited-liability companies, and people who buy franchises will have expanded rights beginning July 1, the start of [...]

NORWEST STIRS THINGS UP Credit card issuers are firing shots at each other in a war to determine who has the best deal for consumers. But people in the credit [...]

The Truth in Savings Act of 1991, a law designed to provide consumer protection for bank depositors, mandates changes in banking practices that could cost banks millions of dollars, and [...]

DES MOINES MARKET UNIQUE The proposed sale of state-owned WOI-TV comes at a time when the market for television stations is soft, and industry analysts say it will not improve [...]

In an effort to shed their image of being more concerned with business development than they are with people, a group of business leaders pledged their support to neighborhood revitalization [...]

SERIOUS CLOWN SUIT Meredith Corp. officials called it 'frivolous' when an Arizona cookie company named after a clown brought a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the media giant, but the man filing [...]

HOW TO LURE RESIDENTS AWAY FROM SUBURBIA Backers of a proposed $47 million downtown housing development believe they can lure young, unmarried downtown workers away from suburbia, but it's going [...]

TWO NEW COMPANIES FORMED Iowa Realty Co. Inc. reorganized its top management last week in a move company officials said was a step toward finding a successor for Chairman William [...]

EMPLOYERS SAY 'NO WAY' TO PLAY OR PAY Al Fick isn't a health-care expert, but he does know his profit margins aren't big enough to provide standard insurance for his [...]

Iowa Network Services Inc. has offered to buy the International Trade Center from Boatmen's Bancshares Inc. An INS official expressed hope that negotiations for the purchase of the building could [...]

COPING WITH AIDS - SECOND OF A TWO-PART SERIES The AIDS crisis has prompted Des Moines' largest insurer to find alternative ways to care for AIDS patients and meet the [...]

THE CONSUMMATE SALESMAN E. H. 'Hub' Mulock was so serious about keeping his word to policyholders that he sometimes paid casualty claims out of his own pocket. In the early [...]

COPING WITH AIDS -- FIRST OF A TWO-PART SERIES AIDS is costing the insurance industry millions of dollars each year, but local insurers say they can cope with the crisis [...]

NO JOKE In 1947, when attorney Bernard Mercer and two partners started an auto insurance company for people who didn't drink alcohol, there were those who didn't take them seriously. [...]

THE RATING GAME For more than 75 competitor-free years, A.M. Best Co. was considered the standard for rating insurance companies. So why did other rating agencies come on the scene [...]

MALL SIGNS LAEGEST TENANT The Des Moines agency of The Principal Financial Group plans to move into the first floor of the Kaleidoscope at the Hub between Fifth and Sixth [...]

Longtime real-estate broker Gene Stanbrough has been hired by Iowa Realty Co. Inc. after recently leaving the Coldwell Banker franchise he formed three years ago. Stanbrough, 58, has been named [...]

NO SILVER BULLET Radical changes in the state's health-care system could devastate Iowa's insurance companies, say insurance industry officials. 'One of the problems facing us today with health-care reform is [...]

AN ABSORBING YEAR Don't look for too many new office buildings to be built this year. Commercial real estate observers say they don't anticipate market demand for much more than [...]

American Republic Insurance Co. may have thrown a monkey wrench into plans to build a major residential development in the northern part of downtown Des Moines. The Hillside Development Corp. [...]

STAYING ABOVE THE FRAY State Auditor Richard Johnson thinks of himself as a professional rather than a politician. But Johnson, a 56-year-old Republican who has been in elective office since [...]

Everything is business to David Fisher. If state government had been run like his floor-covering business, Onthank Co., maybe it wouldn't be experiencing the budget problems it is now trying [...]

THEIR RACE IS NOT RUN Opponents of a proposed statewide fiber-optics telecommunications system, potentially the largest capital project in Iowa's history, say they haven't exhausted their attempts to make the [...]

NO LOOKING BACK Kirke-Van Orsdel Inc., the insurance brokerage firm formed in the '70s by two Des Moines natives, grew to 1,200 employees nationwide this year, and company officials aren't [...]

In the near future, most information will be disseminated through something other than the printed word and electronic media will likely be that conveyor. That's the assessment of officials with [...]

NEW ERA OF NEGOTIATION When Fred Miller's father opened the first Pizza Hut franchise in Iowa 25 years ago, he dealt directly with the brothers who started the chain. But [...]

CHICAGO CHICAGO - Firstar Corp. and Mercantile Bancorp. of St. Louis may have to reduce their Iowa deposits by more than $1 billion if their pending merger is to be [...]

CHICAGO - Bank One Corp. will not make big bank acquisitions just to get deals done before merger accounting rules change, chief executive officer John B. McCoy said Tuesday. Mr. [...]

CLEVELAND - Mayor Michael R. White disputed a report Friday that he has taken a position on a potential merger between National City Corp. and KeyCorp. 'For the record, I [...]

Cleveland pride is playing no small part in speculation about a megamerger between KeyCorp and National City Corp. Such a deal would create a $164 billion-asset company based in Cleveland-a [...]

Huntington Bancshares plans to launch its first brand-name campaign Sunday in six states. The Columbus, Ohio-based company will try to appeal to the desire for personalized service, a pitch nearly [...]

Firstar Corp.'s recent deal to purchase Mercantile Bancorp. is likely to result in the sale or relocation of more than $900 million of the merged company's Iowa deposits. An Iowa [...]

PITTSBURGH - Christopher M. Condron is somewhat of an anomaly in the banking industry: a top executive with little experience in traditional banking. Known to many by his nickname, Kip, [...]