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• Berea College is in the preliminary stages of planning a renovation to Boone Tavern, the historic hotel and restaurant owned by the school and operated by its student workers. The project is estimated to cost between $8 and $10 million and will include new meeting rooms, six new guest rooms, an expansion of the dining room, and bathroom renovations. The tavern will remain open during the majority of the construction work.

• Houchens Insurance Group, a division of Bowling Green-based Houchens Industries Inc., has purchased Curneal & Hignite Insurance Agency of Elizabethtown. According to information released by Houchens, no immediate changes are planned for Curneal & Hignite’s daily operations or its employee base.

• The Lexington Area Small Business Development Center (SBDC) has changed its name to the Bluegrass Small Business Development Center to better reflect its service to the entire central Kentucky area. The center serves Anderson, Bourbon, Boyle, Clark, Fayette, Franklin, Harrison, Jessamine, Mercer, Nicholas, Powell, Scott and Woodford counties, and helps new and existing business owners in central Kentucky by providing no-cost confidential business consultations, affordable business workshops and seminars and research to make informed business decisions.

• Frazier Rehab Institute has opened a new outpatient location in Elizabethtown. The new site is the 23rd such facility in the Kentucky/Southern Indiana region for the Louisville-based regional health care system. The Elizabethtown location offers outpatient physical therapy for orthopedic and sports injuries, sprains and strains, post-surgical rehab, occupational injuries and neurological impairments and dysfunctions.

• Pernod Ricard USA, a leading producer, importer and marketer of spirits and wine, has opened a new corporate office in Boone County. The company is transferring 25-30 executives to Northern Kentucky from its current space in Lawrenceburg, Ind., following the sale of the company’s manufacturing facilities there to CL: Financial Group. The employees relocating to Northern Kentucky are part of the Pernod Ricard team that provides operations support to the Seagram’s Gin, Wild Turkey and Hiram Walker brands.
• The board of directors of Pomeroy IT Solutions terminated President and CEO Stephen E. Pomeroy last month due to “certain conduct and actions.” A news release from the company said that while Pomeroy’s actions did not involve anything illegal, under his watch “the company performed miserably at a time when the rest of the IT industry thrived, restated its financial statements more than once due to accounting errors, and consistently missed guidance.” The board has named Pomeroy Chief Financial Officer Kevin G. Gregory as interim president and CEO.

• The Kentucky National Guard and Military Affairs section has signed a 50-year lease for 16.8 acres at the London-Corbin Airport, where it plans to build a $1.6 million joint-service readiness center. The new center will include administrative offices, a supply facility, helicopter pad and aircraft parking. The state’s department of military affairs hopes to begin construction as early as this fall, with completion targeted for next summer.

• J. Smith Lanier & Co., a Georgia company that is one of the nation’s oldest privately owned insurance brokers, has purchased one of Lexington’s oldest insurance businesses.  Powell-Walton-Milward is a fourth-generation family business that has been operating in the Lexington area since 1852 as the successor of the King Agency. In 1999, PWM was acquired by Palmer & Cay, which in turn was acquired by Wachovia Insurances Services in 2005. With the acquisition by J. Smith Lanier, PWM will once again become a private company operating under the PWM name.

• Marymount Medical Center has paid $4.7 million for 52 acres in London on which to build a new facility that will replace its existing 89-bed hospital. Hospital officials expect to release the design for the new hospital this fall, with construction set to begin by the end of the year. The new facility, which is estimated to cost $47.4 million, will be licensed for 120 beds and is expected to open in 2010. Marymount is part of the Catholic Health Initiatives network.

• The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority has granted preliminary approval of $66 million in tax incentives for Ford Motor Company under the Kentucky Jobs Retention Act. Approval of the incentives is intended to help support the retention of 5,117 jobs and a payroll of more than $4 billion in the state. As part of the company’s “Way Forward” program, Ford is planning to invest $105 million in its Kentucky Truck Plant for equipment and facility upgrades, technology upgrades and the purchase of new machinery and equipment.  It will also include engineering costs necessary to implement the modernization upgrades. Gov. Ernie Fletcher said the state’s action demonstrated Kentucky’s commitment to keeping Ford in Kentucky, as well as protecting its employees. “Ford Motor Company is a driving force of our state’s economy,” Fletcher said, “and we intend to ensure its viability and continuity in Louisville.”
• National Patient Account Services, a Louisville-based accounts-receivable management firm owned by Hospital Corporation of America, is adding 100 new jobs as a result of new contracts. Some 60 percent of the new jobs will be added to the company’s 400-member Louisville staff, with the remainder being added to NPAS’ office in Bedford, Texas.
• Blue Equity, LLC, an independent private equity firm headquartered in Louisville, has acquired Game Seven Sports Marketing, a Kentucky-based limited liability company that specializes in collegiate sports properties. Game Seven represents coaches for a variety of services while specializing in local, regional and national endorsements. Among its stable of clients, which includes both head and assistant coaches, are Louisville football coach Steve Kragthorpe, Minnesota basketball coach Tubby Smith, Arizona State basketball coach Herb Sendek, Ole Miss basketball coach Andy Kennedy, Arkansas basketball coach John Pelphrey and Massachusetts basketball coach Travis Ford. Game Seven was formed in 2003 and has offices in Lexington and Louisville. The company will continue to be managed by the firm’s co-founders, President Brooks Downing and Senior Vice President Jason Charney.
• Bellarmine University will begin offering an accelerated executive certificate in financial planning program this September, designed for professionals in the brokerage, insurance, accounting, banking and related industries. The six-course, eight-month program is being offered in cooperation with Kaplan Financial. Classes will meet on Friday nights and Saturdays, every other weekend.  Bellarmine’s financial planning curriculum is registered with Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. Students who successfully complete the executive certificate program will be eligible to sit for the certification examination.
• Penske Logistics has opened a new 118,000-square-foot logistics facility in southwest Louisville. The new facility, which replaces a smaller one in Louisville’s west end, was developed to handle parts for all of Ford Motor Company’s North American manufacturing plants. The 140-door warehouse and cross-docking site has the capacity to simultaneously unload up to six 86-foot boxcars. The facility employs 65 people and handles more than 800 shipments daily to Ford manufacturing sites across North America.
• Constellation NewEnergy Gas Division has acquired Cornerstone Energy, Inc., creating one of the nation’s largest natural gas marketing companies. Cornerstone Energy provides natural gas supply and financial hedging services to more than 1,400 commercial, industrial and institutional customers across the mid-continent United States. It also provides natural gas and related services to more than 8,500 small commercial businesses. With the acquisition, CNE Gas, headquartered in Louisville, will increase its annual volume by 29 percent to more than 450 billion cubic feet of natural gas deliveries, expand its geographic footprint in the northern and midwestern United States and broaden its reach in new and existing markets such as the growing ethanol markets.
• Louisville Stoneware has been purchased by a group of local entrepreneurs for an undisclosed amount. The company recently cut 38 of 49 full-time positions as part of a plan to reposition itself in the market, moving away from wholesale sales and focusing more on retail stores. Louisville Stoneware now employs 26 full- and part-time employees. No further changes in staffing are expected, according to the company.
• Delta Air Lines will launch daily non-stop jet service between Louisville International Airport and Boston’s Logan International Airport beginning Sept. 6. The service will be operated by Delta Connection carrier Comair, using a 50-seat Canadair regional jet. Since January, Louisville International has added 18 new flights, two new airlines and four new destinations.

• Mary Chiles Hospital has become part of Lexington-based Saint Joseph HealthCare and been renamed Saint Joseph Mount Sterling. As part of the agreement, a new hospital will be built to replace the existing 63-bed facility within the next three years. The two organizations have been in exclusive discussions since Sept. 2006, when Mary Chiles Hospital first approached Saint Joseph to explore a potential relationship.

• Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps has announced that The Kentucky Post and The Cincinnati Post newspapers will end publication at the end of the year. The Post publications’ business operations have long been handled by the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper, a competitor owned by Gannett Co. Under the contract between Scripps and Gannett, the Enquirer handled advertising, subscription sales, production and distribution for the Post, while keeping news operations and editorial separate. Gannett informed Scripps in 2004 that the 30-year agreement would end in 2007. Scripps has said that without that contract, it is no longer economically feasible to continue production. The Post publications have served the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area for more than a century. 

• The Somerset-Pulaski County Airport has received $400,000 in federal funding to complete its instrument landing system. U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers, who helped secure the funding, said having an instrument landing system is a key component in recruiting commercial air passenger service, something the airport has been working towards for the last seven years or so. The new system is expected to be operational sometime next year.
• Kentucky has been eliminated from the list of sites being considered for a $450 million biological research facility for the United States Department of Homeland Security. The University of Louisville, the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee had partnered to submit a joint bid for the project, proposing a site in rural Pulaski County for the 500,000-square-foot lab. However, the Kentucky site was deemed as being too far removed from research facilities in both Kentucky and Tennessee. The list has now been narrowed down to sites in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, North Carolina and Kansas.

• Madison Livestock Sales LLC has been purchased for $2.2 million by Lexington-based Bluegrass Stockyards of Richmond LLC. Though no major changes are planned, Bluegrass Stockyards has said it will offer weekly cattle sales as well as twice-monthly horse sales and monthly goat sales. Machinery sales will take place quarterly.

• The Kentucky Department of Revenue has set the 2007 State Real Property Tax Rate at 12.4 cents per each $100 of assessed value. The rate is based on the percentage increase of taxable real property from 2006 to 2007.  If the increase is more than 4 percent after the exclusion of property newly added to the tax roll during 2007, then the prior year rate must be reduced to limit the revenue increase to 4 percent.  Since the assessment increase for 2007 is estimated at 6.8 percent, the state rate must decline from 12.8 to 12.4 cents per $100 of assessed value.
• The Kentucky Office of Financial Institutions (OFI) is warning consumers about an online loan company that does not appear to be a legitimate Kentucky business. Kentucky Title Loans (www.ktlinc.net) purports to offer loans at reasonable rates.  However, an upfront payment is required to supposedly buy insurance on the loan. Consumers report that after sending money to addresses in Canada, they receive no response and are unable to locate anyone to complete their loans. “Borrowers should be warned that reputable lenders do not require upfront payments in order to receive a consumer loan,” said David Coyle, director of OFI’s Division of Financial Institutions. Consumers can report suspicious loan activities to OFI investigators at (800) 223-2579, ext. 226. Those who believe they are victims of an advance fee scheme can file a complaint through OFI’s Web site at www.kfi.ky.gov/consumerinfo/filecomplaintfi.htm.
• The Kentucky Department for Public Health has launched a state-based system to register medical professionals interested in volunteering to offer assistance during public health emergencies or disasters. The Kentucky Health Emergency Listing of Professionals for Surge (K HELPS) program is designed to complement the existing Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) programs, community-based organizations that organize medical professional volunteers to supplement existing local emergency and public health resources for responding to emergencies. Under the new system, K HELPS and local MRC units will work together. The new system also has the ability to alert volunteers by e-mail and telephone. Volunteers can register online at https://khelps.chfs.ky.gov.
• Kentucky’s Council on Postsecondary Education has approved a regulation revision that raises the minimum requirements on the ACT college-entrance exam for students to be guaranteed admission to credit-bearing courses. Effective Fall 2009, incoming freshmen will need a score of 19 in math and 21 in reading on the exam to be placed into a credit-bearing course. The current math and reading score is 18. Council officials project that while more students will require developmental education or supplemental instruction at least initially, students who receive the help will have a much better chance of actually leaving with a degree. The council’s previous reports show that students who fall below the state readiness standards are twice as likely not make it to their second year.

• Veolia Water has announced plans to move its North American operations to Indianapolis, creating approximately 100 new high-paying jobs. The company will close its Houston operations and will begin hiring finance, accounting, information technology and other professionals later this year at an average annual salary of $100,000. Veolia Water, which currently employs 375 employees in Indianapolis, provides water and wastewater services to more than 14 million people in approximately 600 communities.
• The Purdue Research Foundation is establishing an Indianapolis technology park that will help high-tech entrepreneurs create new businesses and promote the expansion of established companies. The new Purdue Accelerator Park at AmeriPlex-Indianapolis, which is being created in partnership with Holladay Properties Inc., will accommodate up to 75 businesses and create 1,500 jobs with an average annual salary of $54,000. In addition to an industrial flex building and a multi-story office building, the park will also include a six-story hotel and conference center and three sites for restaurants or retail shops. Purdue has three other technology parts in other parts of the state.

• TravelCenters of America LLC, a Westlake, Ohio, company that offers vehicle fueling services and repair facilities in 41 states and Canada, has acquired Petro Stopping Centers, LP for approximately $70 million. Petro is a privately owned Texas company that operates and franchises 69 travel centers in 33 states. TA President and CEO Thomas M. O’Brien said the Petro and TA brands will continue to be operated separately.
• Ohio-based Procter & Gamble has announced plans to close its Clairol headquarters facility in Stamford, Conn., as part of the company’s strategy to focus on fewer but larger business sites. P&G will shift operations from the Connecticut manufacturing plant to facilities in Andover, Mass., and Mariscala, Mexico over the next two-and-a-half years. Approximately 150 of Stamford’s 615 employees will be relocated to P&G’s headquarters in Cincinnati. According to the company, another 180 employees will be eligible for retirement; the remaining positions will be phased out.

• Back Yard Burgers, Inc., a Memphis company that operates and franchises fast-food restaurants in 20 states, has entered into a definitive merger agreement with BBAC, LLC, an Atlanta private equity firm. The transaction is valued at approximately $38 million. Upon completion of the transaction, which is subject to stockholder approval, Back Yard Burgers will become a privately held company and its common stock will no longer be publicly traded.