NEWS

Retail & Shopping Centers

SBJ Staff Report

Feb 6, 2012 – NuBarter, headquartered in Savannah, one of the Southeast’s leading bartering companies that links together small businesses to share products and services and reduce costs, will host a special event Feb 13 with a Valentine's Day theme.

Dyanne Hunter, the owner of Vashti Boutique, a new Savannah business owner, will host the event with NuBarter at her store at 5503 Waters Avenue from 5:30-7:30 pm

Vashti Boutique, located in Midtown, offers eclectic women’s & men’s accessories, including purses, jewelry, scarves and ties for men.

The evening is an opportunity to both purchase items, and network with other NuBarter members, according to Jackie Stein, NuBarter’s Savannah area manager.

Complimentary fine wine & cheese will be served, along with door prizes. Free parking is available in front of the boutique and at Chef Randall’s on 69th Street.

Hospitality & Tourism

Feb 6, 2012 – Ticket sales close this Friday, Feb 10, for the Savannah Area Tourism Leadership Council’s 14th Annual Tourism Awards & Scholarship Dinner set for Thurs., Feb. 16 at the Savannah International Trade & Convention Center. 

This year’s Herb & Franklin Traub Visionary Award and John P. Rousakis Community Champion Award recipients are Dr. Walter O. Evans, retired general surgeon and art collector, and Fran Powell Harold, director, Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, who will be honored at the event.

 “Savannah’s tourism and hospitality industry provides excellent career paths for individuals seeking an opportunity for ongoing growth and development throughout their careers,” according to Marti Barrow, executive director of the Savannah Area Tourism Leadership Council.  “We are very proud of the accomplishments of not only the evening’s award recipients, but of the industry as a whole.”

The recipients of the Service Star and Service Leader Awards for exemplary job performance in the hospitality industry will also be announced, as well as the Tourism Leadership Council Member of the Year.  Six scholarships will also be presented from the Sheldon Fox Scholarship Program to students pursuing culinary, tourism and hospitality careers. 

The Tourism Awards & Scholarship Dinner is not only a celebration of local tourism industry accomplishments, but it is also an annual fundraiser that supports the programs of the Savannah Area Tourism Leadership Council, including scholarships for college students pursuing hospitality careers, workforce development initiatives, networking opportunities for industry professionals, educational seminars for industry employees and an emergency fund available for members in times of crisis, explains Barrow.

Approximately 250 people are expected to attend the event this year. The TLC would like to thank our Platinum Sponsor for the event-Old Savannah Tours! Sonny Dixon, news anchor for WTOC-TV, will serve as emcee for the evening.  The cocktail reception will begin at 5:30pm and conclude just before dinner, which begins at 7 p.m.  Tickets for dinner are $55, and table sponsorships are still available. 

The event will also feature a fabulous RAFFLE this year.  Tickets are currently available for purchase at the TLC office or online at www.tourismleadershipcouncil.com (select calendar – February 16).  You do not need to be present to win.  A list of prizes is attached. 

For more information about the Tourism Awards & Scholarship Dinner or to purchase tickets, please visit the online calendar at www.tourismleadershipcouncil.com (select February 16) or call the Tourism Leadership Council office at 912-232-1223. 

Education & Colleges

SBJ Staff Report

Feb 6, 2012 - The Ivan Lendl International Junior Tennis Academy, founded in May 2011, and led by the former No.1 player in the world and coach to Andy Murray, announced this week that the program’s spring class has tripled enrollment from its inaugural semester.

The new semester at Ivan Lendl IJTA began Jan. 16 on Hilton Head Island, S.C. The spring class features students from Canada, New Zealand, Russia and the U.S.

“The enrollment influx from fall to spring is a tribute to the elite instruction our coaches provide students each day,” according to Peter Orrell, president and CEO of Junior Sports Corporation, owner/operator of the Ivan Lendl IJTA. “Ivan Lendl IJTA offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for passionate junior tennis players to reach their ultimate potential.”

The Ivan Lendl IJTA is based on philosophies Lendl followed to become one of the greatest players in tennis history, Orrell states, with the training program concentrating on classic fundamentals, leading-edge biomechanics, strength training / fitness and mental preparation.

Lendl and his staff subscribe to a hands-on approach with students, instilling dedication, focus, hard work, motivation and overall preparation.

Ivan Lendl IJTA students in grades five through 12 attend Heritage Academy in Hilton Head. Classes average eight students, with a maximum of 15, designefd to promote individual attention. Optional English as a Second Language, college Preparatory and honors courses are also available.  

Junior Sports Corporation also owns the Hank Haney International Junior Golf Academy on Hilton Head, the world’s only academy to combine training, competition and academics for serious junior golfers.  Director of Instruction Hank Haney, who has coached winners of every major championship on the PGA Tour, and his staff train junior golfers from 27 countries across five continents.

State-Regional News

SBJ Special Report

Feb 6, 2012 - With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) believed to be within days of announcing the final federal approval of the Vogtle nuclear project, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has asked a court to force Southern Company and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to disclose to taxpayers the risks involved in $8.33 billion in conditional federal loan guarantees to Southern Company and their utility partners for new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.

Of particular concern to the group in the SACE Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) proceeding is the fact that the amount of taxpayer-backed obligations for the proposed Vogtle reactors is more than a dozen times greater than the failed Solyndra loan guarantee, they state.

“To date, DOE has produced heavily censored documents that have provided little or no information in an effort to frustrate any analysis that would be useful to taxpayers. Based on the limited information produced to date, it appears that the power companies had to put almost no ‘skin in the game,’ only promising to pay a token credit subsidy fee of what could be as little as 0.5 or 1.5 percent of the total loan principal,” according to SACE.

“Private lenders have declined to finance new reactors because of the enormously high cost of new nuclear power and the substantial risk that any such investment will fail. In 2003, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the chance of a loan for new nuclear reactor construction resulting in default would be ‘very high – well over 50 percent.”’ SACE alleges.

Mindy Goldstein, acting director at the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law, is representing SACE in its FOIA litigation. “DOE claims that the loan guarantee terms and credit subsidy fee estimates are confidential and may only be viewed by Georgia Power and its utility partners. Let’s hope DOE is wrong.  For such information to be withheld as confidential, it must have been obtained from the utilities themselves. If the power companies are literally writing their own guarantees and credit subsidy fee estimates, the Loan Guarantee Program is more flawed than anyone could have imagined,” according to Goldstein. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-627,) the GAO found that the program is inadequately planned and executed, lacks objective performance goals, and provides preferential treatment to nuclear loan guarantee applications over other types of applications.

SACE filed its FOIA request on March 25, 2010. Under FOIA, DOE was obliged to respond in full to the SACE request by April 22, 2010.  On August 10, 2010, when SACE had still not received a complete response, it filed suit in the D.C. District Court. DOE recently made its final document production on December 8, 2011, nearly 20 months after the response deadline. Most of the documents produced by DOE were heavily redacted, and the loan guarantee terms and credit subsidy fee estimates were withheld as confidential information belonging to the power companies.

In October 2011, Taxpayers for Common Sense announced its support for the SACE FOIA request, urging DOE to provide the details of the agreement for the proposed Vogtle reactors—especially because taxpayers are on the hook for such an enormous amount of money.

SACE’s March 2010 FOIA request covered such items as: the Southern Company loan guarantee; related correspondence between DOE and Southern Nuclear Operating Company, Georgia Power Company, Oglethorpe Power Corporation, Municipal Authority of Georgia (MEAG), and the City of Dalton, Georgia; environmental review records related to the loan guarantee request; any credit analysis conducted by DOE in relation to the loan guarantee; all records related to the general terms and conditions of the loan guarantee; and all records related to issuance of the loan guarantee.

SACE has posted the thousands of pages of documents on a website that is open for the concerned public to access. Accompanying the documents are highlighted examples of what SACE believes are illegally, redacted materials. Their Vogtle FOIA documents received, document summaries, a timeline of their FOIA activities, and SACE court filings can be viewed at http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2012/02/02/vogtle-loan-guarantee-update/.

“The Obama administration’s proposed loan guarantee for Vogtle transfers the risk onto American taxpayers, who would pay up to $8.33 billion if Southern Company and its partners run into the same kind of trouble that is routine in the nuclear power industry—cost overruns, delays and project cancellations. And Vogtle does have a history that should trouble taxpayers worried about assuming responsibility for the massive loan guarantee: the original two reactors at the Georgia site took almost 15 years to build, came in 1,200 percent over budget and resulted in the largest rate hike at the time in Georgia,” according to Stephen A. Smith, executive director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

 “Given some of the lessons learned and political games developing from the Solyndra loan guarantee case, it’s unacceptable and inconsistent that the much larger Vogtle loan isn’t getting more intense scrutiny when the potential risk to taxpayers is much greater. The DOE needs to operate with more transparency now – not less,” he adds.   

SACE adds that in a July 2010, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report titled “Further Actions Are Needed to Improve DOE's Ability to Evaluate and Implement the Loan Guarantee Program” (See

According to the group’s president Ryan Alexander, “With more than $8 billion on the line it’s time DOE start shedding some light on this program. Solyndra was the canary in the coal mine for this deeply flawed program, these defaults will continue if things don’t change.”