Since walking away from loss-ridden BayWalk, Sembler Co. has moved on to be the finalist bidding to redevelop the abandoned Doraville General Motors plant in suburban Atlanta.
The St. Petersburg developer added a big wrinkle by offering to share 90 acres of the 165-acre site with a publicly financed, retractable-roof stadium for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons.
"We've been talking with the Falcons and city of Doraville about it, but it's still very preliminary," confirmed Greg Sembler, chief executive officer.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank wants a new stadium when the bonds that paid for the 16-year-old Georgia Dome are paid off in 2015. The team's lease there ends 11 years from now in 2020.
If a stadium scheme folded around a mixed-use, live-work-and-play-here development sounds familiar, be advised Sembler was competing for the Doraville property with Hines Interests, which also talked with the Falcons before dropping out. Hines, you may recall, was the developer angling to build a residential/retail complex at Tropicana Field to generate some of the cash to build a proposed waterfront ballpark for the Tampa Bay Rays.
• • •
Here's one more sign online retailers have their work cut out for them if they hope to go back to the glory days of double-digit sales increases:
Customer satisfaction remained unchanged with the 40 biggest Web shopping sites during the holidays compared with a year ago, according to ForeSee Results and FGI Research, the firms that compile the American Customer Satisfaction Index for the University of Michigan.
"Forty percent of Web sites saw customer satisfaction drop," said Larry Freed, ForeSee chief executive officer. "That's not playing to win in this economy."
All this doesn't say much for the creativity emerging from what's supposed to be the cutting edge of retailing.
Customer satisfaction goes beyond just price to reflect selection, delivery and site navigation.
Yet customers gave improving grades to only 15 of the 40 biggest sites including only one (Amazon.com) of only two still rated excellent (Amazon.com and Netflix.com). The big gainers: Target.com, Wal-Mart.com, Staples.com and shopping.hp.com, Hewlett-Packard's retail site.
QVC.com fell out of the top tier, dropping a percentage point to a 79. The worst performer was St. Petersburg-based hsn.com, whose rating dropped 9 percent to a 69 out of a 100. That left HSN tied for last place among the top 40 with gap.com, HomeDepot.com, Overstock.com, CircuitCity.com and NeimanMarcus.com.
• • •
Just about every industry has its hand out to grab some of the federal bailout money, and retailers are no exception.
In a letter to President-elect Obama, the National Retail Federation kicked off lobbying for a trio of 10-day nationwide sales tax holidays in 2009. That would be in addition to massive infrastructure improvements Obama wants to help create jobs.
If Obama and Congress go along, the average household would save $175 in sales taxes buying anything but alcohol and tobacco. The federal government would reimburse states $20-billion for the lost revenues while writing checks to five states that don't levy a sales tax.
It's the retailers' answer to the need for a short-term stimulus.
"We urge you to act quickly to help stimulate consumer spending as one of your first priorities,'' wrote the federation's top officers, including the chief executives of J.C. Penney Co., Saks Inc. and PetSmart Inc.
But after a holiday when shoppers were still tight-fisted staring at 50 percent discounts, it remains to be seen how much a 7 percent tax savings loosens their grip.
Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.
News
