Leaning tower

by DAN MONKdmonk@bizjournals.com

As recently as 2008, it was a public, $96 million radio station chain, its head-quarters filling a floor at Covington’s Rivercenter II office tower.

But now that the former Regent Communications Inc. has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as privately held

firm Townsquare Media Inc., its local corporate presence is fading fast.

“When accounting leaves, we’ll have nine (employees) left,” said John King, senior vice president of operations for Townsquare. That’s down from 21.

The new owner, Oaktree Capital Management, is a Los Angeles-based investment firm with $76 billion in as-sets. The new CEO, Steven Price, has a

résumé that includes stints at the U.S. State Department and Goldman Sachs & Co.

Price could not be reached for com-ment, but he has indicated that he intends to pursue a strategy of “internal growth and acquisitions” for the radio chain, which has 62 stations in 13 cities.

by Lucy MAy | lmay@bizjournals.com

Paul Hemmer Cos., once one of the Tri-State’s largest and fastest-growing commercial con-struction and development firms, cut its work force by half in the past year as its annual revenue dropped by $85 million.

The recession that devastated builders na-tionwide forced the 89-year-old company to “re-engineer” itself for the third time since it was reorganized in 1982 as Paul Hemmer Cos., said CEO Paul Hemmer Jr.

“This economic cycle was driven by the subprime mortgage crisis, and we thought, ‘Oh good. We’re going to get through this one,’” Hemmer said. “Lo and behold, our business just fell off a cliff.”

Construction revenue made up more than $100 million of the company’s roughly $115 million total core revenue in 2008, he said. But once those building projects started closing out, there was no backlog to replace them, he said, “and we realized the world had changed.”

Total core revenue in 2009 dropped to less than $30 million. Hemmer cut staff and outsourced such func-tions as marketing and architecture, which had been handled in house. And the firm has decided to close its Chicago office and will manage its Illinois, Indiana and

by JON Newberryjnewberry@bizjournals.com

Less than three years after a New York-based developer acquired Tower Place Mall, the downtown retail center is in more trouble and could possibly get yet another owner.

The sparsely occupied shopping venue has been losing tenants for years under various owners and managers.

Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Bank informed the owner of the mall and its adjoining Fourth Street parking garage

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art’s sakeRookwood seeks new investors to continue growth plans | 5

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JuNe 4, 2010Vol. 27 No. 5 $3.00

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LocaL appeaLChiquita CEO Aguirre talks about diversification ... and Cincinnati | 4

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Stung by recession, Hemmer regroups with new strategy

A legal dispute between Tower Place’s bank, Regions, and its New York owner, threatens shopping center

Regent’s signal, once powerful, fading from local scene

TOwer pLAce, pAGe 30

reGeNT, pAGe 30

HeMMer, pAGe 29

Regent once was a $96M radio firm.

Pinales to handle cross-examination in murder retrial

INTHE

KNOWJon

Newberry

jnewberry@bizjournals.com | (513) 337-9433.

MURDER, PAGE 14

INSIGHT JUNE 4, 2010 l 11cincinnatibusinesscourier.com l

BUSINESS ADVICE

When criminal defense lawyer Marty Pinales joined Strauss & Troy last fall, the fi rm’s president Jim Heldman said it was glad to add his white-collar criminal defense expertise to the fi rm’s practice off erings.

Six months later, though, Pinales was seek-ing Heldman’s OK to take on a pro bono case that had little to do with white collars and much do to with red bloodstains on a pair of blue pants. He also wanted to involve colleague Nick Wayne from the fi rm’s litigation practice group who was involved with the Innocence Project while a law student at the University of Cincinnati.

The case is a retrial of a Cleveland man, Thomas Siller, who was convicted of aggravated murder stemming from the 1997 beating of an elderly woman. Ohio’s Eighth District Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling last year, overturned Siller’s convic-tion and sent the matter back to the trial court.

According to the appeals court’s opinion, the prosecution’s star witness in the initial 2001 mur-der trial was a man named George Smith, who made a favorable deal with prosecutors and testi-fi ed that he was not in the room where the victim was severely beaten and tied to a chair. Smith’s claim was bolstered by a Cleveland Police blood analyst who testifi ed that Smith’s pants contained no blood, although he later conceded there was a single blood spot on the back of one leg that matched the victim’s blood.

Siller was convicted for the murder and sen-tenced to 30 years to life. Later that year, a man in an unrelated case was exonerated after testimony by the very same police analyst was found to be false. He was fi red as a result, and a few years lat-er, the police department agreed as part of a civ-il lawsuit settlement to audit the analyst’s earlier work. The audit turned up defi cient documenta-tion of laboratory results related to Siller’s murder trial, according to the appeals court. Siller, still in prison, requested DNA testing of Smith’s pants.

The request was eventually granted, and the testing revealed not a single spot of blood on the back of one leg, as was established at Siller’s tri-al, but blood splattered all over the front of the pants, according to Pinales. Nine splatters were tested for DNA. Seven of them matched the vic-tim’s blood, and the two others matched Smith’s

BY ANDY BROWNFIELDCourier Contributor

It’s a bad time to be looking for a job, especially if you’re one of the 2.2 million college-age graduates in the class of 2010. The worst reces-sion since the Great Depression has many graduates leaving college-town

apartments and student housing to move back in with their parents until they can fi nd a job, and often those jobs are low-paying, part-time positions outside their fi eld of study.

College students with little to no expe-rience hardly make ideal job candidates, especially when competing against profes-sionals who have been out of work and are rejoining the work force. However, grads with certain degrees are in high demand in Cincinnati – and they’re netting very high starting salaries.

A survey by the Employers Resource Association (ERA), a Cincinnati-based HR consulting fi rm with more than 1,400 member companies, asked the group’s members what the average starting sal-ary was for recent college graduates with little to no work experience.

The results of the survey show that engi-neering and technical students are on the track to make the big bucks. Of the top 10 highest-paying fi elds for students with a bachelor’s degree, eight were in engineering and sciences, with a starting salary range from $48,000 to $54,333. Survey Manager Douglas Matthews said the high price tag for these graduates comes from the techni-cal nature of their degrees.

Pinales

Bagging big bucksWhile many college grads face months of job-hunting, others have companies chasing them

‘Employers are paying for the specialized knowledge these graduates possess.’Douglas Matthews ERA survey manager

Chemical engineering$54,333

Public relations$54,000

Software engineering$53,964

Electrical engineering$51,266

Construction science $51,000

The � ve highest starting salaries for graduates with a bachelor’s degree in Greater Cincinnati are:

GRADUATES, PAGE 12

l 12 l BUSINESS COURIER BUSINESS AdvICE JUNE 4, 2010 l lINSIGHT

FROM PAGE 11

graduates: Engineering degrees with specific in-demand skills draw high number of job offers

“A lot of these engineering and science jobs are highly skilled positions that re-quire a lot of training,” Matthews said. “Employers are paying for the specialized knowledge these graduates possess.”

The five degrees that net graduates with a bachelor’s degree the highest starting salaries in Greater Cincinnati are: chemi-cal engineering ($54,333), public relations ($54,000), software engineering ($53,964), electrical engineering ($51,266) and con-struction science ($51,000).

In contrast, students who graduate hold-ing the following five bachelor’s degrees are likely to net the lowest starting salaries: criminal justice and corrections ($26,000), liberal arts and sciences ($29,970), English ($30,470), psychology ($33,500) and com-munications ($36,079).

Pay for sPecialized knowledge“(The highest paying degrees) have spe-

cific career paths that require specialized knowledge, and people pay more for that,” Matthews said. “Whereas for someone with a degree in liberal arts, there isn’t

really a traditional career path, and many of them often go into lower-paying fields or nonprofits.”

Stuart Shelley is the co-founder and prin-cipal of Etegent Technologies, a Norwood-based company that conducts R&D for targeting systems for the military. He said his company is more than willing to shell out the big bucks for someone with the right technical skills; someone they’re not going to have to spend a lot of time and money training.

“There’s a high demand for good people with that type of education,” Shelley said.

“We’ve been looking for people with auto-matic targeting systems expertise. Wright State has a pretty good program, but they said by the time their undergrads are juniors or seniors they are pretty much spoken for.”

Etegent Technologies recently hired two college students who will be graduating in June. Both will have degrees in engineer-

ing, one with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering. Shelley wouldn’t reveal how much they were being paid, but he said their salaries were very competitive with the averages from the ERA survey.

“When you need someone who is highly capable and highly qualified with a tech-nical degree, the candidate field is nar-rowed down dramatically,” Shelley said. “People are willing to pay high salaries to attract them.”

more comPetitionThe economy recently created 290,000

new jobs, according to the latest available government data. Despite this, the unem-ployment rate rose to 9.9 percent from 9.7 as 805,000 “discouraged workers” – unem-ployed people who have quit looking for a job and are not counted in the official unemployment rate – left the sidelines and re-entered the labor force. That may be good news for the economy, as workers are beginning to have more confidence in the recovery, but it’s bad news for grads, who now have to compete for entry-level positions against those more qualified.

The unemployment rate for those aged 20-24, a group populated mostly by recent graduates and young professionals, is higher than the national average at 16.4 percent. The National Association of Colleges and Employers, an organization that collects data on the employment of the college educated, reports that employers plan to hire 5.3 percent more college graduates this year, but that’s a small recovery after they hired 21.6 percent fewer graduates last spring.

Despite the numbers working against them, college graduates with those high-paying degrees are also having an easier time finding jobs.

Cheryl Koopman is vice president of hu-man resources for Oakley-based Richards Industries, a manufacturer of industrial valves. Her company recently hired two students who are graduating this spring, and plans on hiring one more. The two new hires both have those in-demand en-gineering degrees.

“People may think valves are simple, but we work in a very technical field,” Koopman said. “We were looking for people who can hit the ground running.”

Criminal justice and $26,000 correctionsLiberal arts and $29,970 sciencesEnglish $30,470Psychology $33,500Communications $36,079

starting low lAccording to a survey by the Employers Resource Association

(ERA), students who graduate holding the following five bach-elor’s degrees are likely to net the lowest starting salaries:

www.cincinnatibusinesscourier.com

I spoke with a friend of mine who is the IT Director and Marketing person for another law fi rm here in Cincinnati. She mentioned she saw both the belly band and the ads we have been running in the Business Courier. She was very impressed by what we had produced, and her marketing team mentioned our campaign as an initiative their own fi rm should be looking into.

Apparently our competition is well aware and impressed with the work we have done. Wood & Lamping and the Business Courier make a great team!

Just more proof that advertising in the Business Courier has impact.

Brian GillanWood & Lamping LLP

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INSIDE

By Andy Brownfield AND Kristin Davenport

The Employers Resource Association’s survey on economic conditions asked participants how well their business performed during the first quarter of 2010 versus expectations. For each month, only a small percentage of respondents felt that they performed worse than expected. The best month seems to have been March, in which one-third of respondents performed better than expected, and 4.5 percent performed much better than expected. February was the worst month, but even then 24 percent exceeded expectations. Improved business conditions gener-ally lead to hiring. After all of the layoffs and downsizing that took place in 2009, many employers are operating with a bare minimum of personnel, and are planning to hire now that business is picking up.

Survey: Businesses feeling better about hiringl l JuNe 4, 2010 BusiNess ADvice BusiNess cOuRieR l 15 lINSIGHT

How well did your company perform in the first quarter of 2010? Do you plan to rehire or otherwise increase staff levels in 2010?

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

March

Yes, we plan to hire employees this year

3%Yes, we plan to hire oncewe hit certain sales goals

7%

No

29%

Unknownat this time

32%

Yes, other

29%

Feb.Jan.

Much worse than expected

Worse than expected

About as well as expected

Better than expected

Much better than expected

No answer

Jobs pRospEcTs looking up lIn recent surveys, employers shared information about how well their companies performed in the first quarter of 2010 (66

responses), and about hiring plans for the year (183 responses).

source: eRA Pulse survey on economic conditions

Top names in music pay tribute to Diane Warren. Also featured: The world premiere of Warren’s new musical project, Due Voci.

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