B USINESS New owners for Hampton Inn,

BUSINESS
THE DAILY HOME, Wednesday, May 14, 2014 — 4C
Retail
sales rise
scant
0.1% in
April
New owners for
Hampton Inn,
Holiday Inn
in Pell City
By DAVID ATCHISON
Home staff writer
A New York based real
estate investment firm
acquired two major hotels
in Pell City.
Jacobs Real Estate
Advisors LLC announced
the successful acquisition of the Holiday Inn
Express & Suites and the
Hampton Inn, both in
Pell City.
The hotels are now
managed and operated by
JREA Management.
Jacobs Real Estate
Advisors LLC has been
acquiring hotels throughout the United States
for the past 18 months,
focusing on properties
that have an inherent
community significance
and unrealized intrinsic
value, according to a press
release from the company.
According to the press
release from Jacobs Real
Estate Advisors LLC, the
Pell City portfolio was
acquired from Peachtree
Hotel Group, a wellknown hospitality investment and management
company, for $11.3 million.
The Holiday Inn
Express & Suites Pell City
and the Hampton Inn
Pell City are held by two
newly formed companies,
Jacobs Pell HI, LLC and
Jacobs Pell HP, LLC.
At the Pell City properties, Director of Hotels
Tom French is working alongside current
staff to ensure the JREA
Management value added
philosophy is embodied.
The current management team is led by Nancy
Gerety.
The new management
team will play a leading
role in a reinvestment
focused on guest rooms
and guest areas.
The hotels will go
through a million dollar
renovation in the coming months, including
updates to rooms and
guest areas.
Upon
completion,
guests will experience a
modern, inviting first
floor with interactive,
communal spaces for conducting business, socializing or enjoying a drink
or meal.
“I am excited to add
these hotels to our real
estate portfolio and management company,” said
David Atchison/The Daily Home
The Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Pell City have new
owners and are currently under new management. The two hotels will go
through a million dollar renovation in the coming months.
Sholom Jacobs, principal at Jacobs Real Estate
Advisors. “These properties are premium properties and to know we
can add value here is a
great feeling. We have had
great success over the past
18 months with hotels
throughout the country,
so purchasing properties
in an area we are familiar
with was a great next play
for us.”
To learn more about
JREA
Management’s
and Jacobs Real Estate
Advisors’ newest hotel,
visit www.jreamangement.
com and www.jacobsrea.
com.
Get Organized!
How to procrastinate effectively
The title of this article
is taken from a chapter
title of an old time-management nugget. “Time
Power” (1987) by Dr.
Charles Hobbs, is one of
the hallmark books on
time management. Since
its publication, much in
our world has changed,
due to technology. The
concept that procrastination cannot only be good,
but is essential, is one that
still rings true.
Time-management literature is full of articles
on overcoming procrastination. Each one tells
us how to avoid “putting
off ” our tasks. Authors
portray it as a practice
to avoid. Procrastination,
however, is a friend for
those who strive to get
the right things done and
get them done at the right
time.
Procrastinate on
your email
Let your email accumulate during the day.
Handle it all in one batch
at mid-day and again in
one batch at mid-afternoon. As people begin to
see your responses coming within the day rather
than within the hour, you
will receive fewer emails
with inquiries the sender
could have handled with
a Google search or 5 minutes of thought.
You will begin to see
little “batches” within
your email. For example,
work for one of my major
clients normally results
with several emails each
day from teachers around
the state who have questions about their data.
To respond intelligently,
I consult a spreadsheet
housing a password for
each school district, access
one particular website,
and with that password,
log into that school district to view the data
in question. That set of
emails goes much quicker
when I open the password spreadsheet once,
access the website once,
and handle those several
emails back-to-back.
If you work with a
large group of employees, your email will likely
include items that seem
to follow the same theme,
such as questions regarding a recent communication. You may find you
can fashion one response
to handle them all.
Procrastinate on placing
phone calls
School administrators
are easier to catch after
school. Procrastinate on
making calls to them and
handle however many you
have in one batch.
Procrastinate on reading
I would include in this
category books, magazines, your RSS feed, and
social media. During the
day, you will find yourself
with odd blocks of time:
waiting at the dentist’s
office, sitting in the audience waiting for the concert to start, arriving early
for a meeting and waiting
for the other participants
to show up. Having a supply of low-priority tasks
which can fill the gaps
turns potentially wasted
time into productive time.
I read my RSS feed
during
those
odd
moments. While standing in line at the grocery store, I open Feedly
(http://Feedly.com) and
read the items from the
blogs to which I subscribe.
What I read there is certainly more beneficial that
skimming the racks at the
checkout aisle. Reading
my Twitter feed happens
at these odd moments.
When magazines arrive
in the mail, I throw them
Home BUSINESS NOTE
QUEST Kids Club & Center located at 11025 Hwy 78 East Riverside, Alabama
celebrated a ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday, May 6, 2014. Those present
were: Erica Grieve; Pell City Chamber of Commerce Executive Director, Dana
Jacks; Chamber Member, Janice Black, Mattison Black, Carla Callahan, Cassie
Callahan, Kari Callahan, Councilman Bill Cantley, Ric Callahan, Elana Weems,
Pastor Pat Worsham, Matt Black, Jimmy Pollard, Tim Gold, Mayor Rusty Jessup
and Councilman Jim Hollander. QUEST kids club & Center can be reached at
205-338-7543
000200041r1
into a decorative wooden
letter tray. When I check
books from the public
library, I put them there
also. I procrastinate on
reading them. When I
leave the house, I always
throw some reading material in the briefcase.
Procrastinate on
some writing
I am writing this post
while sitting in the audience at a concert band
festival. After the performance of each band,
considerable setup for
the next group is needed, leaving small blocks of
time for audience members. I came with ideas for
five different blog posts
and hoped to write those
five during the “breaks in
the action.”
Procrastinate on those
items which need to
‘bake’
Some projects simply need time for more
thought and maturity
before being launched.
Additional, helpful information comes at the most
unexpected time from
unexpected sources.
Need to buy a car?
Procrastinate on the deci-
Frank Buck
WASHINGTON (AP)
— U.S. retail sales growth
slowed in April, with consumers shopping less online
and cutting back on purchases of furniture and electronics.
The
Commerce
Department said Tuesday
that seasonally adjusted
retail sales rose just 0.1 percent last month, after surging 1.5 percent in March
following a harsh winter
that had curtailed shopping.
Several economists said
the April figures might have
been depressed because of
seasonal adjustments connected to a later than usual
Easter. Still, the modest
sales suggest that consumers may remain cautious
during the still-slow economic recovery. Higher
sales would help drive faster
growth because consumers
account for about 70 percent of the economy.
Auto sales increased 0.6
percent in April, and purchases at clothing stores
were up 1.2 percent. But
most of those gains were
offset by declines in spending at restaurants, online
retailers and furniture and
electronics stores. Excluding
autos and gasoline, retail
sales fell 0.1 percent last
month.
Wages have not budged
much during the recovery,
and growth has struggled to
eclipse 3 percent, the average annual gain after World
War II.
The
Commerce
Department
previously reported the economy
grew just 0.1 percent in
the January-March quarter. That figure could slip
into negative territory as
the government revises it,
according to several economists.
But the brutal winter
depressed the economy
during the first quarter, and
economic indicators since
then have pointed to stronger growth in the current
April-June quarter. Many
economists are looking for
a rebound to an annual
growth rate of around 3
percent in the current quarter and similarly solid readings for the rest of the year.
sion to purchase and you
will be surprised at how
many reviews of your
desired model show up,
how many friends you see
driving that model, and
how many dealerships
have that model at bargain
prices.
Actually, all of that
information was probably already available.
Now that you are in the
market to purchase a car,
information which you
would have unconsciously filtered out is now the
Hiring has been strong
information on which you for the past three months.
focus.
Employers added 288,000
jobs in April, after gains
of more than 200,000 in
Procrastination
the previous two months.
frees time
When those things Average wages were flat in
which are best done later April, although each new
is providing another
are out of the way, you job
paycheck to be spent.
“clear the deck” for the
“At the end of the day,
things which are best done it is all about one’s job, and
now. After all, doing what job security,” Jennifer Lee, a
you should be doing in senior economist at BMO
the order you should be Capital Markets, said in a
doing them is what time research note. “A job is a
management is all about. job and that will help determine the ability for one
Frank Buck is a retired to consume. And the U.S.
educator who writes and labor market is improving
speaks on organizational steadily, which will support
techniques.
consumer spending.”
Home BUSINESS NOTE
Shoe Fetishhh recently held the grand opening of its new location at 111 J. White
Blvd., Talladega (256) 268-8377 (next to Margaritas Mexican Restaurant). Shown
cutting the ribbon (l-r) Ray Miller, Charlotte Green, owner Kowheysi Gaines, owner Tangela Garrard, Mayor Larry Barton, Chamber President Chip Moore, Shena
Swain, Chamber Director Jason Daves, Becky Griffin, Sonya Jacks, Angelia Todd
and Mary Jane Dasher. Open Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.- 8 p.m.
000200085r1