Author: Wayne Heilman Special to the Gazette
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Report: Downtown Colorado Springs survives pandemic better than most
Downtown Colorado Springs took some hits during the COVID-19 pandemic, but has emerged far stronger than most observers expected after many office employers sent workers home to work for the past year. Although downtown sales tax revenue was down 20%, retail vacancy rates rose and hotel occupancy declined, more storefront businesses opened last year than…
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Colorado Springs-based Insurance Technologies acquires Utah company
Colorado Springs-based insurance software provider Insurance Technologies has acquired Utah-based IXN Tech for its mobile application that helps life insurance agents sell policies. The deal comes about six months after Insurance Technologies was sold to Boston-based private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners to help it develop its sales automation software for the life insurance…
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Century-old Berwick Electric of Colorado Springs being sold to out-of-state company
A 100-year-old Colorado Springs electrical contractor, Berwick Electric, will be merged into St. Louis-based Guarantee Electrical on June 1, Guarantee announced. Terms of the transaction were not announced by Guarantee, which is owned by its employees and generates annual revenue of about $200 million. Berwick will operate as an “independent business unit” of Guarantee, operating…
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Colorado Springs hotel occupancy increases for first time in 16 months
Colorado Springs hotels sold more rooms than a year earlier last month for the first time in 16 months, but only because the COVID-19 pandemic had already triggered many convention cancellations in March 2020. The 53.9% occupancy rate in March was the highest since October and up from 38.8% in March 2020, the first year-over-year…
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Fraudulent unemployment claims flooding Colorado employers
Gary Seabolt receives unemployment claim notices almost every day for Pikes Peak Construction for people who have never worked for the company, listing some fairly unlikely jobs, such as ship’s engineer. The tiny Colorado Springs company has just five employees and has never laid off any of them, yet the flood of notices has forced…
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Colorado Springs sales tax collections post biggest gain in 4 years
Colorado Springs sales tax collections surged in March to the biggest gain in more than four years amid booming online sales and housing construction, according to a report from the city’s Finance Department. Revenue from the city’s 2% sales tax surged 18.7% from March 2020 to $14.1 million. That’s the largest percentage increase since December…
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Pikes Peak Workforce Center hosting virtual job fair Wednesday
The Pikes Peak Workforce Center will host a virtual job fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday featuring more than 100 businesses that will be available for live chat or video chat with job seekers. Participating employers include a mix of hotels, manufacturers, retailers, government agencies, school districts, restaurants, insurers, nonprofits and others. The…
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Study: Lowest-paid jobs in Colorado hit hardest by COVID-19 pandemic
Colorado’s lowest-paid workers have been hit hardest by job losses from restrictions to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, statistics from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment show. Jobs such as food preparation and serving, personal care and services and sales-related positions shed the most jobs in the 12 months that ended in…
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Teller County trash hauler expanding into Colorado Springs
Owners of trash companies in Teller and Chaffee counties say they plan to expand into the Colorado Springs market Monday to challenge three waste disposal giants that dominate the local industry. Father-and-son team Jay and Jayson Baker, and Dominic Haight, general manager and Jay Baker’s son-in-law, formed Infinite Disposal (infinitedisposal.com) this month to begin offering residential…
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USAA offering small business insurance in Colorado, 4 other states
San Antonio-based financial giant USAA announced Thursday it has begun offering small-business insurance to its members in Colorado and four other states. USAA’s insurance agency had offered small-business coverage for the past 30 years through an unaffiliated company, but it now offers the coverage directly as a result of growing demand from its 13 million…