Kevin Lehrer Title • Managing Partner - U.S., 5 Horizons Group, Maplewood Age • 37 Residence • University City Family • Married. Two children. Education • College at Indiana University. Law school at Chicago-Kent Employment history • TRG Group. Left TRG in 2007 to found 5 Horizons with business partner Jonathan Allen, who manages Asian operations. About a decade ago, Kevin Lehrer was living in Chicago, studying for the bar exam. Then he got offered a part-time job, keeping an eye on shipping at a bean bag warehouse. One thing led to another, and now Lehrer has a front-row seat on the world of global manufacturing. Lehrer and his partner Jonathan Allen co-founded 5 Horizons Group, a manufacturing and design services company that makes products ... Continue reading →
Two men in the weight room and a guy jogging on a treadmill were the only members working out one recent afternoon at the Marquette YMCA in downtown St. Louis. Opened in 1987, the branch Y — one of 18 in the area — is closing at the end of the month. Reasons abound. A six-month closure for a renovation in 2005 prompted 40 percent of the Marquette Y’s membership to drift away. More recently, a newer, bigger for-profit fitness center downtown lured some Y members. The nonprofit YMCA also competes with itself through the presence of the larger, more established Downtown Y 10 blocks from the Marquette branch, which is a bit hidden away on the third and fourth floors of the Marquette Building, ... Continue reading →
June 9, 1997 - May 25, 2012 Today is my last official day of work at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Technically, I’m wrapping up a second week of vacation, so I won’t really be in the office. I was informed earlier this week that my job as an assistant metro editor is being eliminated, along with five other positions in the newsroom. So in light of this, I wanted take a moment to thank my family, friends, co-workers and neighbors for being in my corner with kind words, hugs, practical and creative plan Bs, tears and even a free haircut. You never know how an act of kindness is likely to reveal itself. I worked as a copy editor, designer, travel editor and health editor ... Continue reading →
In the complicated world of economic development, one of the biggest things St. Louis has going for it is the simple fact that living here is cheap. A new report out this morning illustrates just how cheap. The folks over at the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness, an economic development thinktank in Virginia, crunched cost of living data for more than 300 metro areas around the U.S. What they found - surprise, surprise - is that Manhattan is the most expensive place to live in the U.S., with its basket of housing, energy, transportation, health care and other costs there coming out at more than two-and-one-fourths the national average. The cheapest? Harlingen, Texas, with Memphis taking second place. CREC kindly passed along their data, so ... Continue reading →
Sam Shih buys foreclosed houses, fixes them up and rents them out. He’s usually on the lookout for a good deal. But he was shocked when he spotted a new listing on Mimeaux Drive in February. It was a 1,600-square-foot suburban split-level built in the 1970s. It offered three bedrooms, one bath, a carport, deck and a fenced yard in the Hazelwood School District. It’s in a quiet neighborhood made up mainly of neatly kept ranch homes in a part of the Spanish Lake area that seems almost rural. The price? $12,000 for a property assessed at nearly $90,000. "I’m amazed at how low some foreclosed properties are going," says Al Rosen, who keeps an eye on distressed sales at Coldwell Banker Gundaker. "You and ... Continue reading →
A Dallas hotel owned by St. Louis-based Roberts Cos. has filed for bankruptcy, becoming the final hotel owned by the development firm that's embroiled in a $34 million lawsuit to seek bankruptcy protection. Roberts Hotels Dallas LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in St. Louis Wednesday and lists an estimated $1 million to $10 million in assets and between $10 million and $50 million in liabilities. The hotel, which remains open, operates as a Courtyard by Marriott at 2383 Stemmons Trail in Dallas. The Dallas hotel is one of six hotels owned by Roberts Cos. that's involved in a lawsuit Bank of America filed against Roberts Cos. in April. In the suit, Bank of America alleges Roberts Cos. defaulted on a loan to renovate the ... Continue reading →
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which distinguished itself amid great adversity during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is about to enact large staff cuts and may cut back its print publishing schedule to several days a week, according to two employees with knowledge of the plans.Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the Times-Picayune, will apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor, Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann Arbor News, emphasized the Web site as a primary distributor of news and in the process instituted wholesale layoffs to cut costs.A request for comment from the newspaper’s editor, Jim Amoss, late Wednesday night was not returned.The plans have been kept under wraps, but the newspaper will likely cease to exist as a ... Continue reading →
