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