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$1.50/OCTOBER 4 - 10, 2010
Vol. 31, No. 39
Hoping to bury fears, we’re saving more With net worth, property values down, Americans sock away more cash — for now
By MICHELLE PARK mpark@crain.com
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ive months into what would become known as “The Great Recession,” John and Jane Doe made news because they finally had started squirreling away more than mere pennies. A headline in the May 19, 2008, issue of Crain’s declared: “Some Americans bucking trend of saving very little.” The collective consumer, many in the finance sector agreed, had behaved recklessly for years. It
had been hard to convince people to limit how much they spent on credit and to sock away more of their wages. Now, with a public chastened by the worst economic slump since the 1930s, saving little is the trend no more. Consider the following: ■ From June 2007 to June 2010, the total dollars invested in Huntington Bank consumer savings and money market accounts in Greater Cleveland more than doubled, region president Daniel Walsh said. See SAVINGS Page 12
KRISTEN WILSON
In shift, a healthy rise in home permit values Project costs up as buyers opt for more home By STAN BULLARD sbullard@crain.com
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A ray of hope for the new-home market has peaked through recent state data that show the aggregate value of housing permits in the Cleveland and Akron markets was up solidly in July from the month before and also was higher than in July 2009. According to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the valuation of housing permits in the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor Metropolitan Statistical Area totaled nearly $39.4 million in July. That
figure was up 27.5% from $30.9 million in June and rose almost 9% from $36.2 million in July of last year. In the Akron MSA, housing permit values totaled $8.4 million in July, which was a 17% increase from $7.2 million in June and a 1% rise from nearly $8.3 million in July 2009. David Payne, president of the Homebuilders Association of Greater Cleveland trade group, said the statistics do “not surprise me at all.” “This is the bottom; from here it improves,” Mr. Payne said. Mr. Payne, vice president of Payne & Payne Builders in Chardon,
INSIDE No more scribbling out prescriptions A report by the leading electronic prescribing network in the United States shows the number of doctors electronically submitting prescriptions more than doubled to 156,000 in 2009 from 74,000 in 2008. Health care officials say billions of dollars in federal incentives have pushed the issue to the forefront, while doctors point to frustrations over lost prescription slips and delays in waiting for calls from pharmacists as reasons for shifting to e-prescriptions. Read Tim Magaw’s story on Page 3.
See RISE Page 5
Lighting outfits aim to keep LED manufacturing at home By CHUCK SODER csoder@crain.com
The compact fluorescent light was invented at General Electric Co.’s Nela Park campus in East Cleveland, and the first company to commercialize CFL bulbs successfully is based in Aurora. But none of that mattered as the market for CFLs evolved: The manufacturing went overseas anyway. So will the same thing happen with light-emitting diodes, an even more energy-efficient technology that’s expected to eclipse the CFL? Northeast Ohio companies that are developing LED products say no. Some manufacturing is bound to go overseas, especially for the LED-
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MANUFACTURING Northeast Ohio companies keep watchful eye on coming elections, potential effects ■ Page 15 PLUS: EXPORTS ■ GAUGING MAGNET’S IMPACT ■ & MORE
based bulbs under development to replace standard, screw-in incandescent bulbs. When it comes to producing more specialized LED fixtures, however, Northeast Ohio and the rest of the United States have a chance to compete, according to several companies. Just ask Jim Crowcroft, vice president of marketing for TCP Inc. — the Aurora company that was the first to mass-produce CFLs. The company, founded by Ellis Yan, a Chinese immigrant, started making CFLs in China in the mid1990s. At the time, producing the coiled bulbs was an extremely laborintensive process, requiring the glass See LED Page 22