wichitabusinessjournal.com
VOL. 27 NO. 23
JUNE 8, 2012 $2.50
INSIDE
Thin supply of good used cars pinches dealers
A PLACE OF THEIR OWN Craig HomeCare owners buy First Street building. P5 JUNE 8, 2012 | wichitabusinessjournal.com
COMMERCIAL DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION
BY DANIEL MCCOY WICHITA BUSINESS JOURNAL
HISTORY PAYS Architect Wes Darnell is among the construction professionals benefiting from the rise in historic renovations. P15 JOSH HECK / WBJ
INSIDE Developers demand faster build-outs. P12 City-county code consolidation is on track. P13 Hutch man pitches new building concept. P14
11
USED SALES IN THE WICHITA-HUTCHINSON MARKET THROUGH APRIL
DANIEL MCCOY/ WBJ
Sales figures show used vehicle sales are on the increase. But, dealers say, years of slower new sales that have limited the number of quality trade-ins, along with other factors, are making it hard to find the used inventory they need to keep up with the increasing demand. 13,647
FOCUS Commercial Design and Construction. P11
10,000 5,000 0
13,269
9,633 8,342 6,967
7,062
2011
8,852
6,617
2012 Jan.
Feb.
March
April
If you’ve gone shopping for a used car lately, you may have found it tough to get what you were looking for at the price you were expecting. That’s because, dealers say, there is a shortage of high-quality used vehicles in the market. “Used cars are hard to find, especially the good ones,” says Dawson Grimsley, president of Davis-Moore Auto Group. “I tell my guys, ‘Those A- and B-grade tradeGrimsley ins, don’t miss them.’” The lower inventory has meant higher prices for used cars, and that has helped shift consumers who would’ve bought used into the market for new cars.
See USED, Page 18
SOURCE: CNW RESEARCH SHAWN HOUSTON / WBJ
Billion-dollar bank? Equity says it’s ready BY JOHN STEARNS
FROM PLAINS TO PROPERTY Occidental finds the right fit in CFO Todd Richardson. P17
THE LIST Residential Real Estate Brokerages Page 10
You could say Wichita’s Equity Bank has been preparing all along to be a billion-dollar bank — and it will reach that milestone, plus some, just 10 years after launching. The bank will approach $1.3 billion in assets after its planned merger with the larger First Community Bank, based in Lee’s Summit, Mo.
The all-stock deal was announced Tuesday and is expected to be completed later this year. The precise terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Equity’s strategy has been to hire upperlevel managers with experience at banks with at least $1 billion in assets, says Brad Elliott, Equity’s chairman and CEO. JOHN STEARNS / WBJ
See EQUITY, Page 19
Brad Elliott, chairman and CEO of Equity Bank.
Local software group tames WSU engineers leave the lab ... in race cars Twitter for customer service BY EMILY BEHLMANN
Twitter says that, as of November, about 200 million tweets are going out on its platform each day. Some of them are from potential customers. Some are praising or bashing your brand. “The trick is finding them,” says Steve Castro-Miller, vice president for chat products at LogMeIn. “There’s gold somewhere if you can find it.” Find it and manage it. That’s where Castro-Miller and others at LogMeIn come in with a planned addition to its customer-service software, BoldChat. LogMeIn, of Woburn, Mass., bought Wichita’s Bold Software in January for $16.5 million. The name “Bold Software” is gone, but the company’s flagship customer service chat program is still managed in Wichita by 16 local employees. BoldChat has users in 70 countries, including local customers Vornado and
See BOLD CHAT, Page 23
Wichita State University’s Shocker Racing team may be one of the best kept secrets on campus. Launched in 2007, Shocker Racing is a student organization that designs, fabricates, tests and races small openwheel formula-style race cars as well as Baja racers that are used on offroad courses. The program is not widely known on WSU’s campus — or in Wichita for that matter — but it is a popular extracurricular activity within the university’s engineering department. WSU’s race team has been operating out of a 688-square-foot shop on the WSU campus since its inception, but with continued success it was evident that the space wasn’t sufficient. Now, that shop is poised for a $280,000 expansion that will dramatically increase the amount of work space.
Donors are paying for the project. WSU credits engineering alumni Brent Myers and Herb Coin for helping make the expansion possible. A confidentiality agreement prevents the WSU Foundation from disclosing the donation amounts. The WSU racing team competes on the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers circuit, which is a worldwide engineering competition to design, manufacture and test race cars. The team competes in events in California, Kansas, Michigan and Texas. The program receives roughly $40,000 a year from university and inkind contributions. Engineering Dean Zulma Toro-Ramos says the hope is to eventually increase that funding to around $70,000 to help the program run a “top-of-the-line” operation.
See BIZ NOTES, Page 3