Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

The Macy's department store chain will open a district office in Attleboro in early May to support about a dozen of its stores, including two in Rhode Island, a company spokesman said today.

The office is one of 49 the company plans as it realigns store operations to better reflect the buying habits of people in regions across the country. The company recently announced it would cut about 7,000 jobs as part of the change.

People slated to lose their jobs as part of those cuts are eligible for the 20 or so jobs at each of the district offices, according to James Sluzewski, the Macy's spokesman. There will be 23 people working at the Attleboro office.

Other Macy's offices in Massachusetts are planned for Boston and Peabody. The company also will open an office in Enfield, Conn.

CVS Caremark Corp. said today it wants to build a distribution center in Chemung County, N.Y., near Elmira, in the south-central part of the state.

The Woonsocket company said it expects to employ 600 people at the site, which it hopes will be open in 2011. The distribution center will supply about 350 CVS drugstores in the Northeast.

The company has yet to close a deal for the 311-acre site, the company said in a statement, and the project has yet to receive final approvals from state and local agencies in New York.

New York government officials, as you'd expect, are pleased with the proposed development.

"This is great economic news for the residents of our entire region and could not have come at a better time," said Tom Santulli, Chemung County Executive. "This project will create hundreds of quality jobs and provide a significant boost to our local economy."

The CVS statement does not indicate whether any of the jobs will be moved from other company locations, or what workers at the Chemung County site will earn.

CVS Caremark Corp. said today it is voluntarily recalling four types of candy containing peanuts that were sold in its stores during the last two years. The candy was sold under the Gold Emblem label from Jan. 1, 2007 to last Thursday, according to a company statement.

The candy was made with peanuts from Peanut Corporation of America, the company at the heart of one of the largest food recalls in history. Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked retailers, manufacturers and consumers to throw out every product made in the last two years from peanuts processed by the Georgia plant that spawned a deadly nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness.

The action last Thursday came after federal officials discovered that Peanut Corporation of America knowingly shipped products contaminated with salmonella 12 times in 2007 and 2008.

CVS is unaware of any reported illnesses related to its Gold Emblem peanut products, according to the Woonsocket-based drugstore chain. The Gold Emblem products, all of which come in 3.5-ounce packages, include; Chocolate Peanuts, Bridge Mix, Peanut Clusters and Caramel Clusters.

Customers can return the items to CVS for a refund. For additional information, contact CVS at 1-800-746-7287.

Football fans gearing up for the Super Bowl game apparently are feeling the pinch of a tight economy, according to a just-released survey conducted for the National Retail Federation.

An estimated 167 million adults will watch the big game this year, up from 158 million last year. People tuned in to the annual NFL championship game each year tend to roll out all manner of culinary choices for smorgasbords intended to keep guests fueled up to the last hike of the game. With every passing year, the buffets have tended to get bigger and more elaborate and purchases tied to the game get larger and larger (think 60-inch plasma TVs.)

Probably not this year, if the survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association -- an arm of the retail federation.

Though more people will be watching the game, the parties may be scaled back. Super Bowl viewers plan to spend an average of $57.27 on food, merchandise, team apparel and even furniture, less than the $59.90 they said they'd spend last year. In all, shoppers will spend $9.6 billion for the game.

"With the economy on everyone's mind, most Super Bowl viewers will tone down their plans this year," said Mike Gatti, an NRF spokesman.

Fewer people plan to buy electronics, apparel and furniture for the game, according to the survey.

But people still gotta eat, so nearly three-quarters of consumers, 72.4 percent, will buy food and beverages for the evening, compared to 67.4 percent last year.

For more financial news, visit the Projo business blog.

Discount apparel and home goods retailer TJX Cos., the Massachusetts company that owns T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and other discount retailers, is offering a 15-percent discount today as it pays penance for a massive data breach that plagued the company.

The company initially disclosed the data breach in January 2007 but said a few months later that at least 45.7 million cards were exposed to possible fraud in a breach of its computer systems that began in July 2005. Court filings by some banks that sued TJX put the number of cards affected at more than 100 million, based on estimates by officials with Visa and MasterCard.

The "Customer Appreciation Day" running today offers the discount at about 2,412 stores in the U.S. and Canada for purchases made today, excluding gift cards and layaways.

The promotion will run at all T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and A.J. Wright stores in the U.S., and at Winners and HomeSense stores in Canada.

Today's event comes two years after a data breach that exposed tens of millions of payment cards belonging to TJX customers.

Eleven people were indicted last year on charges they hacked into the systems of TJX and other major retailers to steal the card numbers.

Last September, a man identified as a key player in a ring charged with the largest data theft case in history pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Boston and agreed to provide authorities with information about others involved. Damon Patrick Toey, 23, of Miami, pleaded guilty to charges including credit card fraud, wire fraud and identity theft. Toey was one of 11 people indicted last year and accused of hacking nine major retailers, including TJX Cos.

The group is charged in the theft and sale of more than 41 million credit and debit card numbers. The alleged leader of the group, Albert Gonzalez, a former Secret Service informant, pleaded not guilty to similar charges during his initial appearance in Boston

A letter to customers attributed to TJX president and CEO Carol Meyrowitz and posted on the TJX Web site addresses the matter: "We are pleased that charges have been brought against the individuals allegedly responsible for the TJX computer intrusion(s), as well as breaches at many other major retailers."

WARWICK -- Commerce paused for a time at Sears in the Rhode Island Mall.

A knot of people, customers dressed in winter coats and black-shirted clerks, stood around a wide-screen television to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural speech. Among them was Tracey Cassel, who runs a bakery business in Providence.

She had come to Sears after dropping off her sister at a nearby dentist's office.
"I didn't want to miss it," she said. "I was just hunting down a TV."

Cassel stood, rapt, as Obama spoke of the attitudes and aspirations of Americans: "We gather because we have chosen hope over fear ... All deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."

Afterward, she said the speech had moved her nearly to tears.

"I never, ever thought I would be able to see something like this," said the 33-year-old woman. "I'm excited about where the country will be going."

>> Continue reading: In Warwick, hunting down a TV to watch at Sears

Butler Hospital's unionized staff today ratified a new three-year contract that includes annual pay raises and limits the use of "travel" nurses, whose use is a nettlesome factor for the psychiatric center's employees.

Members of the union representing nearly 300 nurses, mental-health workers and other employees had voted earlier in the week to strike if their contract demands were not met. The members of District 1199, the New England Health Care Employees Union/SEIU picketed the hospital earlier in the week to call attention to the contract issues that remained unresolved to that point. The nurses had been working under an extension of a three-year contract since March 31.

But just before midnight Wednesday, union negotiators reached an agreement with management that will keep staff members working. Staff members voted throughout the day today, ultimately approving a new three-year contract, according to a hospital statement.

The new contract includes annual pay raises of 4 percent, 4.25 percent and 4 percent, respectively, limits the use of contracted staff ans excludes mental-health workers from having to work mandatory overtime. The new contract maintains the union members' current health-care coverage.

Hospital management says the use of travel nurses, who work on contracts through temporary staffing agencies, is rare but necessary.

The 117-bed private pyschiatric and substance abuse treatment facility has used travel nurses in the past, according to a hospital spokeswoman. About 2 percent of the nursing shifts are filled by the temporary workers.

-- Journal staff writer Paul Grimaldi

The lenders who financed the purchase and renovations at the Twin River slot parlor gave the Lincoln facility's owners more time to rework their finances.

The lenders have been pressuring Twin River's owner, UTGR Inc., since the company missed a loan payment early last month. The two sides have been negotiating for weeks under a standstill agreement that delayed legal action to collect payment on $577 million in outstanding loans tied to Twin River's operation.

The standstill pact, known as forbearance agreement, was extended twice while negotiations continued. It's now been extended a third time, unil June 30, with options for two additional 30-day extensions.

In effect, Twin River has until Aug. 29 to work out a "permanent financing structure" that would satisfy the lenders, according to Patti Doyle, a spokeswoman for the slot parlor. It also has more time now "to establish a payment schedule with our other creditors, chiefly Dimeo Construction Co.

Dimeo was the primary contractor on the slot parlor's $225-million reconstruction project. The Providence contractor recently placed liens on the property seeking $6 million for some of that work. Other contractors followed Dimeo's lead, filing liens for more than $1 million in all.

The slot parlor’s inability to make the loan payment last month triggered two ratings downgrades on UTGR by Standard & Poor’s, which now rates the company's corporate debt as CCC-.

The company that owns the Twin River gambling facility in Lincoln got another week from its lenders to work out its financial problems, but that wasn't enough to prevent its credit rating from being downgraded for the second time this month.

UTGR Inc., which owns Twin River, missed a loan payment earlier this month, prompting negotiations with its lenders and collection efforts by contractors that worked on the building’s $225-million reconstruction.

UTGR and its lenders entered into a pact, known as a forbearance agreement, which allows the company to work out payment plans with its lenders and creditors. That agreement was set to expire today. The two sides agreed to extend the pact for a week, according to Twin River spokeswoman Patty Doyle.

"Credit ratings by their very nature are very conservative," Doyle said. "We've made tremendous progress with our lenders this week. We're quite hopeful we will reach a long-term agreement with [them]."

The missed payment had already triggered one ratings downgrade on UTGR Inc. by the Standard & Poor’s Corp. ratings unit, The Providence Journal reported. On March 4, S&P lowered UTGR's rating to B- from B+, and placed the ratings on its "CreditWatch" list with negative implications.

S&P went further today, lowering UTGR's rating to CCC-, or "junk" status.

"The downgrade reflects our ongoing concerns about a potential bankruptcy filing as the company reportedly continues to negotiate a forbearance agreement with its lenders. While we believe that incentives exist for the company and its lenders to reach an extended agreement, the new ratings better reflect the near-term risk factors for a potential bankruptcy filing if the parties are not able to come to an agreement."

The facility, which includes video slots, a dog-racing track and restaurant and entertainment offerings, is operating normally at this point.

Beyond serving its customers, Twin Rivers contributes to gambling revenues in the state's budget, and revenues have been up this year.

Altogether, the state expects to take in about $243 million from Twin River’s video slot machines for the year that will end June 30, and about $256 million for the year that will start July 1.

-- Journal staff writer Paul Grimaldi