Joan Saunders, chief operating and financial officer of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce since 2007, will become CEO of the Pet Care Services Association on July 20. The association is headquartered in Colorado Springs.
“We’ve graduated another outstanding member ofour staff to a vital leadership opportunity in the community and nation,” said Dave Csintyan, chamber president and CEO.
TripAdvisor named our own Garden of the Gods the No. 2 top free atrraction unheralded in the United States. The No. 1, by the by, was watching the sunset from Mallory Square in Key West, Fla.
Here’s the blurb:
Its name does not overstate the beauty and the scale of this impressive sight. The Garden of the Gods is home to some of the most uniquely beautiful sandstone rock formations in the country, and affords incredible views of Colorado’s famous Pike’s Peak mountain behind the stunning red giants of the park. According to one TripAdvisor traveler, “Beautiful and right near the city, it’s free. Be sure to look for the ‘kissing camels’ (two rocks that resemble camel heads kissing).”
Hotel occupancy in the Colorado Springs area fell 4.7 percentage points in May compared to 2008, according to the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report prepared for the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association.
Rates dropped to 59.2 percent in the month. The average room rate also tumbled $6.11 to $85.41 compared with a year ago.
Statewide, occupancy rates dropped 7.9 percentage points to 52.4 percent, and the average room rate fell $8.95 to $103.97.
Despite soaring gas prices and a crashing economy, visitors kept coming to our fair state in 2008, according to a study released Thursday by Longwoods International.
The study found 50.6 million people visited the state in 2008, up 2 percent from 2007. Those visitors spent slightly less, however - $10.9 billion in 2008 compared to $11.1 billion in 2007.
As usual, Colorado was the nation’s top destination for skiers, attracting 18.3 percent of all trips within the United States. The state’s ranking among all travelers dipped, however, from 2.5 percent of all overnight trips in 2007 to 2.4 percent in 2008.
Not a great surprise: The venerable clothing chain has wandered in recent years and a mid-level retailer like that is always going to be susceptible in a steep economic downturn.
It’s another reminder that, although we may be reaching the bottom of the economic cycle there will continue to be casualties as the overall economy staggers back.
The Gazette is one of five newspapers joining Yahoo! Inc.’s Newspaper Consortium. The consortium is a partnership between the search giant and local papers that includes online advertising, Internet search results and news content. The group was formed in 2006 and now includes 814 newspapers. The Gazette’s sister paper, The Orange County Register, also joined the consortium.
Security Service Federal Credit Union branches in Colorado Springs are among 15 area credit unions participating in a statewide food drive to benefit local food banks.
Canned goods, nonperishable food items and monetary donations may be dropped off at any of the four locations of the Security Service in Colorado Springs and one in Fountain.
Credit unions in Denver, Canon City, Pueblo, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Greeley, Loveland, Longmont and other towns also are participating. 
Anchor Blue Retail Group Inc., parent company of specialty retailer Anchor Blue and outlet store retailer Levi’s & Dockers Outlet by MOST, announced Wednesday that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As part of its reorganization, it is closing roughly 50 “underperforming” Anchor Blue stores, including its store at Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs. A spokeswoman said the closings would involve “an orderly wind down of business over the next several weeks.
Passenger traffic at the Colorado Springs Airport improved slightly during April by posting the smallest decline of the year, airport officials reported Tuesday. The 71,061 passengers boarding flights last month was down 10.6 percent from a year earlier, better than the 11.9 percent, 16.7 percent and 17.1 percent drops in the previous three months.
Passenger numbers for the first four months of the year are down 13.9 percent from a year ago to 263,922, mostly as a result of flight cuts by eight airlines serving the Springs. No further cuts are expected, said Gisela Shanahan, the airport’s assistant aviation director for finance and administration.
Apartment vacancy rates in the Colorado Springs area surged to a two-year high of 11.7 percent in the first quarter, according to a survey done for the Colorado Division of Housing by University of Denver business professor Gordon Von Stroh. That is up from 10.4 percent three months earlier and 9 percent a year ago and nearly two percentage points higher than a similar study by Apartment Insights, an online research firm. The average Springs area rent in the first quarter fell 2.8 percent from the end of the year to $693.14, but was up 0.5 percent from a year earlier.
