REGION - Veteran appraisers Bob Reamer and Juan Carbonell want to find the silver lining in today's dismal real estate market - and perhaps a little green lining for taxpayers' wallets as well.The two teamed up last spring to establish SetPoint Property Tax Consultants, taking...
Kalkaska's once-promising natural gas discovery went from boom to bust overnight. The landowners left in the dust have questions. And they're considering taking them - and the gas companies they signed with - to court.KALKASKA - Northern Michigan's landowners are shaking off the collapse of...
REGION - Housing officials across the region are taking aggressive measures to provide affordable homes, condos and apartments, tapping into tax credits and subsidies and incentivizing developers to build more low-cost units into their projects.The tools they are using vary greatly from one community to...
TRAVERSE CITY - With Tower Automotive and Metavation gone from the scene, Garfield Township is starting to tighten up its tax abatement process and strengthen its legal position in case companies fail to deliver the jobs they promised. The township plans to start keeping...
REGION - The TCBN rang up the 18 banks with local branches in Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau and Kalkaska counties for a mid-year status report. We asked them to fill us in on how they've fared the last two quarters, what's ahead for the rest...
TRAVERSE CITY - On Friday, September 18, 2009, the international financial crisis hit home on Grandview Parkway: Along with 26 other Irwin Union Banks that were part of the Indiana-based Irwin Financial Corporation, federal and state regulators shut down the TC branch of Irwin Union...
REGION - The cherry, that small, juicy ball of perfection, keeps stirring its processing industry to greater and greater feats.Processors can send a frozen shipment across country without losing a single cherry to spoilage. They can put a 1-pound sugar cap on 5 pounds of...
REGION - In a complex game of musical chairs, a piece of the region's telecommunications business was briefly up for grabs this spring when provider Converged Solutions closed its doors.Ann Arbor-based Great Lakes Telecom managed to get most of it. But virtually every other...
REGION - Over the past two years, three of the region's mid- to high-end residential projects have withstood every insult that the worst economy in decades could throw at them.The onslaught had many components: rising unemployment, a credit meltdown, and a general downward spiral in...
REGION - Lamenting what they call a dearth of business lending right now, many small companies hope Congress will re-approve the Small Business Administration's beefed-up loan guarantee program.The SBA has had an on-again, off-again program of special loan guarantees since early 2009, but its future...
