In the quest to bring more jobs to Illinois, Chicago has trumped at least one growth city in the race for a new support center for Kaplan Inc., an education and career services company owned by The Washington Post Co.
In a deal with the state that is expected to be announced Wednesday, Kaplan is set to open a new facility in the West Loop that will bring more than 300 jobs to the city, officials from the state and Kaplan confirmed Tuesday.
And in the all-important image category, Chicago gets to boast that it beat out Atlanta for the center, which will add to Kaplan’s significant presence in Chicago.
But in what has become par for the course in attracting businesses these days, Kaplan will get $500,000 in grant funding as part of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s Opportunity Returns program to attract new businesses to the state.
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity will administer the funding by making available $500,000 in large-business development funds.
New York-based Kaplan, whose roughly $838 million in sales in 2003 made it the leading revenue producer in The Washington Post Co., already has two of its four units headquartered in Chicago: Kaplan Professional and Score Educational Centers.
The support center, in 42,000 square feet of space at 550 W. Van Buren St., will house operations to service Davenport, Iowa-based Kaplan College, which serves roughly 16,000 online and campus-based students.
In their decision, Kaplan executives cited the Chicago labor pool and the economic incentives from the state.
How long it will take the state to reap the financial benefits to more than pay for the $500,000 in incentives isn’t clear.
“There are going to be 300 more jobs, that’s critical,” said Andrew Ross, a spokesman for Blagojevich.
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Chicago also is in a heated battle with Houston for a division of petroleum giant BP PLC, which is spinning off its petrochemicals business.
A search by the new company for a home base is the biggest headquarters battle in the area since Boeing Co. threw up a jump ball among several cities before landing in Chicago in 2001.
Playboy makes solid comeback: Hef may be getting the last laugh.
Playboy saw a significant increase in single-copy sales in the six months ended June 30, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Single-copy sales grew 11.5 percent, to 450,834, its largest increase in more than two years.
Meanwhile, Maxim, Stuff and FHM, men’s magazines skewed toward a younger crowd that have taken readers and ad market share from Playboy, all took direct hits in single-copy sales.
The big jump at Playboy marks a surprising turnaround in the crucial newsstand sales category for the magazine, and media buyers are saying that editorial changes under former editor James Kaminsky may be responsible for the renewed interest.
Kaminsky was pushed aside this year after a showdownwith Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Veteran Playboy features editor Christopher Napolitano was picked to replace Kaminsky last month.
Meanwhile, media buyers say competition among Maxim, Stuff, FHM and other upstarts appears to be hurting those magazines on newsstands, though subscriptions are up for all three. Subscriptions were down slightly for Playboy.
It’s quite a change from a few years ago, when they were beating the stuffing out of Playboy.
“They’re all looking the same,” said Brenda White, media director at Chicago-based media-buying giant Starcom USA. “They each carry the gal of the moment. You’re seeing them on the other covers. You have the oldies and goodies like Playboy that have upped their game.”
Hollinger shake-up: Embattled Sun-Times owner Hollinger International Inc. has finally named new management for the Daily Southtown, whose publisher stepped down amid a circulation scandal this summer at its sister paper.
Boni Fine, publisher of Hollinger International’s Northwest Indiana Post-Tribune, was named president of the company’s Midwest Suburban papers, adding oversight of the Daily Southtown and Star newspapers. In addition, the company named Southtown interim publisher Mike Waters the general manager of that paper. Fine and Waters will split the publisher’s duties of the Southtown, said John Cruickshank, who heads Hollinger’s Chicago Group.
The new structure follows the resignation last month of Mark Hornung as publisher of the Southtown. Hornung left in the wake of the circulation scandal at the Sun-Times, where he was circulation director for many years.
The Sun-Times said this summer that it had overstated its circulation numbers dating back several years. That and a loss of readers because of a price increase in April led the Sun-Times to readjust its single-copy circulation downward 23 percent (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
No word yet on how much the Sun-Times will have to reimburse advertisers for the false data.
Cruickshank said Waters, who had been editor of the Southtown, would name a managing editor of the paper to run the day-to-day operations.