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(09/23/04 4:34am)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Chi-Chi's, the Mexican restaurant chain, may have served its last chimichanga.\nOutback Steakhouse Inc. this week closed on its $42.5 million deal for the rights to 76 restaurants in the Chi-Chi's chain, which was beleaguered by bankruptcy and a hepatitis outbreak.\nOutback plans to convert many of the restaurants into its own brands -- which include its signature Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's Italian Grills, Bonefish Grills, Fleming's Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bars, Roy's and Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurants.\n"We felt it was a good opportunity to acquire a large number of good locations that we can use for our brands," said Joseph Kadow, senior vice president for Outback Steakhouse Inc., based in Tampa, Fla.\nThe deal did not include Chi-Chi's brand, its restaurant operations or any recipes, Kadow said.\nA statement posted on Louisville-based Chi-Chi's Web site said, "We would like to thank all of our loyal customers of the past 27 years and with a tear in our eye, say ¡Adios!"\nA recorded message on Chi-Chi's toll-free guest relations hot line said the chain was no longer in business and apologized for any inconvenience caused by the closure of its restaurants.\nThe chain's parent, California-based Prandium Inc., declined to comment Wednesday about the fate of Chi-Chi's.\nChi-Chi's was left reeling by a hepatitis A outbreak last fall that sickened 660 people who ate at a Pennsylvania restaurant. The outbreak, traced to green onions, killed four. More than 300 victims filed claims seeking damages from the company.\nChi-Chi's filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few weeks before the outbreak, due to unrelated cash-flow problems.\nA call to a Chi-Chi's bankruptcy attorney in Delaware was not immediately returned.\nThe chain had about 100 restaurants at the time of the hepatitis outbreak, but the company said earlier this year that it would close more than two dozen.\nWilliam Marler, a lawyer for plaintiffs suing Chi-Chi's over the outbreak, said Outback's successful bid for the rights to the Chi-Chi's restaurants would not affect pending cases.\nMarler, of Seattle, said about 150 of approximately 325 claims have been settled, with $7 million paid out so far. He said plenty remains in an existing insurance pool to pay off future claims.\n"It would be very unlikely that this insurance money is not enough," said Marler, who represents about a third of claimants.\nBy acquiring the rights to the Chi-Chi's restaurants, Outback can convert them into its own brands or sell the properties. The restaurants are in several states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, Kadow said.\nThe company hopes to move quickly to put its own name on some stores.\n"We're going to move with all deliberate speed, but there may be permitting issues, there's obviously some renovations to be done," Kadow said in a phone interview this week.\nOutback's stock fell 63 cents to close at $40.91 in trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
(11/18/02 3:46am)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- James Ramsey, appointed Thursday as president of the University of Louisville, quickly embraced an agenda aimed at gaining national prominence for the school while improving lives at home.\nRamsey, the acting president since early September, was the unanimous choice of university trustees to become U of L's 17th president, culminating a six-month nationwide search with a homegrown choice.\nRamsey, who grew up in Louisville, entered the meeting moments later to a standing ovation and told the trustees that "it's a time to recommit ourselves to the task at hand."\nHe pledged his commitment to a 1997 higher education reform law that set a goal for U of L to become a pre-eminent metropolitan university.\nRamsey said the university also has an obligation to uplift lives.\n"Our goal is to see the quality of life, economic opportunity and standard of living for people in this community and in this state to be improved over time," Ramsey said.\nAs president of the 21,000-student university, Ramsey will bring considerable experience ranging from college classrooms and board rooms to the halls of state government.\nRamsey begins his duties immediately as president and will step down as state budget director, a job he retained while acting president. Trustees will work out a contract to negotiate with Ramsey, a process that could take weeks, said spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith.\nIn Frankfort, Gov. Paul Patton said Ramsey's expertise would be missed but said he was pleased for his longtime budget chief and U of L.\n"Jim's academic credentials, knowledge of government and his unwavering commitment to Kentucky's historic higher education reform movement, make him the ideal person to lead U of L to the next level of academic excellence," Patton said in a statement.\nAs acting president, Ramsey stepped in to fill a void left by the departure of U of L's top two administrators.\nJohn Shumaker gave up the U of L presidency in June after seven years to become president of the University of Tennessee.\nCarol Garrison, the school's provost, was appointed as acting president, but she left on Sept. 1 to become president of the University of Alabama-Birmingham.\nRamsey was a late entry in the presidential search. He initially said he wasn't interested but said he had a change of heart after receiving encouragement from people on campus and off to consider the post.\n"His name kept surfacing," said U of L board of trustees chairwoman Jessica Loving. "He hadn't been here 30 days before people started calling me saying, 'The man is doing an incredible job.'"\nA search firm that assisted U of L had contacted 1,000 potential candidates. The pool of candidates was narrowed to eight semifinalists, then pared to a group of finalists, Loving said.\nBased on the groundswell of support for Ramsey, search committee members then asked Ramsey if he would consider the job, and he expressed interest, Loving said. The school's search committee never formally interviewed any candidates before recommending Ramsey be hired.\nLoving said the search process was "as open and as fair" as possible since no candidates wanted their names revealed. She said the finalists were an impressive group but that Ramsey "was not like a second choice by any means."\n"Jim Ramsey has some qualities that really no one else had," she said. "In addition to his brains and his knowledge and his credentials, he has some very solid knowledge about higher education in general, nationally and locally, that no one else had," she said.\nIn outlining his goals, Ramsey cited initiatives under way to make U of L more efficient amid a tight budget and to foster greater diversity.\nRamsey said U of L would seek opportunities to work with other Kentucky universities, but would "compete fiercely" with the other schools for research dollars and top high school students.\nBefore the vote, trustees took turns praising Ramsey.\nTrustee Marie Abrams said that with Ramsey's background as a university administrator he "will hit the ground running."\nStudent trustee Chris Marlin said Ramsey had the full support of students and had displayed an ability to communicate with them.\n"They are excited that not only do they get a new president but they get a new advocate on their behalf," Marlin said.\nRamsey teaches an economics course on campus, and earlier Thursday he had given his students an exam.\nRamsey was accompanied by his wife, their two daughters and his father as he accepted the presidency. Ramsey, who turned 54 Thursday, was serenaded by a U of L pep band with a version of "Happy Birthday To You" and with the school fight song as he left the board room as the school's new president.\nRamsey's resume includes stints as a faculty member or administrator at several universities. He was vice chancellor for finance and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and vice president at Western Kentucky University.\nHe was a finalist for the president's job at WKU in 1997 and has taught at Western, the University of Kentucky, Middle Tennessee State University and Loyola University in New Orleans.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Both sides in the nation's abortion debate will be watching on Wednesday when a Kentucky public health board decides whether to turn down federal family-planning money that is used to dispense birth control pills to women.\nHard-line abortion foes want the Northern Kentucky Independent District Health Board to reject Title X funding, claiming that the pill can cause the equivalent of an abortion.\nThe showdown vote Wednesday night in Wilder could reverberate far beyond the northernmost corner of Kentucky, a\nheavily Roman Catholic area that is a hotbed of anti-abortion fervor.\nIt is almost unheard of for a community to reject Title X money. In one of the rare instances since the federal program was signed into law in 1970 by President Nixon, McHenry County, Ill., voted in 1998 to refuse the funding, though in that case the debate had to do with whether parents should be notified if their teenage daughters get contraceptives.\nJudie Brown, president of the American Life League, said the Kentucky board's rejection of the money would be a huge victory for the anti-abortion movement and a "blueprint for victory" in other communities.\nOn the other side of the issue, Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights\nAction League, said the debate shows that "pro-choice Americans cannot be complacent about fundamental freedoms\nsuch as the right to use contraception."\n"It reveals the extremism of the anti-choice agenda," she said.\nBoard chairman Greg Kennedy predicted a close vote.\nTitle X funding provided nearly $170,000 this fiscal year to the health board, which serves four urban and rural counties just south of Cincinnati. The money was used to provide contraceptives and related reproductive health care services to thousands of poor women.\nThe health clinics that are overseen by the 29-member board also provide gynecological care for poor women, including pregnancy tests, breast exams and screening for sexually transmitted diseases.\nKennedy said the loss of Title X funding could prompt women to seek those services at other clinics where they could obtain contraceptives.\nLeading the push to reject Title X funding is Northern Kentucky Right to Life, which prides itself on its refusal to compromise. It has run newspaper ads asserting that contraceptives such as the IUD, Norplant, the "morning-after" pill - even the standard birth control pill used in the - cause abortions.\n"It's our argument that they are bad morals, bad medicine and bad public policy that should not be distributed to the public with taxpayers' dollars," said Robert Cetrulo, the group's president and a former U.S. magistrate.\nNot all abortion opponents have joined the cause. The National Right to Life Committee has taken no position. And not all of the health board's anti-abortion members support giving up the family-planning money.\nThe effort by some anti-abortion activists to equate the standard birth control pill with abortion has drawn strong objections. An estimated 10.4 million American women use the pill.\n"Oral contraceptives are clearly just that - they are contraception," said Dr. Kimberly Alumbaugh, a Louisville\nobstetrician/gynecologist. "That means preventing conception. When one prevents conception, one doesn't have to worry about abortion."\nBirth control pills prevent conception by blocking the release of eggs from a woman's ovaries. But if ovulation occurs and an egg is fertilized, the pill can prevent the fertilized egg from implanting because it alters the lining of the uterus.\nSome anti-abortion groups equate that to abortion.