07-20-2001 - Laserfiche WebLink

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finance with $9 million in fee waivers and transportation improvements. Intel has not indicated when construction will resume. It has also delayed projects in Denmark, Malaysia, California, Oregon and • Arizona. Computer Sciences, which will belatedly complete the second of three office buildings in November, may take several years to build the third. CSC was granted $10.4 million in deferred costs and incentives by the city last year. In May, e-commerce software firm Vignette scuttled plans to build a $350 million office complex in Digital Downtown, which is now littered with towering cranes over unfinished construction sites. Company officials say expansion didn't make sense, even with a $25 million incentive package of reimbursed property taxes and waived development fees the city approved in December. That's because Vignette lost $229.8 million in the first 3 months of 2001 and has axed 540 employees, nearly a fourth of its workforce, this year. Its stock, which peaked at $200.94 a share in April 2000, has slumped to $8.55. The bare-bones buildings in Austin underscore "a negative image that is symbolic of a slumping economy," says architect Jack Tisdale, a member of the Downtown Austin Alliance. All told, Austin is missing out on an estimated 1,700 jobs that would potentially feed the city's economy with millions of dollars in disposable income and taxes. Unbowed, the city is prepared to offer Advanced Micro Devices $95 million, mostly in reimbursed property taxes, to build a 1,500-worker microchip plant. The situation is raising the ghost of Austin's real estate bust of the mid-1980s, when Texans groused about changing the state's official bird from the mockingbird to the crane. An '80s term has resurfaced: Texans call the empty structures "see-through buildings," says Bob Richardson, a Dallas bankruptcy attorney. • "The Intel building is a multistoried tombstone to the high-tech boom," says Mike Levy, publisher of Texas Monthly magazine. • New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had high hopes when he authorized the Emerging Industries Fund in September 1999. The plan was to invest $250,000 to $1.5 million in promising high-tech start-ups overlooked by venture capitalists and to retain small businesses. But the fund, which hired venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham to weigh proposals, has not invested in any of the 136 small-business owners who applied. Critics say the $25 million fund could have been used on education or to beautify parks. "It's no wonder people think government moves too slow," says Peter Vallone, speaker of the New York City Council, which rescinded $10 million from the fund in June. "I can understand not wanting to waste taxpayer money, but sometimes taking a little risk can go a long way toward benefiting everyone." Michael Carey, who oversees the fund for the New York City Economic Development Corp.,blames the tech-stock meltdown for the fund's slow start. "What if we had invested in companies that bombed?" he asks. The fund is in the "final stages" of approving its first investment, Carey says. • The $12 million Oregon Resource and Technology Development Account, started in 1985 to invest in 40 high-tech companies, began investing last year in university research projects because it didn't see enough high-tech opportunities.