A building site in front of ShopKo Department Store at 905 S. 24th St. W. will become a future home of Men’s Wearhouse.
Men’s Wearhouse carries brand name and designer men’s clothing and tuxedo rentals as well as furnishings and accessories. A single store started in Houston in 1973 has grown into a chain of 587 stores.
Officials at Men’s Wearhouse and at ShopKo headquarters in Green Bay,tiffany, Wis., didn’t immediately respond to telephone or e-mail requests for comment. But Billings developer Steve Corning said the Texas company looked at several locations around Billings before settling on the ShopKo pad.
"In my view,key rings, as a national men’s clothing format, it’s down to Joseph A. Banks and Men’s Wearhouse. They’re the ones left standing," Corning said.
Both chains sell more formal men’s clothes, including ties and suit coats, and their sales have fallen sharply during today’s casual-dress atmosphere. However, both companies appear to still be doing well financially.
During the quarter ending in May, total sales at Men’s Wearhouse increased 2 percent, largely due to more shoppers in the stores and a favorable exchange rate with Canada’s loonie. On Wednesday, the U.S. dollar bought nearly $1.02 loonies.
The company stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MW and is trading just under $20 per share. Six times this decade, Fortune Magazine named Men’s Wearhouse one of the "100 Best Companies to Work for" in the U.S.
Salad Creations
On July 19, former golf pro Scott Pekovich and his father, Greg Pekovich, opened the second Salad Creations in Billings in West Park Plaza.
The restaurant is located at 1595 Grand Ave., next to Time Out Sports and The Den along the exterior promenade in the remodeled plaza.
"Everybody’s been pretty receptive to us over at the West Park Plaza," Scott Pekovich said.
The West Park store employs a dozen people.
In April 2008, the Pekoviches opened their first quick-serve salad-and-wrap restaurant at 1911 King Ave. W., next to Bruno’s. The franchise offers more than 40 ingredients to make salads, including steak, chicken and wild Alaskan salmon, plus soups, wraps, paninis and frozen yogurt.
The Pekovichs have secured the franchise rights for Salad Creations in Montana and Idaho and for Spokane County in Washington.
Out and about
Autobahn Motor Werks has opened at 7175 Trade Center Ave., off Zoo Drive.
The dealership is selling luxury "pre-owned" cars from Germany including BMW, Audi, Lexus, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, plus parts and service.
By the numbers
Montanans can be thankful to have dodged, so far, a bad wildfire season. Our neighbors in British Columbia aren’t so lucky with more than 350 wildfires burning in the province and the smoke drifting into the western regions of our state. British Columbia has already spent its $52 million firefighting budget for fiscal year 2010-11. Last year, firefighting efforts cost the province $400 million.
Some family’s pain is someone else’s gain. Real Estate Disposition LLC, a California company that specializes in auctions of foreclosed properties, recently threw a weeklong auction of 1,500 foreclosure homes in eight Florida cities. Florida is one of four states hit hardest by the meltdowns in the subprime mortgage and housing markets. In Fort Lauderdale, one buyer paid $20,000 for a home previously priced at $210,000. That’s 91 percent less than the asking price.
Scams du jour
Telephone scammers are competing with grasshoppers to annoy Montanans this summer.
Leonard Mapston of Billings said he recently fielded four calls from 713-981-0098, a Houston number. A recorded message said that an inmate from the Yellowstone County Correctional Facility wanted him to accept a collect call. But Mapston was smart enough to check out this scam on the Internet. Inmates with time on their hands essentially use a call-forwarding trick to make long-distance calls on the victim’s telephone. According to Consumer Fraud Reporting, one group of Florida inmates used this ruse to run up $50,000 in long-distance calls that were billed to unsuspecting victims.
On another scam front,Atlas charm bracelet, Lena Heikes of Billings said she got repeated telephone calls and then a letter from "Atlantic Financial Service,s" ostensibly of Vancouver, British Columbia, telling her she had won $200,000. All she needed to do was cash the "check" for $4,570 and wire back $3,990 to cover the taxes to get her prize. She and her CPA husband just laughed.
Again, these Canadian scams are rampant. The "check" bounces, leaving the victim liable for wiring the $3,990. Wired money can go anywhere in the world and virtually cannot be traced.
Laugh lines
While a man and his wife were dining out in a plush restaurant, he kept starring at a lady at a nearby table who was drinking heavily.
The husband told his wife that the woman was an ex-girlfriend, and added,Charm pendant, "I understand she took up drinking right after we split seven years ago and I hear she hasn’t been sober since."
"My God!" said the wife. "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?"
Contact Jan Falstad at jfalstad@billingsgazette.com or 657-1306.