Everybody’s business

Airport ads
Chico Municipal Airport has gone commercial, with the city a while back having awarded a concession to sell space on backlighted signs that perch above a rack of travel brochures.

It’s the classic “captive audience” approach to advertising, said John Goold , the president of Cornucopia Enterprises, the concessionaire. “They’re not racing down the freeway trying to study a billboard at 70 or 80 miles per hour,” he said, and, “you’re really planting the seeds for future sales.”

For the airport, the best part is that the city gets a cut of the action. The concession could be “a great source of revenue for the airport,” said Airport Manager Bob Grierson . In Fresno, the airport gets $100,000 a year from ad commissions, but Grierson will be happy if Chico gets $5,000.

Goold’s firm has been doing this for nearly a decade at the Redding Municipal Airport and nearby Redding Jet Center. (His wife runs the gift shop there.) He also has a set-up at Granzella’s eatery in Williams.

When he decided to expand to Chico, a couple of years ago, he first targeted resorts, restaurants, hotels and casinos. Goold has yet to sell all the available spaces, but the five current advertisers include the A.S. Bookstore at Chico State, Yellow Cab and Packers Bay Resort.

Outsider art
Displaced art school The Loft has finally found a new home: It’s now located at 535 Flume St., near the Pageant Theater and just up the road from where it was located before a July fire claimed the building at 330 Flume.

Eat up, Jared
New in the Chico Mall food court: Subway sandwiches. Nuff said.

Orion shines
The Chico State University student newspaper The Orion has again placed in a big college newspaper competition. The paper was one of 23 presented Nov. 8 with the Associated College Press’ National Pacemaker award. It’s the seventh time The Orion has won the prize, and this year it’s the only California paper to get it, besting finalist papers at UC Berkeley, UCLA and Pepperdine.

The prize is based on four Orion issues produced in Fall 2002 and Spring 2003. If the paper racks up three more Pacemakers, it will be qualified for a special hall of fame award.

Rumor of the week
The buzz downtown is that the keepers of the former Chevy’s building brought some potential lease-holders around the other day, and they’re interested in bringing in a nightclub. The folks I gossiped with were skeptical such a business could make bank there. But, to use a phrase journalists are typically forbidden from uttering due to its sheer meaninglessness, “Time will tell.”