Everybody’s business

Stoking the Kohl’s
The retail boom continues in southeast Chico with a new shopping center near the mall entering the city-approval stages. The developers, who include Dean Kassebaum of Chico and Zaat Development LLC, plan to anchor it with a Kohl’s department store.

I’ve never been to a Kohl’s, although there are several in the Sacramento area. They seem to have all the stuff carried by your typical department store: clothes, home décor, jewelry, luggage and so on.

Kohl’s, a Fortune 500 company, is growing like crazy; it plans to open 15 new stores in California alone this October.

The 122,327-square-foot shopping center, if approved by the city, would be located on the west side of Springfield Drive, north of Chico Mall. Kohl’s would be one of three buildings there.

No, you can’t buy a fat hog
The new shop in the former Beach It! location at 236 Broadway officially opened July 17, and it runs the gamut from gourmet foods to classy cotton clothing.

It’s called To Market, To Market, but in lower case: “to market, to market.”

One standout is a line of bottled foods (spreads, olive oils and the like) with the to market, to market label specially packaged by a firm in the Napa Valley.

The shop also features a revolving art gallery, with photos and watercolors by local artists currently on display.

Former Beach It! owner Debbie LaPlant developed the business plan, and now she’s working there as a consultant. The business is run by four people who formed a corporation: Patricia LaBrecht Johanson and her husband, Bob; and Sarah Dahl and her husband, Rex Smith.

They’re all hooked up with the Chamber of Commerce, so of course one of the plans is to get some tourism information on display at the store soon.

LaPlant, who brought along most of her staff from Beach It!, said, “It’s been great to join forces and make it happen.

“It’s fun,” she added. “It’s a work in progress.”

Hawking hotels
I’ve heard of advertising for a marketing coordinator or a publicity expert, but Wayne Cook’s Hotel Diamond (a.k.a. Diamond Hotel) has taken out a classified ad seeking an entire company.

“Seeking hospitality, marketing firm, for the launch of a renovated upscale hotel, proposal w/results & ref. to …,” the ad reads.

Consider this mention a free ad, I guess.

The girls will go crazy…
You know who’s a sharp dresser? That Wally Herger, our 2nd District congressman. Fittingly, he’s backing a drive from the House Ways and Means Committee, the American League of Lobbyists and Men’s Wearhouse to donate used business attire to needy job-seekers.

Herger said the drive supports the goals of the welfare-to-work plan and recognized in a press release that, “Not having the right interview and professional clothes can be all that separates job-seekers from job-getters

He’s donating “some of my suits, which have inexplicably shrunk since I bought them.” I think this means the congressman has put on some weight. Wild. It can’t be pork-barrel politics; after all, he’s a Republican.