Patient shortage forces closure of Niwot medical center

By Business Report Staff

Longmont United Hospital announced that United Medical Center of Niwot, one if its affiliates, will be closing its doors Jan. 31.

The clinic, which opened in 1996 and had one family practice physician, did not have enough business from the community to be financially independent, said Ken Huey, chief executive officer of Longmont United Hospital. “There were very strong supporters, but it wasn’t large enough to be sustainable,” he said.

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People apparently already had doctors in neighboring communities, Huey said. “We’re disappointed, but the message is people are being served by other arrangements,” he said.

Longmont United Hospital mailed a letter to patients of the United Medical Center of Niwot informing them of the clinic’s closure and giving them a list of physicians in surrounding communities they could use.Gioia, a lingerie, clothing, and skin and body shop, will be closing its Boulder store on the Pearl Street Mall in late February.

Owner Sandra Foa, who has run the store from that location for 11 years, said she is closing the Boulder store because her monthly rent was raised to between $11,000 and $12,000 a month.

Foa opened a second Gioia in the FlatIron Crossing Village last summer and will be moving her inventory from Boulder to the FlatIron store. She said foot traffic in Broomfield is not as plentiful as on the Pearl Street Mall, but she hopes that as the FlatIron Crossing Village is completed and more stores open there, volume will increase. Toemi, a character furniture and home furnishings store, has closed its East Boulder location at 5360 Arapahoe Ave.

After three years in business, Toemi is leaving the retail market and selling merchandise solely from its warehouse in Arvada via flyers and sales calls. The warehouse will also be open to the public one day per month. It will target its furniture to customers in the western United States.

Manager Lonny Johnson said that he was tired of the retail scene and was somewhat disappointed with the store’s location.Evoke Communications (Nasdaq: EVOK) of Louisville will cut 112 jobs, mostly in sales, as part of a restructuring plan to return the company to profitability during the first quarter of 2002. The layoffs will leave the company with 208 employees.

Evoke will focus resources on its highest revenue-generating services ? Web conferencing and collaboration. The company will discontinue Web Talk, a voice-chat service, and Talking Email, a voice-to-e-mail messaging service.

Evoke will outsource its Webcasting service to Digital Island, which also will resell Evoke’s virtual meeting services. Evoke intends to write off approximately $8.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2000.

Also, Terry Kawaja announced his retirement as the company’s chief financial officer. Acting CFO will be Ken Mesikapp, vice president of finance.

Evoke also announced that it will be changing its name, again, following a trademark dispute with Evoke Software in San Francisco. Evoke decided to settle the dispute rather than risk accruing additional operating expenses. The company plans to launch a new name and brand identity sometime in the near future.Synertech Inc., a Boulder-based Internet services and development company, has been purchased by SakInfotech of Madras, India.

SakInfotech will be offering software development services to Colorado companies, using an offshore development model, where small project teams are located in the United States and the rest of the work is shipped to India for coding, testing and development.

The purchase was made so that SakInfotech could establish a presence in the U.S. It currently has 100 programmers in India and its clients include Citibank and Morgan Stanley.

The company plans to add 15 people to its new Boulder office, followed by plans to open offices on the East and West Coasts.Compaq Computer Corp. of Houston, Texas recently opened a 12,500-square-foot office at 867 Coal Creek Circle in Louisville.

Compaq already employs about 25 people in Louisville and may double that number by year end. The facility will be focusing on creating software for storage management.

Compaq has leased space that it can build in the future to house up to 75 more workers. When Compaq first announced its arrival to the Boulder area last March, it predicted that it might eventually employ up to 500 people.

The company chose to locate in Louisville in large part due to the heavy concentration of data storage firms in the area, like Storage Technology Corp. and IBM. The resulting opportunities to form partnerships with these competitors and to hire from a stock of qualified workers was attractive to Compaq.

In unrelated announcements, Compaq Vice President Mark Lewis was promoted to vice president and general manager of the company’s Enterprise Storage Group, replacing Howard Elias. Elias was promoted to senior vice president and general manager of the company’s Business Critical Server Group.San Francisco-based RWS Group LLC, a provider of language technology solutions to the information technology, oil and gas, life sciences, legal and financial services industries, has opened a new center for software localization in Boulder.

The center’s engineering staff will work closely with its customers’ engineers to deliver localized software products, online information applications and traditional documentation. It will specialize in localizing software for international product launches, localizing web sites to meet global market goals, testing and validating software, and translating technical documents.Greenough Communications Group Inc., a communications consulting firm based in Boston, has opened a new practice group in Boulder. The new outfit will support the agency’s western client base.

Greenough offers communication programs for leaders in I/T and Internet commerce, like Citrix Systems, Rational Software and Qwest Cyber Solutions.As You Wish Inc. President Shelley Goddard has sold both of her ceramics design stores. As You Wish in Boulder will become Color Me Mine, owned by Linnore and Rodrigo Gonzales, who are owners of two other Color Me Mine stores in the metro area. The Denver location was sold to Myrian and John Nowasad, who will rename it As You Like. Both stores allow customers to paint a ceramic piece, which they leave at the stores for glazing and firing and for later pick up.The Rocky Flats United Steelworkers of America, Local 8031 and Kaiser Hill Co. LLC have signed an agreement making the union the “workforce of choice” through 2006, when site closure is scheduled to be completed.

The agreement’s provisions include competitive pay increases over the next three years, annual performance incentive payments of up to $4,200 a year, a 401K matching program for hourly workers, enhanced retirement options, and retraining opportunities.

Kaiser Hill is contracted with the United States Department of Energy to clean up the former nuclear weapons plant in Jefferson County.