Frank Lloyd Wright school's future divides leaders

PHOENIX -- The future of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has divided the institution named for the iconic designer. The quest to keep its accreditation status has some school board members concerned the degree program will end, while its foundation denied the school is in danger of closing.

The Scottsdale-based Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which operates the school, announced last week that it would not independently incorporate the school as a way to stay accredited. The Chicago-based Higher Learning Commission, which accredits degree-granting colleges and universities in 19 states, changed its bylaws two years ago to prohibit accreditation for schools that operate as divisions of a larger organization.

Without accreditation, the school would be unable to offer a Master of Architecture degree, which offers students the chance to learn from those who once worked with the legendary architect.

The foundation's decision has shaken the school's Board of Governors, who say the program may have to shut down when its accreditation expires in 2017.

"The school could continue but it would not train architects that could become licensed. I'm not sure what value it would bring to them or to the profession," said Maura Grogan, board chairwoman.

Foundation President and CEO Sean Malone disagreed, saying the possibility of the school closing in the future was not "grounded in fact or reality."

He said he understood the board's desire to try separating the school from the foundation to meet the new accreditation criteria, but it wouldn't have been feasible.

"It was determined that it just wasn't appropriate to do that and simultaneously be committing long-term funding at well over $1 million a year," Malone said of the foundation's financial support.

Wright, who died in 1959, designed 1,141 architectural works. More than one-third of his buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or are in a National Historic District. His Taliesin estate in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and one in Scottsdale, dubbed Taliesin West, became laboratories of sorts for student apprentices.

Approximately 20 students are enrolled at the Wright School, which was initiated in 1932. They divide their time between Scottsdale and Wisconsin. Besides education programs, the foundation also oversees preservation, restoration and tourism related to Wright-designed buildings.

Since 2012, Wright officials have considered other options to keep its accreditation, such as jointly partnering with another institution.

"It's my understanding the foundation has looked into this in the past and has not found suitable partners," Grogan said. "I'm unclear what has changed at this point."

Malone said the school has already received "significant interest" from a number of institutions nationwide.

"I've heard suggestions that partnering with somebody else is in essence the definition of closing the school — which is completely inaccurate," Malone said. "There are no plans, intentions or willingness whatsoever to close the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture."

Grogan said she is hopeful that the board and the foundation can come to a resolution. Now, the sides agree that the school provides a unique learning environment.

"To sit in a dining room and overhear conversations from four or five generations of people all debating, arguing, sharing and laughing — it's a very, very special place," Grogan said.

Celebrity chef charged with intoxicated driving

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. -- Celebrity chef Todd English, who has opened restaurants around the country and written multiple cookbooks, was arrested Sunday on a charge of driving while intoxicated, authorities said.

Police in Southampton said English was arrested Sunday morning on a county road on Long Island. He made a court appearance later in the day, and authorities said he posted $1,500 bail.

The circumstances of the arrest were unavailable. An email to English's representative and a call to his attorney were not immediately returned.

The chef, whose full name is William Todd English, is the creative force behind a number of restaurants around the country, including Olives, Figs and Fish Club. He also has been a regular on television programs including "Iron Chef USA."

English has written several cookbooks and has been honored by the James Beard Foundation for excellence and achievement in cuisine.

In September 2009, his former fiancee was charged with assault, and authorities accused her of hitting him with a metal wrist watch, leaving him needing multiple stitches. The couple had been scheduled to get married, but English called the wedding off.

A judge in January 2010 closed the case without prison or probation based on her going through anger management and performing community service.

Armored truck overturns, spilling bags of money

CRANSTON, R.I. -- Police say an armored truck overturned on a Rhode Island highway, spilling bags of money that quickly drew passers-by.

Deputy Fire Chief Paul Valletta Jr. tells The Providence Journal (http://bit.ly/Y3w8qh) that the Garda truck was southbound on Route 10 on Saturday afternoon when the driver lost control. The truck swerved off the highway and onto the grass and rolled onto its left side.

Money stored in clear plastic bags and white canvas duffel bags flew out of the truck.

As state police watched, money was transferred to a second Garda truck that was called in.

Valletta says passers-by swarmed to the scene, but it wasn't clear if they took any money.

Both occupants of the truck had cuts and bruises and possible neck and back injuries.

Scale will matter for success of New York casinos

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Racino revenue is down. Casinos are closing in Atlantic City, while new ones are opening in Maryland and Massachusetts. Yet New York is just now getting into the game, with more than a dozen groups lining up to open upstate casinos.

The state's late arrival at the betting table is forcing developers to think smaller. Rather than behemoths like Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut or the gambling palaces in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, the contenders for the four available licenses are pushing more modest facilities designed to appeal to a local customer base within a few hours' drive.

They liken it to a Goldilocks zone: The facility must be grand enough to lure customers, with the glitz of amenities and the feel of a resort but not something so big and expensive that it doesn't break even in a competitive market.

"You might figure: Build a bigger casino, you might have a better chance of winning," said Mitchell Grossinger Etess, CEO of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, which is proposing a $550 million casino in Sullivan County. "But you have to look at the market size. You need the right-sized building that can operate efficiently. There will never be another Mohegan Sun. That's the way the market has shifted."

Gamblers are increasingly choosing smaller casinos closer to home over gargantuan resorts. Once, Atlantic City, Las Vegas and a scattering of tribal casinos dominated the market. Now, Atlantic City is losing four of its 12 casinos this year, and most Americans are within a few hours' drive of casinos in cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Detroit and Cleveland.

New York's casino expansion was sold on the idea that it would draw tourists and their money upstate. Yet the developers now acknowledge that they need local gamblers to succeed.

"Times have changed," said Bill Walsh, the developer behind the $172 million Traditions Casino and Resort proposal in the state's Southern Tier. "People are looking for convenience. They don't want to drive five hours to get to a casino now. You need a primary market."

When voters approved a plan to license up to four casinos in upstate New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said casinos held the promise of jobs, tourism and economic revitalization for struggling communities. More recently he's expressed trust in the developers, noting they're the ones investing money in the proposals.

"The private market ... will make a determination as to what scale and scope the market can support," he said in July. "And they will then build the buildings and employ people and run the business because they think it's a good business to run. I'm sure they will propose what they believe will be successful."

Gary Greenberg is a minority owner of the Vernon Downs racino and hotel near Syracuse. He said that with racino revenue continuing to slump he doesn't believe the state can support the addition of four casinos.

"They'll be new the first year and people will go, but what about the next year?" he said. "I don't see the casinos doing as well as they're saying. There's a saturation right now."

A state board is now reviewing the 16 casino proposals. Up to four licenses are to be awarded this fall in three regions: the Southern Tier-Finger Lakes, the Albany-Saratoga region and the mid-Hudson River-Catskills area. The last region, with its proximity to New York City, has attracted more than half the applications.

Jan Jones Blackhurst, vice president at Caesars Entertainment, said they have "tremendous faith in the market" and have not scaled back plans to build a $880 million casino resort about 50 miles north of New York City in Orange County.

Blackhurst said their resort would hold true to Cuomo's vision of creating destination resorts, with the Caesars casino taking advantage of its proximity to the city and the neighboring Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, which draws 13 million visitors annually.

"We firmly believe that our project is more of a destination project, that you're really bringing new people into New York," she said.

Casino opponents, however, point to Atlantic City's crumbling gambling market, plans for new casinos in Massachusetts and struggles at New York's nine racinos as evidence that the market is saturated and that additional casinos aren't going to be the boon some believed. The state estimates the casinos will generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually for local governments and public schools.

"The politicians seem to buy it, but I think people intuitively know this is baloney," said Dwight Jenkins, a resident of East Greenbush who is fighting a proposal to open a casino near his home, across the Hudson River from Albany. "Four casinos are closing this summer in Atlantic City. Yet New York for some reason is thinking we're somehow going to be different."

Associated Press writer Michael Hill contributed to this report.

Officials investigate cause of leaks in Ohio dam

WAVERLY, Ohio -- Leaks found at a dam have led the state to ask boat owners to remove their boats from Lake White while inspectors check for the cause.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said on its website Sunday that the lake water level had been lowered nearly 3 feet below summer pool after unusual levels of seepage were found in a routine inspection of the Lake White dam spillway.

"They had an employee notice the water coming outside of the spillway and reported it to our dam safety staff," Andy Ware, deputy director for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, told the Chillicothe Gazette.

Initially, about a foot and a half of water was drained from the 337-acre lake at Lake White State Park in Waverly, but that had been increased to nearly 3 feet as of Sunday.

Draining water from the lake allows inspectors to get a better look at any damage and determine what needs to be done, department spokeswoman Bethany McCorkle said Sunday.

She said the spillway gates were opened to lower the lake level and pumper trucks can be used if officials decide the water needs to be lowered even more. McCorkle said the dam appeared stable and officials would continue to monitor the situation.

The website noted that the lake had been lowered out of "an abundance of caution."

Ohio was using the engineering firm Stantec to help assess and monitor the situation.

The water was closed to recreational activity while inspectors continue their assessment, but the rest of the park in Pike County remained open during regular hours.

Ware said the state agency will continue working with the community to keep it informed of developments and provide updates on the agency's website.

Incentives states can offer to get Tesla factory

LOS ANGELES -- Five states are on the short list for a $5 billion factory that Tesla Motors plans to build so it can crank out batteries for a new generation of electric cars.

The package of economic incentives that each state offers will help determine where Tesla builds the factory — Nevada, California, Texas, Arizona or New Mexico. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the winning state will shoulder about 10 percent of the total cost, meaning at least $500 million worth of incentives.

Tesla already has done initial preparatory work on a potential site near Reno, Nevada, and plans to prepare one other site in coming months. A final decision is expected by year's end.

While officials in each state are keeping confidential the specifics of their packages, here is a look at the types of incentives and advantages each state can offer.

NEVADA

— Few taxes: No personal income tax, franchise tax, estate tax, inheritance or gift tax, and no taxes on corporate shares. No corporate income tax, although voters will decide in November whether to implement one to finance education — a move U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said could undermine efforts to attract Tesla

— Other tax credits or breaks: Up to a 50 percent abatement on personal property taxes for up to 10 years; a partial abatement on sales and use taxes on capital equipment purchases; and a deferral of sales and use taxes on capital equipment.

— Worker training subsidies: Up to $1,000 per employee for job training if the company provides a 25 percent match, makes a five-year business commitment and pays at least hourly minimum wages.

— Other advantages: Proximity to the assembly plant in Fremont, California, where Tesla makes its cars; significant deposit of lithium, which is essential to making the batteries.

CALIFORNIA

— Tax and hiring credits: Legislation passed this year offers a tax credit of 17.5 percent of wages for full-time employees for 15 years, totaling up to $31 million a year that could be split between a battery manufacturer and other industries including aerospace manufacturing. A hiring credit of 35 percent of wages is available if Tesla locates in a region that has high unemployment and poverty, for wages above certain benchmarks, until 2029.

— Sales tax exemption: New legislation waives the state's share of sales tax, 4.19 percent, on the first $200 million in equipment purchased.

— Waiver of environmental rules: Some lawmakers are advocating waivers on a host of California's complex environmental review laws that would allow for much quicker building permitting.

— Other advantages: Tesla already has its headquarters and car assembly plant in the San Francisco Bay area.

TEXAS

— Incentive funds: The Texas Enterprise Fund regularly gives companies incentives worth tens of millions of dollars to open facilities in the state, including $15.3 million to SpaceX, a commercial rocket company where Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also chief executive. The Texas Emerging Technology Fund, also run out of Gov. Rick Perry's office, has given $205 million to fund scores of technology startups.

— Other incentives: The state also offers tax refunds, exemption from state sales and use tax on electricity and natural gas in manufacturing.

— Other advantages: Cities and counties have made direct pitches to Tesla, highlighting for example how San Antonio owns its own utility and can provide solar and wind energy.

NEW MEXICO

— Various tax credits or breaks: For investments by manufacturers, and the creation of high-wage jobs and renewable energy.

— Worker-training subsidies: The state pays up to 75 percent of new worker salaries for up to six months.

— "Closing fund": Local governments can tap public money to finance infrastructure improvements, such as roads and utilities, around a factory. The Legislature provided $15 million for the current fiscal year.

— Other advantages: State officials also tout a diminishing corporate income tax rate, low property taxes, rail connections to California and competitive electricity rates.

ARIZONA

— Job training grant: The state may provide new employers up to 75 percent of the cost of employee training.

— Tax credits: A company can receive tax credits of up to $30 million for new manufacturing facilities, and a separate tax credit of $3,000 per new employee in each of the first three years. Tesla could qualify for a $5 million tax credit if it installs at least $300 million worth of renewable power capacity.

— Property tax breaks: A factory that is placed in one of seven foreign trade zones in the state gets a break of up to 80 percent.

— Sales taxes are waived for machinery or equipment used directly in manufacturing, and electricity or natural gas used for businesses engaged in manufacturing.

Cleveland welcomes growing field of server farms

CLEVELAND -- Northeast Ohio is hardly ready to usurp Silicon Valley as a high-tech mecca, but a growing number of data centers are choosing to locate in and around Cleveland to take advantage of cheap power, an abundance of fiber-optic cable and one of the safest environments in the country for storing digital information.

BYTEGRID, which got its start in northern Virginia, is investing millions to convert a small data center near downtown Cleveland into a large one capable of using enough electricity to power around 20,000 homes. At least one other company is looking for a site in Cleveland, and several more have established sites in the city and its suburbs.

"One of the things that is attracting data centers to Cleveland is we have a lot of industries with a lot of data," said Tracey Nichols, director of city's Department of Economic Development.

Data centers do not create large numbers of jobs directly, Nichols said, but their existence is a big attraction to companies that use massive amounts of data. Hospitals and medical research centers such as the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, for example, are prime customers for data centers. Nichols hopes these data centers will help grow the city's fledgling health tech corridor. Information technology companies like Rosetta and Brandmuscle have come to Cleveland, in part, because of its high-speed, fiber-optic data and Internet connections, Nichols and others said.

"We have a very robust fiber trunk that runs through Cleveland, which means excellent connectivity," Nichols said.

Ken Parent, chief operating officer of BYTEGRID, said his company is spending millions to renovate and expand a data center on the edge of downtown because of that connectivity.

Connectivity is best described as the speed at which data flows. If copper wire, one of the means by which homes are connected with telephone, Internet and cable service, is a gentle stream, then fiber-optic cable is a raging river. Or think of it this way: It takes 33 tons of copper wire to transmit the same amount of data as one-quarter pound of fiber-optic cable, a single strand of which is thinner than a human hair.

It's ironic that a Rust Belt city like Cleveland, once a manufacturing giant brought to its knees by disruptive technologies and business models, is so well-suited to the Internet age. The superhighways of the 19th and early 20th centuries — rail lines — have proven to be the ideal conduit for routing fiber-optic cable, much like the telegraph lines of old.

"It's an infrastructure legacy," said Kevin Goodman, managing director and a partner in BlueBridge Networks, which has a downtown data center near Playhouse Square and a larger facility in suburban Mayfield Heights.

Servers, like all computers, hew to Moore's Law — computing power roughly doubles every two years. That means smaller and smaller computers that run faster and faster and are capable of holding even more data. But those smaller computers run hotter and require more electricity. At a data center, one kilowatt of electricity spent powering servers requires an equal amount of electricity to keep them cool.

And that is one of Cleveland's biggest attractions. Parent says power can cost 13 to 16 cents per kilowatt in the Northwestern U.S. but only 5 or 6 cents in Cleveland.

Goodman said BlueBridge wants to reduce its carbon footprint, but he acknowledged that high electric use is unavoidable.

"Power is king," he said.

Data centers, sometimes called server farms, perform a number of vital services to businesses, both high- and low-tech. They provide a secure environment for companies to put servers, which are computers loaded with applications and programs and hard drives for storing data. Companies lease servers from data centers and use them to create a cloud that allows them to operate without having to own or provide space for their own servers. And companies with their own servers also co-locate — lease server space to back up some or all of their data and to give themselves the means to operate should their own servers fail or should a catastrophic weather or seismic event occur.

In addition to connectivity, data centers sell security. The buildings in which server farms are located are typically thick, reinforced concrete and steel structures. Data center companies sell to potential clients the existence of generator farms that provide electricity in case of a power outage. But security in the data center world also means the promise of impenetrable firewalls and intrusion detection and protection programs to thwart hackers.

Hackers have always been the scourge of the Information Age, as Target Corp. discovered late last year when the credit card information of millions of its customers was stolen.