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Roadies swarmed the parking lots and sidewalks. Black-draped fencing lined the roads, helping to close off a two-block span of Sidney Street on Pittsburgh’s South Side. And tents, stages and a buzz of activity have turned the SouthSide Works into a two-day compound of popular culture as American Eagle Outfitters Inc. and Live Nation play host to the first New American Music Union.

The festival of concerts sold out its 10,000 tickets for the two-day event scheduled to start Friday at 5 p.m. and culminate with headliners The Raconteurs and Bob Dylan and his band Saturday night. The event is expected to draw well more than 10,000 with a second stage on which 15 college acts will perform for free, said Jani Strand, the vice president for public relations for American Eagle Outfitters.

"The good news is because we¹ve partnered with Live Nation we are really pleased with the level of planning that went into this," said Strand.

Strand didn’t offer a total cost for putting on the event.

Given the featured acts also include performers the Roots, the Black Keys and Gnarls Barkley, among others, Strand said she believed the New American Union Festival may draw more people to the SouthSide Works this weekend than the 50,000 people who came to the South Side in June for the Tour of Pennsylvania bicycle race.

Along with the music, the festival will include a variety of food tents, a free bicycle valet, an Aerie Freshen up Lounge, where visitors can cool off and get sun screen and lotion, cell phone-charging stationary bicycles.

While parking is at premium, Strand said American Eagle will offer a free shuttle to the Mellon Arena for parking there as well.

Strand said American Eagle hopes the festival will help the fashion retailer further cater to its prime shopping demographic of 15 to 25 year-olds."Because music is such an important part of our customers’ lives, we wanted to create something that would both interact with them and inspire them," she said.

American Eagle will stream video footage of the concert on its Web site, www.ae.com, starting on Aug. 12. How well the event goes will help the company decide whether it plans to host future events, Strand added.

Roberta Weissburg, who owns Roberta Weissburg Leathers at the SouthSide Works, was impressed with how American Eagle has put the event together.

"I think it¹s a wonderful exciting opportunity. I’m sure there will be some chaos and some patience required for parking and finding everything,,"she said. "They were extremely well-organized in their presentation. It seems like they’ve thought about just about everything."

U.K. house values fell by the most in at least seven years in July and the property slump will continue for months, Hometrack Ltd. said.

The average cost of a residential property in England and Wales slipped 4.4 percent from a year earlier to 168,500 pounds ($336,000), the London-based research company said today in a statement. That's the biggest annual drop since the index started seven years ago. Prices fell 1.2 percent from June.

“With no immediate end in sight to the current uncertainty, activity levels are likely to remain suppressed with prices remaining under pressure into the autumn,'' said Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, in an e-mailed statement. Prices “are now back to levels last seen in October 2006.''

Banks have raised mortgage rates and limited the supply of credit, reversing a decade-long property boom in which prices tripled. The Bank of England kept the benchmark interest rate at 5 percent this month on concerns that inflation is accelerating even as the economy risks slipping into a recession.

The majority of house-price declines were in southern England. Demand for housing has declined 20 percent in the past three months, Hometrack said.

Central bank policy makers said this month that the housing downturn has “gathered momentum,'' minutes of the July 7 meeting showed last week. The Monetary Policy Committee split three ways in its interest-rate vote. Timothy Besley favored an increase to help stem the fastest in inflation in a decade and David Blanchflower supported a reduction to ease an economic slowdown.

Slower Growth

Britain's economy grew 0.2 percent in the second quarter, matching the slowest pace since 2001. Unemployment jumped the most in June since the aftermath of the last recession in 1992 as the economic slowdown forced homebuilders and banks to cut jobs.

Banks are curbing lending following the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market, which so far has cost financial institutions worldwide $469 billion in writedowns and losses. U.K. mortgage approvals slumped in June to the lowest level in at least a decade, according to the British Bankers' Association.

Demand for farmland also declined for the first time since 2005 in the first half of the year, the Royal Institution of Charted Surveyors said in a separate report today.

The deteriorating economic outlook has contributed to the pound's 12 percent decline against a currency basket of Britain's main trading partners, making exports cheaper for overseas buyers.

The weaker pound “won't prevent the credit crunch, a major housing downturn and a sharp retrenchment in corporate spending from sending the economy into recession,'' Roger Bootle, chief economic adviser to Deloitte & Touche LLP in London, wrote in a report published yesterday.

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Emergent BioSolutions Inc. has received two federal grants worth more than $4.5 million to continue development on two vaccines.

The Rockville-based biotech was awarded the grants by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one being a three-year allotment for its botulinum vaccine program and the other a five-year allotment for its next-generation anthrax treatment vaccine.

The latter, a blend of a compound and Emergent’s federally approved BioThrax anthrax vaccine, has been tested in early human clinical trials. The grant funding will provide for further animal testing, as well as manufacturing capabilities for alternative formulations fo the vaccine.

“These are both important countermeasures that address critical biopreparedness requirements of the U.S. government,” said Daniel Abdun-Nabi, president and chief operating officer of Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS). “We believe that, with continued government support, we will be able to successfully advance these product candidates towards commercialization.”

Emergent recently announced $16 million in funding from Rockville-based nonprofit Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation and the U.K.-based charity Wellcome Trust for a new joint venture the local company formed with the University of Oxford to develop a tuberculosis vaccine.

North Hawaii Community Hospital officials said late Tuesday they are laying off 59 employees in an effort to stem operating losses that could reach $7.4 million this year.

The hospital notified 45 full- and part-time employees Tuesday that they were out of a job. Another 14 employees at the Waimea Women's Center, on the North Hawaii Community campus, also are losing their jobs.

The layoffs take effect immediately and the employees were spread across multiple departments, according to North Hawaii Community Hospital CEO Jeff Comer.

"This is one specific part of it and we need to have a more concerted focus on communicating to the public and getting the message out that the hospital is in a serious situation," Comer told PBN. "There is a cash flow problem and because of that we are forced to take this difficult and painful action…"

The hospital has approximately 460 employees.

The Waimea hospital, which came under new management in late 2007 and hired Comer as its new chief executive in May, has implemented what it calls the "Get Well Plan," which is designed to ensure financial viability.

North Hawaii officials called the layoffs an "unfortunate but necessary action" because the hospital lost $7.5 million last year and stands to lose an estimated $7.4 million this year.

North Hawaii Community Hospital is a 40-bed, privately funded facility. It was established in 1996 and serves some 30,000 Big Island residents.

XeroCoat Inc. said Monday it entered the solar energy market with an anti-reflective coating designed to increase solar system conversion efficiency.

The company said it targets the solar thermal and solar photovoltaic segments.

Founded by two University of Queensland, Australia researchers, XeroCoat is headquartered in Redwood City and maintains its research and development base in Brisbane, Queensland.

The company said it has "an international team of leading optical materials and solar energy scientists and engineers who are focused on continuous innovation of coatings for the solar energy industry."

XeroCoat also said it signed a contract "with a large solar thermal manufacturer to provide the anti-reflective coating for their demonstration line."

Fourth of July travelers are paying the highest prices ever for a gallon of gasoline this week, according to AAA Texas.

In Texas, the average price for regular self-serve gasoline hit $3.96 a gallon, up 3 cents from last week. Nationally, the average price gained 3 cents to a new record of $4.10 a gallon.

The average price rose to $3.95 a gallon in both Dallas and Fort Worth, up 2 cents in Dallas and nearly 3 cents in Fort Worth.

The highest price was in Beaumont, where it jumped 6 cents to a record $3.99 a gallon. Both Houston and Galveston City tied for the cheapest fuel at $3.93 a gallon, up nearly 2 cents and 3 cents, respectively.

Prices averaged $3.95 a gallon in Austin and $3.93 a gallon in San Antonio, up 3 cents for both cities.

"Despite the record high fuel prices, almost 2.8 million Texans are expected to venture out for the holiday," said AAA Texas spokeswoman Rose Rougeau. "Although down 2 percent compared to last year, that is still a great deal of travelers."

Web site: www.aaa-texas.com

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The Denver law firm of Fife and Associates now is called Fife, Charles, Mangall & Mossinghoff, the company reported Monday.

The names of attorneys Christ Charles, Darin Mangnall and Dan Mossinghoff were added to the firm's name.

The firm focuses on criminal law and DUI defenses.

Charles has been with the firm since 2004, and Mangnall and Mossinghoff have been with it since 2005.

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The Green Bay Packers recorded net income of $23.3 million in its 2008 fiscal year, a 5.9 percent increase from 2007, but it was not as much as team officials had hoped for.

In fact, the team saw its profits from operations fall to $21.4 million in 2008, a drop of 37 percent from $34.2 million in 2007, mostly due to rising player costs. Total operating expenses jumped from $184 million to $220 million during the past fiscal year, which ended March 31.

With the team going 13-3 and hosting two playoff games, including the NFC Championship Game, at Lambeau Field, team officials had hoped for better financial results.

"We had a good year, but not as strong as you might have anticipated," said Mark Murphy, Packers president. "There are some trends that are really concerning us."

Most notably, player costs rose from $110 million in 2007 to $124 million in 2008, which Murphy said was caused by bonus payments paid to veteran players.

Revenue increased 10 percent to $241 million, with national revenue making up $135 million of that total. Included in that figure is $87.5 million from the National Football League’s national television contract, which is split among the 32 teams.

Packers vice president of finance Vicki Vannieuwenhoven said the team ranked 11th among NFL teams in local revenue last season, and expects to remain in the same range when the league calculates new rankings later this year. In 2006, the Packers ranked seventh in team revenue.

Larry Weyers, Packers treasurer, said local revenue totaled $105 million. About $50 million in revenue came from a record year in the Packers Pro Shop, marketing and other corporate sponsorships.

Weyers said the $295 million renovation of Lambeau Field, which was completed in 2004, was still paying off for the Packers. With national revenue being evenly divided among the teams, local revenue is very important, he said.

"In order to be successful in this league, you have to depend on local revenue," he said "That is a way to gain an advantage."

NFL owners voted in May to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement with the players union. The current agreement remains in effect through the 2010 season, but owners are hoping to negotiate a new deal that would allow them to keep a bigger share of the money the league and teams make.

Murphy said a new collective bargaining agreement was very important to the Packers, who play in the smallest market in the NFL.

"It is extremely important that we protect the mechanisms the NFL has in place today," he said. "The salary cap is very important and it allows us to compete against team in much larger markets. The system does need to be tweaked a bit and that is what we are working on."

Weyers said the team was able to add $2 million to the Packers Preservation Fund, putting the total in the corporate reserve that was set up in 2005 at $127.5 million.

In addition, the team purchased 15 acres around Lambeau Field this past year. The Packers have not determined how the land will be used, but Murphy said they are talking to municipalities about development possibilities, including retail, entertainment or a mixed-use project.

"We’re looking at ways to generate additional revenue," he said. "We knew (buying the land) would be a good investment as we look to the future."

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