Overheard

Know anyone who’s missing an Elvis belt buckle, 300 $100 bills and an autographed Yogi Berra baseball card? Those are among the items the Missouri State Treasurer’s office has discovered in abandoned safe-deposit boxes. The Unclaimed Property Division in Treasurer Sarah Steelman’s office currently holds more than $500 million in unclaimed property and has returned more than $32.3 million worth of property so far this year. With a month to go in the fiscal year, the division already has surpassed last year’s record of returned property, $22.9 million. The division is responsible for safeguarding and seeking out owners of the contents of abandoned safe-deposit boxes and unclaimed funds. Since Steelman took office about three years ago, her office every year has broken the previous year’s record for amount of property returned, the release said.

Report: Hammons Snubs Alabama

Springfield-based John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts has pulled its plans to build a four-star hotel at the $1.3 billion, 540-acre Sweetwater development in Decatur, Ala., The Huntsville (Ala.) Times reports. Decatur officials in March announced the mixed-use development – which is slated to be anchored by Bass Pro Shops, another Springfield-based company – and its developer, Genesis USA, earlier this month revealed that Hammons would be behind its hotel and convention center.

“I continue to be interested in Huntsville, Alabama, but I have not yet satisfied myself with the right spot,” Hammons told the Huntsville paper. Hammons already owns the nearly two-year-old Embassy Suites in downtown Huntsville, which is about 20 miles from Decatur. Bass Pro remains committed to the project, the paper reports, and Sweetwater is still a go, though there could be delays as the developer scrambles to sign another hotel.

Small-business Optimism Falling

The latest Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey indicates small-business owner optimism is at its lowest point since the survey’s inception nearly five years ago.

The index score dropped 35 points in the first quarter to 48, representing the largest quarterly decline to date. The score is 66 points lower than the index’s highest score on record of 114, reported in December 2006. The index score is the sum of current and future expectations of small-business owners for six key measures: financial situation, cash flow, revenues, capital allocation, job hiring and credit availability. An index score of zero indicates that an equal number of respondents are optimistic and pessimistic about their companies’ situations.

The score for current conditions was 18, down 20 points from January. Future expectations scored 30, a 15-point drop from the previous quarter. The most significant shifts in attitude were in small-business owners’ present revenue situations and in their future expectations for cash flow and financial situations. Despite falling optimism, 86 percent of survey respondents reported satisfaction being small-business owners, and 94 percent said they feel successful. Those numbers were relatively unchanged from the previous quarter. For the survey, 600 small business owners nationwide were interviewed April 2–16.