Rumor has it you want some morning news.

• Following up on yesterday’s story about the Kentucky coal plant, Evansville has adopted tougher air quality standards. These standards determine when the city issues air quality alerts.
• The Candy Bouquet, located on Main Street, is closing today. The owners cite financial reasons for the closing.
• Casino Aztar has laid off another 12 workers. If you look at the Civic Building, you can see steam coming out of the Mayor’s office.
• For the past two nights, two different gas stations have been robbed. Wednesday evening he robbed a Thorntons on the West Side. Last night he moved out to the Circle K on Highway 41. Police believe the robberies were both done by the same guy.
• Looking to start a business? The city of Evansville will soon offer a two million dollar program to provide low-interest loans to people who want to bring their businesses downtown. Can someone please entice Starbucks, Jimmy Johns or Jamba Juice to come downtown?

photo courtesy of -Lori-

One of the things that always gets under my skin is seeing giant buildings become vacated for several years at a time. When Wal-Mart moved, their building was vacant for a few years (the West side’s old store still is vacated). The same thing happened when K-Mart closed. Luckily most of these buildings find a new home at some point, it just takes a while. Sam’s Club moved to their new building almost 3 years ago, and their old building off of Green River Road has sat vacant, save for a few Fireworks sales.

The old Sam’s Club building on the East side is may soon be occupied once again. Cingular Wireless is planning to renovate the building to turn it into a call center for for their business customers. The call center is expected to bring in 500 jobs, which could be beneficial to those 500 people who lost their jobs at Whirlpool back in December.

While nothing is officially announced, the general consensus is that the new center will be announced by Cingular and the City Of Evansville on Monday.

photo courtesy of brave new films

Inside Indiana Business is reporting that the Evansville Regional Airport has had it’s deadline to find an operator for daily flights to Indianapolis extended from this Sunday to September 24. The airport received a $1 million grant from the US Department of Transportation for the project, and got the extension by promising to have an airline in place for the daily flights.

Evansville officials say they have been in discussions with Big Sky Airlines. Big Sky partners with US Airways, Delta and Northwest Airlines to provide service to smaller cities such as ours. Not having to drive to Louisville to catch to catch a flight to Indianapolis will be a good thing for our small airport; especially since I-69 isn’t here yet to make that 3-hour drive more peaceful.

Now if only they could make flights out of Evansville as affordable as Louisville or other regional airports…