Building auction The building that housed Lourie's for almost 50 years, 1601 Main Street, will be auctioned on Thursday, May 14. Minimum bid for the 44,000 square feet is $799,000. The auction is managed by McGee Real Estate of West Columbia.

Record visitation The Turner to Cezanne exhibition at the Columbia Museum of Art, which opened March 6, has had record visitation through April 30. The exhibition closes June 7. Through the end of April, more than 20,000 tickets had been issued to members and visitors.

B of A board chairman also a physicist Walter Massey, new chairman of Charlotte- based Bank of America Corp., was president of Atlanta's Morehouse College from 1995 to 2007. He was a director of NationsBank, 1993- 1998, and he became a director of the merged company Bank of America in 1998. Before joining Morehouse, he was a director of the National Science Foundation. He is a former vice president of research and a professor of physics at the University of Chicago. He was a director of the Argonne National Laboratory, and he was dean of the college and professor of physics at Brown University. Earlier, he was an assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois. At the University of California at Berkeley he was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, where he was also responsible for the oversight of the three national laboratories the university manages for the Department of Energy: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Massey earned a BS in physics and mathematics in 1958 from Morehouse, and he earned his master's and doctorate in physics in 1966 from Washington University in St. Louis.

Publix Publix Super Markets Inc. has 1,005 stores in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, including nine in Columbia. The Lakeland, Fla.- based grocery chain reported sales for the first quarter of 2009 at $6.4 billion and net earnings of $321.5 million. Publix stock is available for sale only to employees and members of its board of directors.

Endowed chairs Between June 2007 and April 2009, South Carolina's Centers of Economic Excellence endowed chairs program received non- state investments of more than $54 million. Since the program began in 2002, more than $250 million has been brought in, while 110 invention disclosures and 49 U.S. patent applications have been filed.

Women still earn less than men According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, of the more than 500 occupational categories covered by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only five occupations pay women the same or more than men.

Radisson ranks The Radisson Hotel Columbia & Conference Center is one of Radisson Hotels & Resorts top- performing hotels. The hotel received Radisson's annual President's Award based on performance in 2008. It also received the award for 2007.

Clemson grass Researchers at Clemson University's Pee Dee Research and Education Center have announced an initiative with Charleston- based Carolina- Pacific LLC to supply switchgrass to European power plants as a substitute for coal in electricity generation. Beginning in 2012, Carolina- Pacific will need more than 350,000 tons of switchgrass annually for its European markets. To S.C. farmers supplying the switchgrass over the next ten years, the initiative is worth more than $20 million a year. Next door to Clemson's extension center is Wrenfield, home of Dargan Turf Farm, and across the street is Oaklyn Plantation, the Williamson home since the king's grant in the Colonial Era.

Highbrow networking The South Carolina Business Hall of Fame, presented by Junior Achievement and BlueCross BlueShield, will be held on Thursday, May 21, at the convention center on Lincoln Street. Honorees for this 25th anniversary event are Columbia's Joe Edens, Greenville's Hayne Hipp, and former S. C. governor, the late Bob McNair. The black- tie banquet begins with cocktails at 6 pm, and dinner is served at 7 pm. Expect a statewide crowd of 500 business leaders, and expect to pay $225 per plate, which means a table for 10 is $2,250. For further information and to reserve seats, call 252.1974.

It's not just The State, obviously Washington Post Co. posted a loss of $18.7 million for this year's first quarter, while last year there was a profit of $39.3 million. The Post suffered a 33% decline in print advertising revenue. The Post also owns Kaplan, the test prep education unit with offices on Gervais St., and Newsweek, which covered our Governor Sanford over a three- page spread recently.