Celebrity athlete, UFC sports legend and local idol Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell will be the first mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter to be inducted into the famed Madame Tussauds Las Vegas collection.

The Liddell figure will be officially unveiled on May 28 at the UFC Fan Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Then on May 29, the figure will move to its permanent home at Madame Tussauds, and "The Iceman" himself will be in attendance to unveil his figure inside an interactive octagon experience.

Liddell recently opened his official fan headquarters called Ultimate Iceman on California Boulevard in SLO.

The local Damon Castillo Band might be well known around these parts and may even be gaining notoriety throughout California, but starting this Saturday they may find themselves in the big time.

The WealthTV channel has been in San Luis Obispo interviewing band members and documenting their lives for a one-hour episode on the show "In Session", airing this Saturday in more than 10.5 million households nationwide.

The show not only highlights the Damon Castillo Band, but it also showcases San Luis Obispo and why the band members love the city so much.

The first showing locally is May 1 at 2 p.m. on Charter Cable channel 137. Check listings for other showtimes.  

The recently released fourth edition of the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Vision was endorsed by a 5-0 vote at the City Council meeting last night.

This is the first time any City Council had been asked to endorse an edition of the Vision Document.

All five council members praised the Chamber’s two-year effort producing an economic development roadmap that balances economic, social and environmental values and focuses on the creation of more meaningful head-of-household jobs while protecting SLO’s unique character.

The Chamber and the City are working together on several new economic development initiatives.

Click here to view the document.

The latest SLO City sales tax figures for the all-important fourth quarter (2009) show additional softening but at a much slower rate.

Sales tax receipts were down 4.9 percent from fourth quarter 2008, and 2008 was already down 9.9 percent from the peak in 2007. Grim news? Not compared to the double-digit quarterly decreases for the rest of the year.

Nationally, retail sales have been rebounding into positive territory during the first quarter of this year. So there’s a good chance SLO will finally show increases when those figures are released in late June.

Several other factors could also help longer term.

Target, which broke ground earlier this month for its nearly 140,000-square-foot store, plans to begin building this summer with the intent of opening its doors by late spring-summer of 2011.

And Old Navy, which is hosting a grand re-opening of its San Luis Obispo store on April 24, reportedly spent nearly $1 million on an entire remodel of the store.

When city police got their outrageous arbitration award last year, we predicted that other City employees were going to expect lots more, too.

Now, with several of the City’s labor contracts set to expire Dec. 31, one of the largest City bargaining units, the San Luis Obispo City Employees Association (SLOCEA), has hired Strobridge and Brennler and Associates to negotiate its next contract. SLOCEA represents about half of the City’s 300 employees.

Strobridge and Brennler and Associates Principal Dale Strobridge, who retired from SLOPD and now works as a county deputy sheriff, is often given either credit or blame for making SLO’s police salaries and benefits nearly the highest in the state.

While he hasn’t always been that effective in other jurisdictions, his “take no prisoners” approach is sure to inject a level of divisiveness that was unknown in this city before he got involved here.

Interestingly, his approach doesn’t always win praise from the groups he represents. Recently the County Deputy Sheriff’s Association voted overwhelmingly (70 percent to 30 percent) to decertify Strobridge as its representative and form a new association.
 

It seems that Principal Life Insurance Company, headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, has never been very happy with what SLO’s American Principle Bank chose for its name.

While it may be hard to imagine that someone would confuse a national insurance company in the Midwest with a local bank headquartered in San Luis Obispo, pressure from Principle Insurance has "inspired" a new name: American Perspective Bank.

Although shareholders have approved the new name, insiders report that it will appear gradually over the next several months.
 

Insiders report that business leader and entrepreneur Jeff Buckingham has formed a new telecommunications company in San Luis Obispo, Blue Rooster Telecom.

Buckingham is again partnering with Cheryl Lovell, who helped him start Call America’s second iteration in 2001 in SLO.

Buckingham founded the original Call America in 1983 and later sold it to a national company. Their new company will offer traditional local and long distance phone service, plus Internet and private networks to local businesses.

Buckingham has long been a business leader both locally and nationally in his field of independent telecom suppliers.

The management of Hearst Castle is trying some creative, new ideas to reverse a slow but steady attendance decline that’s been going on since 1989.

In that year, attendance at San Luis Obispo County’s most important tourist attraction peaked at just over 1 million. The latest attendance figures are about 650,000. New self-guided garden tours are among several new ideas that are being instituted.

The attendance decline is especially important to San Luis Obispo because about half of Hearst Castle visitors actually stay overnight in SLO. The attendance decline is probably caused by several factors: unfamiliarity of young people with William Randolph Hearst, lack of funds for promotion, and, lately, the slumped economy.

In a historic decision nearly 12 years in the making, the San Luis Obispo City Council last night adopted the Orcutt Area Specific Plan.

This multi-use, transit-friendly development plan could potentially – over the next 20 years – accommodate almost 1,000 new homes in a 230-acre area south of the city, bounded by Orcutt and Tank Farm roads.

Next month, the process to annex the land will begin, a move the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce has long advocated due to the social, economic and environmental necessity of providing adequate workforce housing in the city.

The council also agreed to find grant money to pay 50 percent of a controversial $1.7 million for a pedestrian/bicycle bridge to go over the railroad tracks.