Holiday Bowl Hopes to Fill Up

The Holiday Bowl is two months away, but the football game’s backers are taking no chances in their bid to ensure a sellout and avoid last year’s embarrassing turnout of only 42,000.

Starting two weeks ago, 17 area banks and savings and loans included mail-order Holiday Bowl ticket requests in their monthly customer account statements. About the same time, more than $200,000 worth of public-service announcements began appearing on local TV and radio.

Last year, the Holiday Bowl didn’t start pushing the event until mid-November, which was one of the reasons for the less-than-sold-out event, according to John Reed, Holiday Bowl executive director.

Adding a boost to this year’s effort is the recent five-year sponsorship deal signed by Sea World, which has attached its name to the Holiday Bowl moniker for an undisclosed amount.

Last year, Arkansas and Arizona State each received $546,000 for participating in the Holiday Bowl. (Arkansas won, 18-17.) This year, said Reed, each team’s take will be between $650,000 and $700,000.

“We’re a worthwhile community venture,� Reed said.

NO ADVICE FROM KRINSK

A story in last Tuesday’s business section incorrectly quoted Fabulous Inns Chairman Jeffrey Krinsk as saying he would counsel others to follow his lead and not vote their shares at the company’s court-ordered special shareholders’ meeting Nov. 5.

Krinsk says he will not cast his votes, but that he is “not counseling others to do the same thing. I’m not counseling them at all.�

JENNINGS LAW FIRM GOING BROADWAY

A lack of suitors wasn’t the problem for the law firm of Jennings, Engstrand & Hendrikson when it went searching for a new headquarters office. Choosing the right mate was.

But the law firm’s search for a new home, led by partner and former U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ross Pyle, has ended and the date has been set.

Jennings, Engstrand has become the first tenant in the Koll Co.’s plans for a downtown complex of two office towers, a hotel and apartments on the west end of Broadway.

The law firm will take over two floors of one of the Koll Co.’s 21-story office buildings in the fall of 1989, coinciding, Pyle said, with the firm’s lease expiration at its current Mission Valley digs. Those offices are now owned by several Jennings, Engstrand partners, who are in escrow to sell the building, Pyle said.

‘UNAUTHORIZED’ REPORT GOING PUBLIC

Speaking of the Koll Co., its purchase of the First Interstate Plaza from Great-West Life Assurance Co. of Winnipeg is expected to close this week. Representatives of Koll’s joint venture partner, Beta West Properties in Denver, a subsidiary of US WEST, will be in town to make the announcement.

But real estate people, perhaps antsy that deals in escrow often fall through, don’t like news of pending sales to leak out, as the plaza’s sale did last week on these pages.

“You have no authorization to run that story,� a Beta West representative told a reporter at the time.