The Buzz

If you drove through downtown last week, you probably noticed that the digital countdown clocks for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games weren’t working.

Don’t panic. The Games haven’t been canceled or moved to Dubai.

“A part” failed in the clock system and has to be replaced, says Krista Greathouse, Mayor Jim Newberry’s liaison to the Games.

The clocks will be up and running again when “the part” arrives.

People have noticed, Greathouse added. “If I had a penny for every call I’ve gotten about it …”

In the meantime, you can check the countdown online at Kentucky.com/weg.

By the way, if you want to do your own math, the Games will be held at the Kentucky Horse Park beginning Sept. 25, 2010.

Two real estate pros, Bret Caller of Lexington and Steven Miller of Cincinnati, have formed Viking Partners LLC, a commercial real estate investment firm that is seeking investors to buy good properties that are bargain priced due to the current economic slump or owner desperation.

“Invoking the spirit of the Vikings, who were known for their prowess in exploring new lands and navigating in uncharted seas, the firm seeks to capitalize on real estate-related investment opportunities with strong fundamental value,” Caller and Miller said in a statement.

But in an age of accused scamsters like Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford and Arthur Nadel, is it wise to name your business after the Vikings? They were great explorers, no doubt, but they also practiced pillage, plunder and piracy in conquering much of Europe?

Arthur Nadel, in fact, managed at least three investment funds with names that included “Viking” or “Valhalla,” a place in Norse mythology.

“We said ‘Viking’ in the sense of an explorer, not in the sense of a pillager,” Miller explained. “We want to be careful not to be put into that bucket.

“What we are saying is that this is a difficult time. We are going to navigate these waters and who better to navigate than a couple of players who have been doing this for a long time” — nearly 40 years total.

The Web site, www.vikingpartnersllc.com, features these words: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

It’s from Warren Buffett, the wise investor’s Viking.

The British Broadcasting Corp. is planning television coverage of the Alltech FEI European Championships in August at Windsor Castle.

For American riders who can’t travel to England this summer, the BBC images could be their best look at the competition before they face many of the same riders in the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2010.

It’s not clear if the BBC coverage of Windsor will be shown in the United States, however.

The international governing body for equestrian sports, the Fédération Equestre Internationale, or FEI, is “sorting out the international broadcasting rights, and the coverage available to U.S. viewers is unknown at this time,” says Susanna Elliott, Alltech’s equestrian events spokeswoman.

“However, quite a bit of video will be available on (the Internet at) www.alltechwindsoreuropeans.com,” she said.

Riders with friends in England have another option: Get them to tape it for you.

It’s not a buffalo, it’s a dog.

Buffalo Trace, which likes to produce bourbons with all sorts of different labels and bottle shapes, is adding another.

But it’s not bourbon. It’s white dog, the 125-proof distillate that is clear and strong before it mellows in oaken barrels. There’s another name for it that rhymes with “loon vine.”

Buffalo Trace began bottling white dog on Thursday and expects to have it for sale in its gift shop in two to three weeks, distillery spokeswoman Angela Traver told Herald-Leader reporter Steve Lannen. It will be labeled as Buffalo Trace Mash Bill #1.

Buffalo Trace is treating its new offering as a novelty item available only in the gift shop. There are no immediate plans to sell it elsewhere, Traver said.

“It’s not a sipping drink,” she added, as if anyone who has tried moonsh …, er, white dog would need to be told.

The proposed Farmers Market development plan for Lexington’s Cheapside Park would give John C. Breckinridge a new view of the world, so to speak.

A statue of Breckinridge, who served as vice president and U.S. senator before joining the Confederacy during the Civil War, has stood along Cheapside for about a century.

The statue faces the old Fayette County Courthouse, which is now a museum, because Breckinridge was a lawyer and “that’s where he conducted business,” said Clete Benken, a principal in Covington consulting firm KKG Studios.

The KKG plan calls for Breckinridge to be moved 40 or 50 feet to the Main Street end of the park. The statue also would be turned to face Main “to let people see who he is.”

Would it be hard to move the Breckinridge statue?

Not really, Benken says, although engineers haven’t evaluated the job yet.

A fountain in Cincinnati that probably weighs 20 times more than the Breckinridge statue “was picked up and moved twice in the last five years,” he said.

And the cost?

That’s not clear yet, either.

“It’s probably a significant number, but not an outrageous number,” Benken said.

Besides, history buffs might say that giving Breckinridge a new view of Lexington is priceless.

J. Robert Owens says it’s “kind of a wintertime hobby. I play golf in the summer.”

He wasn’t referring to skiing or coin collecting.

Owens, who is known to friends as “Bobby” and to many other people as the new chairman of the Blue Grass Airport board, rebuilds historic warplanes.

Hundreds of his fellow members of the Rotary Club of Lexington learned of Owens’ hobby on Thursday when he was introduced as guest speaker at the club’s weekly meeting.

Between Labor Day 2003 and Aug. 3, 2005, Owens and friends rebuilt a 1942 Piper L-4A, a military version of the legendary Piper Cub, that saw service during World War II.

His L-4A is now the oldest aircraft of its type still flying, out of about 7,000 L-4’s built for World War II service.

“My plane was one of the first 50 that were delivered to the Army Air Forces and it ended up flying submarine patrol for a year out of Jacksonville, Fla.,” he said last week.

Later, the light, single-engine plane did various jobs for the military until it was sold to civilian aviators near the end of the war in 1945.

Owens, who has been a pilot since he was 18, is the 18th owner of the aircraft, which is now officially known as N49750.

“I bought it in pieces from a guy in 1992 and started restoring it about 10 years later,” he said, laughing. “It was a lot of fun.”

His account of the restoration project, which started after a previous restoration effort failed to get off the ground, can be found at warbird-central.com.

The posting includes the reaction of his wife, Debbie, to his more-or-less spur -of-the-moment purchase of the plane — in pieces — in Dalton, Ga.

Every married guy will know what Owens means when he writes, “Sometimes wives don’t appreciate the passion of men’s hobbies when opportunities present themselves.”

At any rate, since the restored N49750 flew on Aug. 3, 2005, Owens has worked with friends on other restoration projects.

“We are just a bunch of hobbyists who have old World War II aircraft,” he adds. “We have one P-51 (Mustang fighter plane) that’s just gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.”

If you’re waiting for Keeneland to roll out its new master plan, the racetrack’s president says hold your horses.

In August, Keeneland hired the architectural firm HOK Sport to develop a plan to expand the historic Lexington track to accommodate the larger crowds that had been coming to the races.

Nick Nicholson, Keeneland’s president and chief executive officer, said they had intentionally hired a firm that didn’t specialize in racetrack construction so they could get a fresh perspective.

Nicholson didn’t say in August how much the plan would cost or when it might be completed, although he said “they (HOK) think they can have it done this year (2008).”

In answering a question from the audience at Tuesday’s meeting of the Bluegrass Hospitality Association, Nicholson said the plan is still in the works.

“That process is ongoing. There is no time frame on it,” he said. “Certainly, with the (sluggish) economy, nothing is going to happen soon.”

Venza is for lovers — pet lovers, that is.

Made by Toyota at Georgetown, the vehicle is a “crossover,” a mix of car and SUV, that looks like a tall Camry wagon.

The Venza’s target audience is empty-nesters and young families, many of whom have pets.

So Toyota is sponsoring “pet-centric ride and drive events” and joining with pet accessories makers, like Krugo, to put on lectures and demonstrations at pet shows.

After all, 70 percent of pet owners “consider the comfort and safety of their pets when choosing a vehicle,” Toyota says, “and that’s what (drives) this campaign.”

Next up, Venza test-drives for dogs. (Just kidding.)

Dennis Frommeyer was annoyed.

When he trimmed the bushes in his yard, the clippings had to be raked up — or picked up by hand if they fell into the landscaping material around his plants.

He vented to his wife, Michelle, and “she told me to invent something,” Frommeyer wrote in an e-mail.

Out of that remark came the Pruning Partner, a timely invention that may be useful to lots of us as winter turns into spring and the 2009 growing season begins in Kentucky.

Pruning Partner is six triangles of canvas with plastic backing. The triangles can be connected to form a circle, a line or an L-shape on the ground around or beside bushes or hedges to catch the trimmings as they fall.

When the job is done, the canvas is rolled up with the trimmings inside so they can be dumped in a recycling bin or a compost heap.

“It works real well; I used it all last year,” says Frommeyer, who has been with the Scott County Fire Department for nearly 20 years.

Pruning Partner comes in medium and large sizes, as you can see at www.pruningpartner.com.

A patent is pending on his invention, which has been on the market for only about a month, Frommeyer says. The real unveiling will be at upcoming garden shows in Louisville and Lexington.

It’s one of those things that looks so simple, you may find yourself asking, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Caller Enterprises just bought 60 percent of Chevy Chase Plaza, but the changes Steve and Bret Caller are planning might make a 100 percent difference in the business climate at East High Street and Euclid Avenue.

The Callers paid $3.2 million for the first, second and third floors of the five-story building, plus the 200-space parking garage. Floors four and five are condos owned by private buyers or Chevy Chase Plaza LLC.

The plan, says Steve Caller, is to move the office-type businesses now on the ground floor to the second and third floors so retailers can move in. One of the first-floor tenants that will be moving upstairs is WDKY-TV Fox 56.

No new retailers have been signed –”We have only owned the building a few days now,” Caller said – but likely candidates are restaurants, a book store and “anything Chevy Chase doesn’t have now.”

The purchase probably gives the Callers the distinction, if they didn’t have it already, of being the largest property owners in the relatively small Chevy Chase business area where their offices are located.

Their other holdings include Ashland Plaza and Saratoga Center on the block across Euclid Avenue from Chevy Chase Plaza.

“We are committed to Chevy Chase,” Caller says. “We put our money where our mouth is.”

By the way, Caller spends a lot of time in Florida where two of the largest industries — real estate and tourism — have been economically decimated.

The difference between Florida and the Bluegrass is “remarkable” and local residents may not appreciate their good fortune, he says.

“I’m sure it’s not great around here compared to the past, but compared to nationwide, I think Lexington is doing a lot better.”