LOCAL BRIEFS: Cox moves to take radio unit private

Cox Enterprises on Monday launched an offer to take private Cox Radio by buying about $69.1 million of stock in the company’s last publicly traded unit. The $3.80-a-share offer is a 15 percent premium over Friday’s closing price. Sandy Schwartz, president of Cox Media Group, which oversees the Atlanta-based company’s media holdings, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said the move “reduces the impact of market uncertainty. Anytime you have a public company, you’re not totally in control of your company.”

—- Kristi Swartz

Pediatric research center opens

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has opened a pediatric research center on its Egleston hospital campus. The research center, in a renovated part of the hospital, includes a four-bed inpatient unit, a four-bed outpatient unit and a lab. The center will do clinical research on new drugs, treatments and therapies for children, and is primarily funded by the Atlanta Clinical & Translational Science Institute.

The institute is a partnership of Emory University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Tech and the National Institutes of Health.

—- Andy Miller

CVB: Paid trips to promote Alpharetta

The Alpharetta Convention and Visitors Bureau is trying to help fill the city’s hotels. To that end, the organization has decided to send sales representatives from the hotels to lead generating trade shows during the 2009-10 fiscal year.

The CVB will pay for the entire trip, including convention registration, travel, lodging and meals. The plan is to send one representative from each of the city’s 23 hotels to a show, said Janet Rodgers, president and chief executive officer of the Alpharetta CVB. And the expense isn’t out of line with the group’s mission to promote Alpharetta as a “premier tourism destination,” she said.

Hotels attending on the CVB’s dime will have exclusive rights to any leads gotten from the trade show, according to a news release from the bureau.

—- Michelle E. Shaw

Delta offers $5,000 relocation package

Delta Air Lines is offering a $5,000 relocation package to its employees in airport customer service who relocate from an overstaffed location to an understaffed location in an effort to avoid layoffs of frontline employees, Delta chief executive Richard Anderson said in a message to employees.

The move comes as Atlanta-based Delta further cuts its flight capacity this year, and the company is offering transfers to more than 50 locations in the United States.

Delta said earlier this month that its last round of buyouts, which 2,100 employees signed up for earlier this year, fell short of reaching the cuts needed in certain geographic areas and for certain positions.

—- Kelly Yamanouchi

U.S.-Australia airline pact signed

Delta Air Lines has signed a United States-Australia interline agreement with Virgin Blue’s V Australia airline to allow “seamless travel” on each other’s networks and across the Pacific.

Delta plans to start flying from Los Angeles to Sydney on July 1. V Australia started flying between Los Angeles and Sydney on Feb. 27, and will start flights from Los Angeles to Brisbane on April 8 and from Los Angeles to Melbourne in September.

—- Kelly Yamanouchi