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TheBuzz Erika Engle |
McMillionaires and Kailua
parking are in the offingMCDONALD's Corp. will make millionaires of 15 people between tomorrow and Sunday. Each winner who completes the verification process will be awarded a $1 million annuity that will be paid out at $50,000 per year for 20 years with no interest accrued.
The company's 2004 Instant Prize Giveaway is the second and final part of the resolution of a class-action lawsuit stemming from a rigged McDonald's Monopoly promotion. It was not McDonald's but its promotions contractor, Simon Marketing Inc., that was found to have committed the fraud.
Nevertheless, it is McDonald's money that is being given away, according to Marketing Manager Melanie Okazaki.
The potential millionaire-making will unfold everywhere the troubled Monopoly contest was conducted, in the United States, Canada, Aruba, Guam, the Bahamas, Curacao, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, St. Maarten, St. Thomas, Saipan, Suriname, Trinidad and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Lengthy and detailed rules are at www.mcdonalds.com in the "In The News" section.
As required by law, no purchase is necessary to enter the contest. No game pieces are involved. A person is entered in the contest if they are in the store, are the driver at the drive-through menu board or are at locations that don't have doors, if they are within the restaurant premises.
"A random drawing will take place to select five winning restaurants per day," Okazaki said. "On the days of the giveaways, a team of judges will be positioned in each of the selected restaurants." The judges will randomly select the winners. "Somebody will walk up to you," she said.
"They have also randomly selected the time of day that they are to be awarding the prize," but no prizes will be awarded within 30 minutes of closing time, according to the rules.
The rules also say an entrant may win more than one grand prize. Your columnist's eyes got big at the prospect, but quickly went back to normal, considering there are 77 McDonald's locations in Hawaii, 13,000 in the United States and thousands more spread out among the rest of the territory.
Kailua parking
The five-level parking structure proposed for Kailua has been downsized to a three-level, two-deck structure."We scaled back the parking structure in response to community feedback that told us to keep Kailua Kailua," said Mitch D'Olier, chief executive officer of the Castle Foundation and its real estate management entity, Kaneohe Ranch Co.
The top level of the structure will be leased to McKenna Motors for vehicle storage. The structure project, set to get underway this week and finish in August, will employ a range of 30 to 60 people, D'Olier said.
The concrete strike has so far not had significant impact on construction of the new Longs Drug store near the planned structure. "Fortunately we had most of our concrete done by the time the strike happened," he said. "It will affect the parking structure (if it is not settled soon) ... I'll try to be optimistic about that," D'Olier said.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at: eengle@starbulletin.com