A survey of Iowa corporate chief executive officers, chief operating officers and senior executives finds they are cautiously optimistic about the recovery of the economy.

Tom Murphy, McGladrey

McGladrey’s 2010 Manufacturing and Wholesale Distribution survey found executives optimistic about business prospects for their companies, plans to add business capacity, and forecasts for near-term job growth.

At the same time, the corporate leaders remain concerned about credit availability, the cost of health care, and the potential impact that several legislative issues might have on their companies.

“While companies in different areas of the country are recovering in different ways and at different times, generally, state-level responses closely mirrored those of their nationwide counterparts,” said Tom Murphy, executive vice president of manufacturing and wholesale distribution for McGladrey.

Steve Schoenauer, McGladrey

“Nationally, 24 percent of the respondents described their companies as ‘thriving and growing,’ which is a 15 percentage point improvement from 2009. Just as important, however, is the fact that only 10 percent said company business conditions are ‘declining.’”

Steve Schoenauer, leader of  McGladrey’s Iowa manufacturing practice, said 31 percent of the Iowa respondents said their companies are ‘thriving and growing,” which is a 22 percentage point improvement from 2009.

Schoenauer said the Iowa responses also showed that companies remain dedicated to the growth of green initiatives.

Hiawatha Mayor Tom Theis (left) and Iowa Lt. Governor Patty Judge look over the shoulder of customer service representative Matthew Harris after the official opening of the new Go Daddy facility at 1 Parsons Drive in Hiawatha on Thursday, July 8, 2010. The company that was founded by Bob Parsons, plans to hire 60 people immediately and up to 150 in the next year. (Julie Koehn/SourceMedia Group News)

HIAWATHA – Hiawatha Mayor Tom Theis took Go Daddy President and Chief Operating Officer Warren Adelman aside after a ribbon-cutting at Go Daddy’s new Hiawatha facility.

Theis handed Adelman his business card, and urged him to call if there was ever anything – anything at all – Go Daddy needed from the city.

After a brief but highly publicized duel with Cedar Rapids for a new Go Daddy facility, the company was up and running in Hiawatha, and Theis said later that he has every intention of making sure the company is comfortable there.

Adelman apologized for the unavailability of Go Daddy President Bob Parsons, celebrity spokeswoman Danica Patrick, and, the Go Daddy girls. He jokingly waved a skimpy Go Daddy blouse, saying his public relations department had given it to him with the suggestion that a volunteer could be found.

“We are taking customer care calls live now here in Go Daddy Hiawatha!” Adelman told a crowd of over 100 employees and community representatives. He said one seven-person customer care team was operating, and the first customer care training class for others is in progress.

The company is looking to fill about 60 positions immediately, and expects to hire 150 more over the next year.

“I predict we will happily fill Hiawatha,” Adelman said of the 55,000-square-foot facility.

Most of the hires will be in customer care positions, which Adelman said typically pay in a range of $14 per hour exclusive of bonuses and commissions. He said the company will also hire information technology positions that will pay from $70,000 to $100,000, however.

References were made by Iowa Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge and others to the building’s  history as the former home of Parsons Technology, a company founded in Cedar Rapids by Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons.]

Judge said the new facility, which eventually is expected to employ 500-600, will aid the state’s economic recovery.

“Their decision shows faith in Iowa’s people, in our economy, and our ability to provide them with the workers they need,” Judge said.

Adelman said Go Daddy’s core market for its  web site hosting, domain name registration, e-mail and other services are small businesses.

“Over 70 percent of our customers are small businesses,” Adelman said. “they look at us as their IT (information technology) business partner.”

Adelman said the operation has begun with one shift, but will be adding a second customer care shift.

Customer service representative Chris Childress takes a call after the official opening of the new Go Daddy facility at 1 Parsons Drive in Hiawatha on Thursday, July 8, 2010. Childress was one of a handful of representatives to transfer from the Arizona facility. The company that was founded by Bob Parsons, plans to hire 60 people immediately and up to 150 in the next year. (Julie Koehn/SourceMedia Group News)

International business makes up about 16-17 percent of Go Daddy’s total, a number the Arizona-based company hopes to boost with new data centers that opened in Amsterdam nine months ago and in Singapore last week.

Adelman said some of the company’s biggest technical skill needs are in LINUX systems administration, MY SQL and SQL data bases, network security, Microsoft Windows administration, and C++ coding.

“We need the community colleges and universities to be focusing their curriculum on computer services and these specific areas,” Adelman said.

Adelman said fewer hard skills are needed for customer care positions, mainly “a good head on their shoulders.”

Go Daddy is accepting applications for the Hiawatha positions on the company’s web site.

Marco’s Pizza, 3607 First Ave. SE in the Town & Country Shopping Center, has closed, according to an e-mail sent to its customers.

The e-mail said the closing of the 1,870-square-foot restaurant was due to “circumstances beyond our control” and said it would also notify customers should it plan to reopen in the future.

Sam Hanna and Gary Black opened Iowa’s first Marco’s Pizza franchise in late 2007. The Marco’s Pizza corporate website at www.marcos.com does not list a Cedar Rapids location, but does seek individuals wanting to invest in a Cedar Rapids franchise.

Hanna and Black were the area developers for the Toledo, Ohio-based restaurant business, with rights to open or sell franchise rights for 37 Marco’s Pizza restaurants in Iowa and the Illinois Quad Cities.

When they were interviewed prior to the opening of the Cedar Rapids store, Hanna and Black planned to open a restaurant in the Iowa City area and possibly one in the Des Moines area. Their eventual plans included Marco’s Pizza locations in Dubuque, Davenport, Des Moines, Iowa City and North Liberty.

Check back for more information on this story.

John Kane (left) and his wife, Linda Edwards (center) sell plants at Web Walkway, their home business at 3121 12th Ave. in Coralville on Saturday. The City of Coralville has ordered them to shut down their hosta and daylilly business by July 14 or face daily fines for operating a retail business illegally in a residential zone. (John Richard/Freelance)

CORALVILLE — Linda Edwards says she has sold hostas and daylilies from her home garden for a decade, but that likely will end next week.

On June 15, Edwards and her husband, John Kane, received a letter from James Kessler, a Coralville building and zoning official ordering her to shut down her business, Web Walkway, at 3121 12th Ave. by July 14 or face a fine of $750 daily for operating a retail business illegally in a residential zone.

“When I started my business 10 years ago, we were located in Johnson County with a rural Iowa City address,” Edwards said. “Five years ago, we were annexed against our will by the City of Coralville. The neighborhood got together and hired a lawyer to fight annexation, but we lost.”

Edwards said she spoke with Kessler after the annexation and was told that her business could continue as a grandfathered enterprise.

“We never had a formal agreement,” she said.

Edwards said details of what she sells have been on her website, www.webwalkway.com, for close to a decade.

The decision to “ungrandfather” her business followed an altercation between a customer and police regarding a “No Parking” sign.

“Three days later, I got this letter,” Edwards said. “Mr. Kessler suggested that I sell my hostas and daylilies at farmers markets and was not willing to compromise with me.”

Kessler said the cease and desist order was issued because Edwards has changed the nature and scope of her business since they spoke in 2005.

“At that time, she said she was selling slips of the hostas she was growing on her property,” he said. “For that, she was grandfathered.

“Over the course of the last five years, she has started to sell all kinds of plants. She even brings plants in on large trucks, unloads them and sells them.”

Kessler said the shutdown order was prompted by a Coralville police complaint about a truck delivering flowers to Edwards that was blocking a lane of traffic.

“We do have a provision for a home occupation, but everything must be conducted within the dwelling and there’s no outside retail sales,” Kessler said.

Edwards and Kane plan to appeal to the Coralville City Council.

“I’ve already bought $2,000 worth of stock for next year,” she said.
“I’ve had an outpouring of e-mails from customers who were very upset when they learned that I’m having to shut down.”

Foreclosure rates in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City increased in May over the same period last year, according to CoreLogic, a real estate data and analysis company.

The rate of foreclosures among outstanding mortgage loans in Cedar Rapids was 1.75 percent for the month of May, an increase of 0.28 percentage points from 1.47 percent in May 2009.

In Iowa City, the rate of foreclosures among outstanding mortgage loans was 0.79 percent in May, an increase of 0.04 percentage points compared with 0.75 percent in May 2009.

Foreclosure activity in Cedar Rapids was lower than the national foreclosure rate, which was 3.15 percent in May, representing a 1.4 percentage point difference. Iowa City’s foreclosure rate was 2.36 percentage points below the national foreclosure rate.

The mortgage delinquency rate also increased in Cedar Rapids. CoreLogic data for May showed 3.7 percent of mortgage loans were 90 days or more delinquent, compared with 3.12 percent for the same period last year, representing an increase of 0.58 percentage points.

CoreLogic data showed the mortgage delinquency rate in Iowa City edged up to 1.91 percent in May from 1.55 percent for the same period last year, representing an increase of 0.36 percentage points.

CEDAR RAPIDS – Rockwell Collins will play a key role in an  ITT-led contract to develop advanced concepts for a Federal Aviation Administration project to modernize the national airspace system, the company said on Thursday, July 8.

The FAA announced in May that it had selected ITT to perform the initial Systems Engineering 2020 contract for NextGen, the Next Generation Air Transportation System.

 The $1.4 billion with ITT contract has a five-year base period and options to extend to 10 years.

ITT said its team will work across all dimensions of air traffic control, including avoinics, ground systems, aircraft and human factors, safety and security. More than two dozen team members on the project include aircraft manufacturers, cloud computing companies, universities, airlines, and avionics companies.