People are gathering for tonight’s open house.

For more:
The Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation Welcomes Les Garner, Jr. as President & CEO
The Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation Moves to Renovated Torch Press Building

Christoph Trappe spends much of his time explaining new ways to report the local news.

CEDAR RAPIDS – Prospective wind industry suppliers got an inside-out look at the workings of wind turbines Tuesday as a conference on wind turbine supply opportunities began.

Large wind turbines have about 22 component groups with as many as 8,000 parts, explained Dale Reckman of the Great Lakes Wind Network, a manufacturer network and supply chain advisory group.

Reckman said the number of parts can vary from as few as 30 in a residential wind turbine that supply homes, to 8,000 in large utility-grade turbines that supply the transmission grid.

Many of the parts are enormous, making the wind market seem formidable to small suppliers interested in taking part.

“Everybody seems to gravitate toward the huge parts,” Reckman said.

Utility-grade wind turbine blades are sometimes 200 feet long, weighing 13-15 tons.

The generator frame can weigh 7,000 to 8,000 pounds. The main shaft of the turbien can weigh 45,000 pounds.

Towers are made in ten-foot-wide sections that are attached to make 50-foot-long sections.

Reckman repeatedly pointed out that there are opportunities for smaller suppliers who lack the cranes and hoists needed to handle huge parts. They include manufacturing yaw systems, that handle the rotational movement of the turbine rotor on top of the tower, and parts used to attach the blade to the hub of the turbine.

Even though the blades can be enormous, Reckman said that did not necessarily rule out smaller suppliers because the processes used to manufacture them are mostly manual.

Quality standards for wind turbines components are high, in part because they are so costly to fix once they are in the field. The cost to replace a part once it is part of a wind turbine assembly at the manufacturer’s location can be ten times the original cost, Reckman said. The cost to replace or repair a part once the turbine is in operation can be 100 times the original cost.

The average utility-grade wind turbine faces operating conditions ten to 20 times more harsh than the average automobile sold in the United States, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Conference attendees toured Acciona Wind’s turbine manufacturing plant Tuesday afternoon. The conference continues today at the Hotel at Kirkwood Center.

About 95 were preregistered for the event, sponsored by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association International.

Mark Seckman, resigns from Priority One

Mark Seckman, president of Priority One, the economic development division of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, has resigned, effective Tuesday.

Seckman, who has lead Priority One for a decade, will pursue other opportunities, according to Barry Boyer, chairman of Priority One.

“We’re very pleased with the work that Mark has done over the last 18 years and we wish him the best as he moves forward,” Boyer said. “The executive committee of Priority One will move quickly to name a successor.”

Boyer, who declined further comment on the resignation, said the committee believes it has a viable successor to succeed Seckman. He said an announcement could be made within the next 30 days.

Boyer told the Corridor Business Journal that he doesn’t expect Seckman’s departure to have an impact on Priority One’s economic development efforts.

“We’ve got a good team. here, and we’ve already met as a team,” Boyer said. “The staff there is very professional and capable. They understand the priorities.”

Efforts to reach Seckman for comment were not immediately successful.

Seckman joined Priority One in 1992 as assistant vice president/project development. He was appointed president of the organization in 2000.

Friction developed in June between the Cedar Rapids City Council, Mayor Ron Corbett and Priority One when the economic development organization worked with the City of Hiawatha to land a new Go Daddy facility. Despite an 11th hour bid by Cedar Rapids to attract the jobs to downtown Cedar Rapids, Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons stayed with Hiawatha as the preferred site for the company’s local presence.

Over the last decade, Priority One has taken the lead on projects that created nearly 14,400 jobs, attracted 59 new companies, assisted  209 businesses with expansion and resulted in total capital investment of more than $2.1 billion.

Two projects that Priority One announced in recent years have been put on hold due to the sluggish national and international economy.

Hamlet Protein, a Danish manufacturer of soy protein supplements for animal feed, was originally scheduled to begin construction of a facility in southwest Cedar Rapids in April 2008 and take about nine months. It has been delayed for a variety of reasons, including currency fluctuations.

Alb-Gold Teigwaren and Bionade in 2007 signed a letter of intent with the Amana Society to build a 121,500-square-foot production facility on 65 acres near the corner of Highways 151 and 220. The plants were to produce organic egg-based pastas and the organically-fermented Bionade beverage, a new soft drink for the North American market.

The companies have pushed back construction of their plants in Amana until 2011 due to Bionade being acquired by a large German brewery and the costs of significant expansion in Europe.

updated with ages for Ferguson and Whitmore; current title for Musick, too

IOWA CITY – The man who has led ACT for more than two decades is retiring.

Richard “Dick” Ferguson, 69, spent his last day at the helm of the company on Tuesday.  He has been an employee of ACT since 1972.

The company produces the popular ACT college entrance examination that was taken by more than 1.5 million high school students during the past school year.  ACT also offers a host of other education and workforce development products.  The company employs about 1,500 people.

Ferguson said a major highlight during his years leading ACT was seeing the company evolve from one focused just on the high school to college transition to with a broader, international focus.

“We believe that the better that all young people are prepared for education and work the happier we will be both as a nation and as a world,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson believes the company’s efforts under his watch have made a difference.

“At the heart of everything we do there are individuals impacted by the decisions that we make, the manner that we go about the work we do,” he said.  “We are touching lives.”

Ferguson’s successor as CEO is former University of Iowa provost Jon Whitmore, 65, who has been currently serving as the president of San Jose State University in California.  Whitmore starts as ACT’s CEO on Wednesday.  Ferguson also served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors.  Whitmore will just serve as a board member.  Mark Musick is the new Chairman of the Board.  Musick is currently the :Lead Director on the ACT Board of Directors.

Sprint has introduced Common Cents Mobile, its pay-as-you-go cellular service, in Corridor Walmarts as part of an expansion to an additional 500 Walmart stores.

The 500-store expansion brings Sprint’s Common Cents service to Wal-Marts in Cedar Rapids, Coralville, Iowa City, among other Iowa cities. The services is offered at 1,250 Walmarts nationwide.

Common Cents competes on value, offering a rate of 7 cents per minute that is rounded down to the nearest minute after the first minute. The service also offers seven-cent messaging.

Sprint launched its prepaid Common Cents in May.

A Canadian company attempting a hostile takeover of Casey’s General Stores Inc. of Ankeny has extended its offer by one month.

The most recent $36.75-per-share bid of Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. of Laval, Quebec, expired at 5 p.m. eastern time on Monday, August 30. It will now expire at 5 p.m. eastern time on Sept. 30.

Couche-Tard did not raise its offering price for Casey’s shares.

Casey’s responded in a statement, saying the percentage of Casey’s shares held by the Canadian firm has actually been declining.

From 19.2 percent of Casey’s shares on July 12, the percentage of shares held by Couche-Tard declined to 12 perent on August 2 and 1.1 percent at the latest count, the Casey’s statement said.

Casey’s called Couche-Tard’s offer “inadequate” and “highly conditional.” It said Casey’s is already creating more value than the $36.75-per-share offer represents, and will deliver more value to shareholders as it executes its business and growth plans.

A Marion company broke ground Monday in Akron, Ohio, for a $20 million data storage facility.

Involta LLC, ranked No. 40 on the Inc 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately owned companies in the United States, said the 46,000-square-foot hardened data center will be twice the size of its Marion data center at 5055 REC Dr. off Highway 13.

The company said the Akron data center will be completed and fully operational in the final quarter of 2011. It will feature environmental systems and controls, redundant back-up power, specialized fire suppression, and reinforced concrete building construction.

The Akron facilitywill provide many advantages for local and national businesses including “the ability to share the high costs of housing and managing mission critical systems and the option of off-site data storage for disaster preparedness planning,” said Bruce Lehrman, Involta chief executive officer. “By co-locating, businesses can have the advantages of a data center while actually cutting costs.  Using this data center will allow business leaders to focus on their core businesses rather than complex infrastructure and facilities issues.”

Lehrman cited the assistance of Summit County (Ohio), the City of Akron and the Greater Akron Chamber for making the data center project possible.

Tad Davies, executive vice president of Bick Group of St. Louis, which is providing design-build services for the project, said the Involta data center should earn LEED certification for efficient use of energy, lighting, water and materials.

Lilja Mosesdottir, Icelandic Parliament

IOWA CITY – A member of Iceland’s Parliament says foreclosures brought on by sharp increases in mortgage interest rates following the collapse of its banking system will likely spawn more civil unrest in the Nordic nation of 320,000.

When the global economy crashed in 2008, Iceland’s banks were so deep in international debt that they failed and the country’s economy collapsed within a 10-day period.

Lilja Mosesdottir, who graduated from the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business in 1984 with an economics degree, said Monday that food lines are getting longer and the sections publishing legal notices of foreclosures are getting to be thicker than the rest of the daily newspaper.

“A lot of people are going to realize this fall that they don’t have a house anymore,” Mosesdottir said. “Angry people who have nothing to lose can do a lot of things. In January, we had civil unrest in Iceland for the first time when people wanted to throw out the government and stormed Parliament.

“If there are protests again, I feel they will be more violent. As a member of Parliament, I’ve been personally threatened. The people feel that the Iceland they knew is being taken away from them.”

In the days leading up to the banking crisis, Mosesdottir was a harsh critic of Iceland’s loose banking rules that allowed unfettered lending and high debt loads for banks. While the regulations allowed Iceland’s economy to reach new heights for a time, Mosesdottir argued that the banks were too deeply in debt to foreign lenders and would be vulnerable in a global economic slowdown.

Mosesdottir said lack of strict regulation enabled the owners of privately-owned Icelandic banks to rob them from inside through high leverages and Ponzi style schemes that left the economy with unsustainable private debt. She warned that turning to the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance would lead to sharply higher interest rates, which has occured.

“Iceland was forced to turn to the IMF when we had two weeks of food supply left in the country,” Mosesdottir said. “Inflation went to double digits within the first six months and in the two years since the crisis inflation has been at 30 percent.”

Mosesdottir said the IMF is implementing an economic plan for Iceland that involves monetary policy, fiscal policy and restructuring of the banking sector. The aim of the monetary policy is currency stabilization.

“We are paying a lot a high interest payments to investors outside the country, which is depressing consumption and investment,” she said. “I would have used the pension funds to finance the recovery and I would write down private debts by as much as 30 percent. If we were able to write down debt, people will have more money to spend.”

Mosesdottir said the banking crisis became very personal in November when she flew to Stockholm, Sweden, to speak at a conference.

“When I tried to use my VISA card, they would not accept it because all the banks’ assets had been frozen,” she said. “What was more embarrassing was having to ask my colleagues for a ride from the airport because I didn’t have the funds to pay for a taxi.”

Corn and soybean crops made rapid progress last week, according to the USDA’s weekly crop report.

The report said harvest could begin in a few weeks in some parts of the state, where corn is beginning to turn color and ears have dropped.

The past week was the longest span without rain in the entire growing season, the report said, although western Iowa received light showers.

The hot dry weather was a big boost to hay production. Cattle farmers used the dry weather to harvest silage.

The report found some instances of white mold in corn, and sudden death syndrome in soybeans.

The condition of the corn crop was rated 25 percent excellent, 44 percent good, 20 percent fair, 7 percent poor and 4 percent very poor.

The soybean crop was reported 24 percent excellent, 45 percent good, 21 percent fair, 7 percent poor and 3 percent very poor.

The report found 94 percent of the state’s corn crop had reached the dough stage and 77 percent had reached the dent stage. Only 8 percent of the corn was mature and safe from frost.