1. Wednesday, July 28, 2010 – Moberly/Randolph County;

2. Tuesday, August 3, 2010 – Macon/Macon County;

3. Wednesday, August 11, 2010 – Memphis/Scotland County;

4. Tuesday, September 14, 2010 – Louisiana/Pike County;

5. Wednesday, September 15, 2010 – Shelbina/Shelby County;

6. Thursday, September 16, 2010 – Monroe City/Monroe County;

7. Wednesday, September 29, 2010 – Eldon/Miller County.

All seven of the workshops will be free, with each beginning at 1:00 p.m. and ending at 4:30 p.m.

Presenters include the U. S. Small Business Administration, U S Department of Commerce, Missouri’s Small Business & Technology Center, the Missouri Procurement Technical Assistance Center, the Missouri Department of Economic Development’s Office of Trade and Investment, the SCORE Association and a number of local economic development authorities and chambers of commerce. Area commercial lenders willing to lend to expanding or start-up businesses will be invited to participate in each of these small business opportunity workshops.

Opportunities to be discussed include:

• SBA-guaranteed loans and revolving lines of credit;
• Export finance and international business opportunities;
• How to reduce risk when selling your product or service in foreign markets;
• Selling your product or service to the Government;
• The Historically Under-utilized Business Zone (HUBZone) certification program;
• The U S Department of Defense’s Central Contractor Registration;
• The U S Small Business Administration’s Dynamic Small Business Search engine;
• And much more.

To find out more about these events please call Bob Newman at 636-358-5941, or e-mail him at robert.newman@sba.gov. Please contact Bob if you would like SBA to schedule a similar small business opportunity workshop in your community.

Previews of the workshop topics are available at the following websites:

SBA - http://www.sba.gov/;

Export Finance & Opportunity - http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/internationaltrade/index.html;

Reducing Risk - http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_program_office/oit_sba_fast_facts.pdf;

Selling to the Government - http://www.sba.gov/hubzone/;

The CCR - https://www.bpn.gov/ccr/default.aspx;

SBA’s DSBS - http://dsbs.sba.gov/dsbs/search/dsp_dsbs.cfm.

It’s slow progress, but progress nonetheless. Governor Nixon applauds business investments in the towns of Houston and Cuba this week, adding 85 and 37 jobs in those towns, respectively. That adds on to announcements for hundreds of jobs in recent weeks.

“Over the last six weeks or so we’ve seen IBM come to central Missouri with 800 jobs, We’ve seen Mamtek come to Moberly with 400 jobs, we’ve seen Unisys come to St. Louis with 300 jobs, we’ve seen Jet Midwest come to Kansas City with 500 jobs, we’ve seen Expedia come to Springfield with 500 new jobs. Those were all very competitive choices, it wasn’t just, ‘we’re coming to Missouri’ at the beginning of that process. We had to go out and compete in that area,” Nixon said.

The state offered tax incentives in most of those cases. Nixon says he expects more jobs announcements announcement next week, as well. But the unemployment rate in the state is still at 9.2%.

“We have stayed below the national average on unemployment for the last six months. We’ve had a net job gain and continued to, I think, invest correctly. We all would like to see the economy come back much more quickly. But when you compare Missouri to other states, we’ve been able to do all this and keep our stellar triple-A credit rating because we’ve been fiscally prudent with the dollars folks give us,” Nixon said.

Nixon points out that the triple-A bond rating allows the state to get much lower interest loans, for instance a recent bond issue got a rate of 2.28%. He says we’re the only state in the Midwest with that rating from all three credit agencies. He says this helps as the state continues to compete to try to bring in new jobs, or at least keep the ones it has.

“I think they’re solid signs, I really do. Are we there yet, to where we want to be? No. Do we have challenges? Yes. Are we going to need to continue to invest our resources sharply and use our economic development tools crisply? Yes,” Nixon said.

Click here to see the original article.

Tom Howard, right, general manager of Callaway Electric Cooperative, which owns the Callaway Energy Centre, a 79-acre industrial site in Fulton, receives a plaque Tuesday at the site from David Kerr, director of the Missouri Department of Economic Development, indicating the industrial site is one of only five Missouri Certified Sites in the state. At far left is Fulton Mayor Charles Latham with Bruce Hackmann, director of the Fulton Area Development Corporation. (Don Norfleet/FULTON SUN photo)

By: Don Norfleet, The Fulton Sun

Now it’s official. Fulton’s Callaway Energy Centre is one of only five elite state-certified industrial sites in Missouri.

David Kerr, director of the Missouri Department of Economic Development, presented a plaque Tuesday morning to Tom Howard, general manager of Callaway Electric Cooperative, the owner of the industrial site.

The industrial site is located around Callaway Electric’s new headquarters building along U.S. 54 just north of Missouri H.

Kerr said the certification will be a major plus for the city in attracting new industries to the city.

The presentation by Kerr was made under a tent at the site with about 75 community leaders, state and local officials and Kingdom of Callaway Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors.

During the event, Fulton Mayor Charles Latham lauded Bruce Hackmann and his staff at the Fulton Area Development Corporation (FRDC). The FRDC staff prepared much of the five-inch-thick application for the Missouri Certified Site designation.

Hackmann served as master of ceremonies at the event.

Howard noted that Callaway Electric will celebrate its 75th year next year. “If we want to be around another 75 years, we will have to grow our community and this is one of our investments to do that,” Howard said.

Howard said development of the site has the potential of providing jobs and economic opportunities for children now attending school in Fulton and Callaway County.

Howard said Callaway Electric’s growth created a need to build a new headquarters. The cooperative bought a large site along U.S. 54 and decided to create an industrial park with the excess space.

“This is a big day for Fulton and it’s also a big day for Missouri,” Kerr said. “The prime location of this site along U.S. 54 and Route H provides everything needed to recruit industry to this site.”

Chris Chung, chief executive officer of The Missouri Partnership, said the Dollar General Distribution Center in Fulton and the new IBM expansion announced recently in Columbia did not happen because of good luck by local agencies. He said it came only after much work by local officials seeking the industries. The Missouri Partnership was created in 2007 as a nonprofit economic development organization to promote Missouri industry.

Chung said Fulton should be proud that it is creating its own good fortune by developing a Missouri Certified Site. He said the site will be promoted not only by Fulton officials but also by many other state agencies.

Firms considering relocating or expanding typically ask many similar questions about a proposed industrial site.

Through experience in dealing with many prospective developers, the Department of Economic Development and other participating agencies have identified many of those questions and needs. The Certified Site program attempts to have many of the answers ready when a developer asks about a site.

For this reason, the Missouri Department of Economic Development helped create the Certified Sites program.

So far only five sites have been certified through the program. Fulton’s Callaway Energy Centre became one of the state’s elite sites on Tuesday. The others are in Columbia, Kansas City, Kearney and Springfield

The comprehensive review of a proposed site includes a long list of items, including availability of utilities, site access, environmental concerns, land use conformance, and potential site development costs.

Having a site certified reduces the risk associated with development of particular sites by providing up front and consistent information.

Since this information has been reviewed by the state’s technical review team for completeness, the potential buyer will achieve an increased level of detailed information to aid his decision-making.

Missouri requires a certified site to be at least 10 acres or more in size and controlled by one entity.

The site is not intended for retail businesses and contains a minimum water, sewer and electric infrastructure.

The certified site program is a cooperative effort of AmerenUE, KCP&L, Missouri Electric Cooperatives, Missouri Economic Development Council, the Missouri Department of Economic Development, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and individual economic developers.

Click here to see original article.

BlueBird Media will use its grant of $45,145,250 from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to construct an ultra-high capacity middle-mile network that will make broadband affordable and accessible to approximately 600,000 households and 57,000 businesses.

United Electric Cooperative received a grant of $14,849,173 and a loan of $6,363,933 (for a total project cost of $21,213,106) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to build a last-mile network to bring broadband to more than 4,200 households and businesses in six counties in northwest Missouri.

BlueBird Media Project

BlueBird Media’s Northern Missouri Ultra-High Capacity Middle Mile project , a public-private partnership among local service providers and regional cooperatives, the state of Missouri, and national equipment vendors, proposes to bring high-speed Internet access to a largely underserved and/or economically distressed 59-county region in the northern part of the state.

The project plans to enable health care institutions to initiate regional health information exchanges and foster telehealth adoption, along with advanced medical imaging and medical collaboration in rural areas. The project would also utilize telehealth to allow regional correctional facilities to limit costly inmate transport and reduce security risks. The project’s network also plans to enable significant online testing for students, distance education, and other e-learning technologies.

The Northern Missouri Ultra-High Capacity Middle Mile project also proposes to:

• Connect as many as 350 community anchor institutions with speeds between 50 Mbps and 10 Gbps, including 213 K-12 public school buildings, 60 public safety entities, 10 community colleges, 30 healthcare facilities, and 28 government facilities.

• Facilitate more affordable and accessible broadband service for approximately 600,000 households and 57,000 businesses by enabling local Internet service providers to utilize the project’s open network.

• Construct 809 miles of new fiber and 44 new microwave towers across the region.

• Provide middle mile service to partner Socket Telecom, which recently won a $23.7M broadband award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deploy fiber-to-the-home in Callaway county and Fulton, Missouri.

The image below demonstrates the vast area of Missouri that will be served by this project.

This image shows some of the network elements and capacity that will be connected by this project.

United Electric Cooperative project

United Electric Cooperative has been approved through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to build an advanced FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) network capable of delivering high-speed broadband service up to 100 Mbps. United will also add additional fiber strands to create a dedicated 1 gigabit education network, providing our rural school systems and libraries an exponential increase in broadband access. This education intranet, named the Cooperative Network for Rural Education Advancement (CnREA) will open the door to advanced education options through the use of video delivery and shared resources.

The system will be an open network model with competing internet, video and voice providers offering advanced broadband applications directly to 4224 households and 58 businesses in rural, underserved portions of Andrew, Buchanan, Clinton, Dekalb, Gentry and Nodaway counties in Northwest Missouri. Furthermore, the United fiber network will provide the opportunity for up to 150 critical community anchor institutions, including 21 rural communities, 33 school facilities, 38 health facilities, 31 public safety entities, 5 libraries and 3 prisons to connect. The network spans 1370 miles at a cost of $21.8 million, and United Electric Cooperative seeks a 70% grant, 30% RUS loan for the project.

Through partner Pulse Broadband, United Electric will build a passive optical fiber-to-the-home network on existing electric distribution right-of-way, with planned drops to every home in the network coverage area. Pulse Broadband’s patented, RUS-approved FTTH design is significantly less costly to build and to maintain than similar fiber networks, reducing the cost per premise passed to $4919.  United will utilize existing right-of-ways to eliminate adverse environmental impact.

Services offered over the network will include triple-play bundle options from multiple Internet, video and voice providers as well as home security, video surveillance, distance learning, tele-medicine, and other future end-user applications. Residential service levels will start at $29.99 for internet service and approximately $120 for triple-play video, voice, and data packages, while commercial rates will start at $69.99. The network will also connect critical community anchor institutions and small disadvantaged businesses offering discounted rate packages to these entities at least 25% lower than the proposed base commercial rate packages for a minimum of three years.

This image shows the area that will be serviced through this project.

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IBM plans to open a new technology service delivery center in Columbia, Mo., that will create up to 800 jobs for technical professionals, the company said Monday.

The company said it will begin hiring for the new center this summer, and the facility will be operational this fall and fully staffed by the end of 2012. IBM’s technology service delivery centers provide information technology (IT) services and business process outsourcing services to IBM clients.

IBM has signed a 10-year lease, with optional extension years, for a building at 2810 LeMone Industrial Blvd. that it plans to renovate for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The company said it worked with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid, the Missouri Department of Economic Development, the Missouri Partnership and Regional Economic Development Inc. on the project.

The state awarded $8.6 million in Missouri BUILD and $14.7 million in Quality Jobs Program incentives. Missouri’s incentive package also includes $4.5 million in training funds and $412,500 in Employee Recruitment and Referral Savings funds.

The new center will be the third IBM has opened in the U.S. in the last year and a half, joining North American service delivery facilities opened recently in Dubuque, Iowa, and Lansing, Mich. IBM has a network of service delivery centers in more than 20 countries, many hosting multiple sites.

“IBM’s decision to locate its new facility, and create 800 professional IT jobs, here in Missouri is a strong sign that we’re heading in the right direction,” Nixon said in a statement. “For generations, IBM has been a trailblazer in the development and implementation of technology and software solutions, and it is exactly the type of company we want to attract and grow here in the Show-Me State.”

Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid said in a statement that the “enormous” economic benefit from IBM’s investment there “will increase the quality of life for all Columbians for decades.”

Tim Shaughnessy, senior vice president of service delivery for IBM Global Technology Services, said in a statement, “We selected Columbia for our newest facility based on several criteria, including the strong public-private partnership with the state and city, a competitive business model and the talent and skills that Missouri and the Midwest have to offer.”

IBM’s new service delivery center will primarily support the company’s U.S. outsourcing clients. The center will provide server systems operations, security services and end-user services, including maintenance and systems monitoring. Employees will manage the servers and storage systems.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM (NYSE: IBM) said it will work with Columbia-area educational institutions on recruitment and training of potential employees as well as hiring experienced workers. The company said it also wants to partner with the schools to enhance their IT curricula.

For more information about jobs at IBM, go here.

(Columbia, MO) Delta Air Lines upgraded to jet service for one flight out of Columbia in February and has already announced another round of upgrades for the Airport. Beginning April 6, Delta will switch all aircraft at Columbia Regional Airport (COU) from 34-seat Saab 340’s to 50-seat regional jets.

“We are pleased that Delta recognized the need for additional capacity in our market and filled that need with larger aircraft” says Kathy Frerking, Manager of the Columbia Regional Airport.

Delta Air Lines has consistently reported higher than expected load factors since August 2008 when they began service in Columbia. Load factors, meaning the percentage of seats filled on all flights leaving COU, have been averaging above 70% each month. In February 2010, Delta changed one of the three round-trip flights from a Saab 340 to a regional jet. Many of those flights have already been filled above the Saab 340’s capacity.

Don Laird, President of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce, said, “We are excited about the new service to our community. The entire region has benefited by having the Delta service to Columbia Regional Airport. The increased capacity of the new jets and efficiency of operation to Memphis gives us a great connection to the entire US.”

The Great Barrington, Mass.-based American Institute for Economic Research has ranked Columbia the No. 9 college town in the nation.

In its 2009-2010 College Destinations Index, the institute identifies the 75 best places in America to attend college. The institute organizes the nation’s metropolitan statistical areas into four population categories: major metros (2.5 million or more), mid-size metros (1 to 2.5 million), small cities (250,000 to 1 million) and college towns (under 250,000).

Columbia was named No. 9 in the college town category, behind Bloomington, Ind., and ahead of College Station, Texas.

In a news release announcing the index, the institute said the criteria included academic environment, quality of life and professional opportunities. From the news release:

 Choosing the right college or university should involve more than just cost, academics and sports programs. The institution’s location also should be an important part of the equation, says the (AIER), because just like the colleges themselves, the towns and cities in which they are located vary widely in the opportunities they offer students and recent graduates.
 “The College Destinations Index isn’t just for students and their parents,” says Keming Liang, CDI Lead Researcher and AIER Research Associate. “College administrators can use it to promote their schools, civic planners to tout the desirability of their community, and business leaders to plan their next move. Indeed, the amenities that create great college communities also make these destinations great places to visit, live and even retire.”

 A PDF copy of the report can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/JNV7q.

September, 2009:  CNBC recently announced America’s Top States for Business in 2009, ranking Missouri 4th in cost of business and 5th in cost of living. In addition, the state ranks 6th in transportation based on the value of goods shipped by air, land and water. Missouri’s overall ranking climbed from 24th in 2008 to 14th in 2009.  Another study recently released by Pollina Corporate Real Estate ranked Missouri 12th for its pro-business climate, up from 16th in 2008.
 
CNBC ranks states based on their standings in ten economic development categories, with the cost of doing business as the top selling point.  Pollina’s study evaluates states on 33 factors including taxes, human resources, energy costs, infrastructure spending, workers compensation laws, economic incentive programs and state economic development efforts. Pollina is a full service brokerage and consulting firm representing corporations on a national and international level.
 
“We are proud to not only be moving up in the business climate rankings, but to be doing so in this challenging economic environment,” said Governor Jay Nixon. “With our many business-friendly qualities and skilled workforce, Missouri offers the best location for companies from all over the world.”

Curtis Creagh, LU Vice President, Administration and Finance; Dr. Carolyn R. Mahoney, LU President; Steve Marble, Scholastic Vice President, Customer Service; and Ron Williams, LU Vice President, Employee Services. Photo Courtesy of Seth Garcia.

Sept. 4, 2009:  This fall, Scholastic Inc., the global children’s publishing, education and media company, will open a studentstaffed, seasonal call center at Lincoln University. The temporary center, which will handle orders for Scholastic Book Clubs during this peak demand period, will be Scholastic’s first call center located on a college campus, and will continue to build on the company’s longstanding commitment to Jefferson City.

 “This venture will further our investment in the Jefferson City community through a creative working environment that supports education and the development of professional skills,” said Steve Marble, Vice President of Customer Service, Scholastic, who has worked with Ron Williams, Vice President of Scholastic Employee Services in Jefferson City, in developing the project. 

This partnership with Lincoln will provide job opportunities to a dozen students during a challenging job market. To ensure that students receive quality training, mentoring and professional development skills, Scholastic has assigned one seasonal supervisor to work with the Lincoln University student employees. With its close proximity to classrooms and residence halls, the center will allow students to travel safely and easily to and from the site, and it will offer flexible hours to accommodate students’ schedules. 

“I am pleased to partner with Scholastic to provide this unique employment opportunity to our students,” said Dr. Carolyn R. Mahoney, President of Lincoln University. “In today’s economy, many students must work while pursuing their education. Establishing this call center on campus will give students more flexibility and convenience in balancing their academic and work schedules.” 

Over the years, Scholastic has developed a rich tradition in Jefferson City of supporting literacy initiatives and education focused events in the community. Scholastic has also sponsored numerous student awards programs and worked with Lincoln University to establish the Children’s Center within the university’s Page Library. 

“I have visited the Lincoln University campus many times and have a great respect for the talent and professionalism of the university staff and student body,” said Mr. Marble. “Scholastic is truly proud to be a part of the Lincoln University campus.”

To support the giving theme this year, the committee plans to support the Central Missouri Food Bank in several ways. Architects Alliance will be building a “can-struction” display on site with cans donated by Hy-Vee. They will put their expertise to work and who knows what they will create…. they may go bananas! Plus, exhibitors will also have the opportunity to join in the fun while making a donation to the food bank by creating a canstruction of their own in the exhibitor competition. And finally, $1 of the $3 admission will be donated to the Central Missouri Food Bank. “We are really excited about the giving theme. We all know Jefferson City is a great place to live and do business. And in these time tight economic times, it’s nice to give back when you can,” said Expo co-chair Lance Stegeman, Hawthorn Bank. 

For more information Susan Albert at susanalbert@jcchamber.org.