At a public meeting Thursday night UW-Madisons Police Chief Susan Riseling and others criticized plans to replace Madisons Stadium Bar with an eight-story building with apartments and commercial space.
Two Madison labor groups released a new kind of dining guide Tuesday that rates 139 central Madison restaurants on how they treat workers. The guide awards up to seven stars based on factors such as starting wages, health insurance coverage and sick pay. Food quality doesn?t play a role. The big winners: Ian?s Pizza, Ancora Coffee, the Dayton Street Grille, the Plaza Tavern, all of the Food Fight restaurants and the numerous public dining establishments operated by UW-Madison.
Madison craft brewer Ale Asylum has more than doubled its staff this year and online apparel retailer Shopbop has added 50 employees, mostly in Madison. But they are the exception to the rule. More Dane County businesses say they expect to show a profit for 2012 and their sales are higher than last year?s. But most have not added workers. Those results are part of the 2012 First Business Economic Survey being released Wednesday. “I?d call this a positive report,” said Scott Converse, director, project management for the UW-Madison School of Business.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of the Climate Action 350 and Madison residents joined in a protest Monday presenting the UW Foundation with more than 1,200 petition signatures requesting the foundation end its investment in fossil fuels to help decrease the threat of climate change. Climate Action 350-UW is a student group that works to reduce climate change resulting from the unsafe amount of carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere, according to UW-Madison junior Emmy Burns.
Palermo?s Pizza reached a settlement agreement Friday with the National Labor Relations Board acknowledging it committed labor law violations, following allegations of labor practice violations from employees. The agreement came after workers from Palermo?s factories went on strike, accusing the pizza company of unlawfully firing workers for their attempts to unionize, as well as over immigrant audit threats.
Going to the Rose Bowl: once-in-a-lifetime or not again? It?s a question facing many Wisconsin Badger fans, who so far have appeared a bit tepid in booking tickets to Pasadena, Calif., for this year?s edition of the New Year?s Day game. “I don?t want to say the frost is off the pumpkin but this is the third year they?ve gone,” said Michael Lee, owner of Concorde Travel. His company, which again is selling all-inclusive trips for about $2,300 a person, had received about 40 calls about booking trips by Monday afternoon, he said.
MADISON, Wis.- Madison city alder Scott Resnick, representing District 8, said there is a committee looking into the need for high-rise student housing around the city and the impact of those residences on surrounding neighborhoods. As discussions continue about potential redevelopment of the Stadium Bar property on Monroe Street, Resnick said the city continues to look at housing markets and how many student apartments may be too many around town. Resnick adds that students are often looking to be close to campus no matter the cost.
Downtown Madison?s rental housing boom is continuing with a $40 million-plus, 12-story project being proposed for a third of a city block near State Street. Developer David Schutz is seeking to demolish three existing apartment buildings to construct a project with 320 to 340 apartments and 215 underground parking spaces catering to students and young professionals on the 400 blocks of West Dayton and West Johnson streets and the 200 block of North Broom Street.
The Search and Screen Committee for the next University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor met with Madison community members earlier this week to further its outreach efforts to university constituencies, according to the committee?s chair David McDonald. McDonald said the committee met Wednesday with the greater Madison city and business community because the university relies heavily on its support and partnership.
The Milwaukee Common Council voted Wednesday to support University of Wisconsin-Madison activist groups in urging Chancellor David Ward to terminate the university?s contract with adidas.
Madison is home to tons of history and sentimental hotspots. We have the big ones such as the Capitol, Memorial Union, Bascom Hill and many others. However, it?s the smaller, more unnoticed areas that are under attack. Real estate developers have made plans to destroy the Stadium Bar on Monroe Street and put a six-story apartment complex in its place. The Minneapolis-based OPUS Group plans to create a complex with retail space on the first floor and five floors of apartments. This brings the entire building to a total of 100 units and 150 bedrooms with 40 underground parking spaces.While it is extremely important that every student finds a place to live while attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this continual construction of more and more apartment complexes is getting out of control.
The University of Washington and Rutgers University announced plans Tuesday to cut ties with adidas following allegations of labor violations from a factory contracted by the apparel company, a move some members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison have encouraged Interim Chancellor David Ward to pursue. The issue began January 2011 when a factory contracted by adidas suddenly shut down without compensating over 2,700 workers. Since then, other colleges and universities, including Cornell and Oberlin, have cut ties with the company for violating contracts with the schools to ensure all workers are paid.
America needs more workers with expertise in science and math. America needs more entrepreneurs with innovative ideas to start businesses and create jobs here. And that?s why America needs Congress to pass the bipartisan Startup Act 2.0 bill ? with or without a larger package of immigration reforms. The proposal would provide more visas to foreign students who graduate from American universities with advanced degrees in science, math, technology and engineering.
One of Madison?s most storied Camp Randall-area watering holes is facing the wrecking ball. Plans are in the works to demolish the Stadium Bar at 1419 Monroe St. and replace it with a six-story mixed-used student apartment complex. The tavern operated for decades as Jingles Stadium Bar before being sold by owner Bill ?Jingles? O?Brien in 1999 for $200,000. O?Brien died in 2010 at age 86. A public meeting on the proposed project is scheduled for Thursday at 6 p.m. at Union South.
I am not a Black Friday kind of person. Nor do I see myself partaking of any of the increasingly popular shopping opportunities on Thanksgiving Day ? which I am christening Bloated Thursday, as much as for the swelling of the lines at the mall as for the gas and indigestion I imagine one experiences during a sale-crazed shopping spree immediately following a meal big enough to feed a small African village.
“For families with healthy emotional connections and constructive, mature communication, any opportunity to engage in a joint activity such as shopping will generally be experienced as pleasurable, even when stressful,” said Darald Hanusa, a senior lecturer in social work at UW-Madison. But he emphasized it’s not the shopping that makes for happy families; it’s the happy families that make for pleasant shopping.
Q: How will the Chamber become policy proactive?
A: After one year on the City Council, in 2004, Mark Bugher (then chairman of the city’s economic development commission) and I initiated a report on how to make Madison more business-friendly. I think we’re at that point again….Madison is an under-performing city, based on its potential. It’s about the right leaders, the right vision. There’s a significant overhaul in our leadership system now, with a new school superintendent, UW-Madison chancellor, U.S. senator and U.S. representative coming in and a new leader of Thrive (the eight-county regional economic development organization). People are not entrenched; they will be willing to think differently.
….The Wall Street Journal this past week called the SWIB purchase the most expensive college campus housing purchase on record. It also referenced the American Campus Communities Inc.?s $165 million purchase of an Austin, Texas, student housing property known as ?The Block.? The presence of UW-Madison has led to similar ? though not as large ? high-end complexes for millennial college students here, like Grand Central and Lucky Apartments. Vicki Hearing, spokeswoman for the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, says the pension fund purchased the dormitory in large part because of its value as a rental property.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. ?Bud? Selig will give the keynote address for Ethics Week to Wisconsin School of Business students and faculty Tuesday, focusing on ethics and professionalism in the business world. The 1956 UW-Madison alumnus has served as the MLB Commissioner since 1988 and will discuss his efforts to build ethical principles within the Milwaukee Brewers organization and MLB?s headquarters.
A regional labor relations board?s decision that Palermo?s did not violate workers? rights in firing a group of employees will likely not change student labor activists? approach to the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s ties with the pizza company, one activist said Sunday.
Madison officials mourned the loss of booming Epic Systems to Verona in the mid-2000s, but the medical software colossus is having a huge, unexpected impact on its original hometown. Smart, young Epic employees with cash in their pockets and an affinity for Madison?s culture, restaurants and nightlife are fueling demand for rental apartments in the Downtown area. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of visitors to the Epic campus are booking Madison-area hotel rooms, boosting city room tax revenues in a tough economy.
The anti-Black Friday shoppers didn?t have to line up in the cold outside of Best Buy or Toys R Us with their sprinting shoes on. They weren?t looking for the best deals on electronics or toys made in China. Dedicated to buying homemade gifts made locally, these shoppers simply moseyed through the UW Arboretum?s Visitor Center on Sunday looking over the mostly handmade arts, crafts and edibles sold by 41 vendors during the ?Close to Home: Arboretum Local Products Fair.?
Dick Leazer, one of the state?s first angel investors, has been named as the first inductee to the newly created Wisconsin Investor Hall of Fame.
Before starting the angel group, Leazer was managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the technology transfer arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Under Leazer, WARF for the first time took stock in a company instead of an upfront fee. The company, Third Wave Technologies Inc., later went public and became an example for other Wisconsin high-tech start-ups.
Pre-proposals are now being solicited for a university endowment competition that aims to share knowledge that benefits the community and the state of Wisconsin.
UW is now invested in climate change. Our professors? well-deserved pensions are paid partially from the revenues of the fossil fuel industry. Accordingly, any positive activism we do surrounding climate change, sustainability or environmentalism must be accompanied by a crucial push for divestment or else we?re simply betting against ourselves. We just opened an Office of Sustainability. We have a wide variety of departments, classes and programs which highlight the dangers and moral hazards of climate change. As an institution, we must put our money where our mouth is.
….Of course, we?ll continue to fight the most egregious projects, from the Keystone XL pipeline to drilling in the Arctic, and we?ll continue to hope that the administration will take more than half-hearted moves to keep carbon in the ground. But we?re not counting on our politicians anymore. After 20 years of general inaction on climate change, while the world?s emissions and the planet?s temperature have continued to soar, it?s time to engage the real power: a reckless fossil fuel industry that has known for years the damage they?re doing. Until they cease exploring for new hydrocarbons and begin the rapid conversion to energy companies installing renewable energy on a vast scale, they don?t deserve the social license our silence grants them.
One of the liveliest events at the Early Stage Symposium in Madison is traditionally the Elevator Pitch Olympics. It?s a chance for entrepreneurs to talk up their young companies to a panel of seasoned investors, squeezing the high points into a 90-second presentation, the time of a theoretical elevator ride. Novo was founded in August by brothers Scott and Matt Johanek, of Shawano. Scott lives in Madison and teaches prototype design at the UW-Madison; Matt lives in the San Francisco area. Novo features customized luggage and other bags.
After a years-long fight to renovate the historic Edgewater hotel that saw countless revisions, legal challenges that reached the state?s highest court and city meetings that stretched well past midnight, there was a prevailing attitude at the project?s ceremonial groundbreaking Thursday morning: This was a long time coming. “We shouldn’t waste any time getting this project started,” project developer Robert Dunn said to open a program inside one of the hotel’s ballrooms. “Someone might change their mind.”
University of Wisconsin Interim Chancellor David Ward issued a statement regarding the ongoing labor disagreement over the university?s ties with Palermo?s Pizza, saying UW does not currently have any plans to take action.
Interim Chancellor David Ward released a statement Wednesday stating the University of Wisconsin-Madison will review its contracts with Palermo?s Pizza following a request by a university committee to cut ties with the pizza company….In the statement, Ward said he will review the committee?s request to cut ties, but the university currently has no plans to take action. Ward said while certain parties within the university, including the athletic department and the Wisconsin Union, have sponsorship agreements with Palermo?s, UW-Madison as an institution is not ?a party to this dispute.?
In each of the last two Novembers, area grain operations piled towering mountains of corn on their lots ? lasting images of the two best corn yields on record. Those lots are empty this fall, symbols of a drought-ravaged growing season that has led the National Agricultural Statistics Service to predict that Wisconsin?s corn yield will be the lowest in 16 years and 20 percent lower than last year.
Quoted: UW-Madison agricultural economics professor Bruce Jones
The muscle of Bucky Badger could possibly get behind striking workers at Palermo?s Pizza. The University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Labor Licensing Policy Committee is recommending that the university move toward terminating contracts valued at more than $200,000 annually with the Milwaukee frozen pizza maker, whose products are sold at Camp Randall and the Kohl Center. The contracts also allow for the use of the Bucky Badger logo on Palermo?s pizzas sold in grocery stores.
Growth in the U.S. gross domestic product has slowed from 2010 to 2011, according to an industry analysis conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
A University of Wisconsin committee is in the process of re-evaluating the university?s contract with Palermo Pizza as investigations of Milwaukee food company?s alleged labor violations continue.
The Joint Southeast Campus Area Committee met Monday night to consider future projects on campus and updates on existing projects.
Spectrum Brands, Madison, said Monday it has paid $50 million cash to buy a majority 56 percent interest in Shaser Bioscience, a privately owned Boston company developing “energy-based, aesthetic dermatological technology for home use devices.”
Thomas O’Guinn, professor of marketing at the UW-Madison School of Business, questioned the diversity that will be added to Spectrum Brands’ already broad list of products. But he said the acquisition represents a growing market. “This is getting into a space that is almost medical device, but not exactly. That is not where I expected Spectrum to go,” O’Guinn said.
In business for 76 years, Kramer Printing was opened by Mildred Gill Kramer, one of the first women to graduate from the UW-Madison Business School, on July 7, 1936, in the Gay Building on Capitol Square. Now owned by Todd and Liz Tiefenthaler, Kramer Printing has expanded over the years. The couple met at UW-Madison in 1970 and married just before their senior year.
The muscle of Bucky Badger could possibly get behind striking workers at Palermo?s Pizza. The University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Labor Licensing Policy Committee is recommending that the university move toward terminating contracts valued at more than $200,000 annually with the Milwaukee frozen pizza maker, whose products are sold at Camp Randall and the Kohl Center. The contracts also allow for the use of the Bucky Badger logo on Palermo?s pizzas sold in grocery stores.
Putting things together in original ways is what Good Style Shop is about. The vintage clothing store is run by the same people who fill its racks with one-of-a-kind fashions from decades past ? so it?s easy to get advice about what shoes might work best, say, with that cocktail dress from the 1950s, or how to care for that leather jacket made circa 1974.
Madison?s Urban Design Commission met Wednesday night to review plans for three new student-oriented apartment buildings located on campus.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison labor licensing committee plans to send a letter to Chancellor David Ward early next week urging him to give Palermo?s Pizza, a sponsor of UW-Madison athletics, a 30-day ultimatum to meet the requests of the company?s striking workers, which include union recognition and priority rehiring.
Isomark, a Wisconsin, Madison-based medical device company, was founded back in 2005 with a goal to commercialize a technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that could detect blood infections early.
Downtown residents and community members met at a neighborhood meeting Thursday to discuss two proposed student-oriented apartment buildings on North Bassett Street and North Frances Street. Developer Scott Faust has proposed demolishing two existing houses at 313 and 315 N. Frances St. to make way for a 12-story student-oriented apartment complex. The building would include 42 apartments, 91 underground bike stalls and commercial space on the first floor for either a restaurant, bank or retail business.
I know it?s common for major corporations and major universities to hire outside search firms to help them find top leaders. But corporations aren?t spending millions in tax dollars. And am I wrong to wonder why a tax-supported organization such as UW-Madison ? which has its own human resources department and thousands of learned people of sound judgment ? can?t find its own boss? UW-Madison history professor and search committee chairman David McDonald emphasized that “this is a really important position,” and the search firm, Storbeck/Pimentel and Associates, has expertise and connections “that none of us on the committee really has.”He also said hiring search firms to identify chancellor candidates is standard practice in the UW System.
Madison?s City Council unanimously approved plans to build two apartment buildings near the University of Wisconsin campus on West Johnson Street and Main Street at a meeting Tuesday night.
UW-Madison will pay a search firm about $167,000 plus additional expenses to help the university identify and recruit candidates to be its next chancellor, according to a contract obtained by the State Journal. The company, Storbeck/Pimentel and Associates, is a household name in recruiting top university executives nationally and touted its record in placing non-traditional candidates in top jobs.
The University of Wisconsin School of Business hosted their annual awards ceremony, a celebration to honor the achievements of distinguished alumni on Friday.
UW-Madison animal science professor Mark Cook, who is an expert on lipids, said he thinks the fat levels in cottonseed oil are healthy and give it a unique cooking property that sets it apart from popular cooking oils like corn and canola. “It has superior cooking qualities,” Cook said.
The UW School of Business will recognize some of its most accomplished alumni Friday night at its annual gala and awards ceremony at Grainger Hall.
Hyrax Energy has reached a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to move ahead with technology aimed at reducing the cost of processing waste agricultural products to turn them into biofuel or chemicals.
Burned popcorn in a popular bar at the UW-Madison Memorial Union brought firefighters to the facility for the second time in two weeks, authorities reported. The fire in the Rathskeller was reported at 2:47 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release from Madison Fire Department spokeswoman Lori Wirth. Staff of the Rathskeller met firefighters in the hallway and led them to the bar, where the popcorn cooker had been on fire before being extinguished by the bar?s general manager.
The ?beauty? of overhead power lines has always been in the eye of the beholder. Many can overlook their ugliness as a necessary evil if cities and businesses are to develop and expand. Retired UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, a renowned research engineer, would joke that while others might see a transmission tower as a blight on the landscape, an engineer sees them as a work of art. They are, after all, what brings the power to make things go. Obviously, employees at the UW Arboretum don?t see them as art.
In the midst of the controversy surrounding the Palermo?s Pizza workers? strike, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Teaching Assistants? Association and the Student Labor Action Coalition released a joint resolution calling for the university to cut all ties with Palermo?s.The issue began when workers at Palermo?s were fired from a Milwaukee factory after attempting to unionize. Workers also condemned poor working conditions and Palermo?s lack of effort to correct them.
UW-Madison administration is aware of the current dispute between the pizza company and its workers and will continue to monitor the situation, Vice Chancellor for University Relations Vince Sweeney said in an email. ?It appears to be a difficult and complicated issue and we are hopeful that the parties can reach a resolution in the immediate future,? Sweeney said.
American Transmission Co. has lowered the height of four power poles along the Beltline so they don?t ruin the pastoral view inside the UW Arboretum. In the quiet of the Arboretum, where wild turkeys wander and bicyclists meander, there?s little sense of the hubbub of the city ? or the busy Beltline Highway ? just beyond.
Quoted: Donna Paulnock, the Arboretum’s interim director and associate dean for biological sciences in the UW Graduate School.
A recent report showed Wisconsin is experiencing a severe shortfall of skilled laborers in the workforce, something that could be harmful to the state?s growth.
University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Labor Licensing Policy Committee expressed concern Wednesday after adidas announced its plan to host a summit abroad to address the issue of companies? failure to pay severance in the global garment industry. Over the past year, LLPC has urged Chancellor Ward to cut licensing and sponsorship ties with adidas, the university?s primary licensing partner, after the company failed to pay more than 2,700 Indonesian workers due severance pay after a PT Kizone factory contracted by adidas abruptly shut down in January 2011.
The University of Wisconsin System is taking aim at working in conjunction with local businesses in an effort to provide opportunities to students and faculty to promote economic development.
Until recently, a diverse constellation of industries ? farming, manufacturing, mining and tourism ? sustained these communities. But in many of them today, the population is aging, fewer babies are born, and fewer workers are left to support those left behind.
“When we think about the needs of the community and the tax base that?s required to support a community and all of its services, this is where it really starts to matter, not only for the current well-being of the community but for the future well-being for the community,” said Katherine Curtis, a UW-Madison assistant professor of community and environmental sociology.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was in Madison for the World Dairy Expo last week when he raised the specter of $6-a-gallon milk should Congress fail to renew the federal farm bill.
….After all, America hasn’t “got milk” in quite a while, as milk consumption has been dropping since at least 1975, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Brian Gould, an agriculture economist at UW-Madison, says a variety of factors are to blame for the change, including the advent of bottled water and other beverages, an aging population that drinks less milk, and changes in taste and preference. “It’s a structural problem,” he said. “It’s something that’s not short-term.”
Recently, at a unique fund-raising dinner for the Foundation Fighting Blindness and retinal research on the UW-Madison campus, I had the strange experience of eating a meal in the dark. It was an event designed to plunge participants into a sightless world. To say the least, the dinner was effective.
A Madison developer is proposing two large apartment buildings near the Kohl Center and UW-Madison, continuing a surge of residential construction in the Downtown area. Scott Faust is proposing to demolish two smaller residential buildings to build a 12-story tower at 313-315 N. Francis St. and to demolish four more residential buildings for a five-story apartment building at 202-222 N. Bassett and 510-520 W. Dayton streets. Both projects are targeted mainly to students but also would welcome young professionals.
