Category: Business/Technology

In another blow to the beleaguered owners of the Hilldale Shopping Center, the UW Foundation, which built and developed Hilldale, on Thursday sued a group that bought the Foundation?s stock in the shopping center for allegedly failing to make interest payments on two promissory notes.

Despite concerns that the city doesn?t need more liquor outlets, especially at pharmacies, the City Council on Tuesday approved liquor licenses to let Walgreen Drug Stores sell beer and wine at three stores in Madison. The approvals continue Walgreens? national push to reintroduce beer and wine sales to its stores in response to customer demand and competition.

The council, following recommendations of the Alcohol License Review Committee and after a near three-hour debate, approved licenses for stores at 7810 Mineral Point Road, 606 S. Whitney Way and 8302 Old Sauk Road.

After residents fought a much larger project, the Mullins Group is proposing a six-story, $15 million to $20 million housing redevelopment on a triangular block where University Avenue meets Campus Drive on the West Side.

Mullins wants to redevelop the 2500 block of University Avenue ? except for Lombardino?s restaurant ? with 110 apartments, eight town homes, commercial space and a 166-space parking garage. The project, which would replace older, one- and two-story buildings and surface parking, would target professionals working at UW-Madison and nearby hospitals, said Sue Springman of the Mullins Group.

Does Walgreens really need to sell liquor amidst all the products designed to care for the wounds that liquor helped create? No, for many reasons, including the hundreds of people in Wisconsin who are killed and injured every year by people who found it too easy to drink too much.

Wisconsin may be facing a $2.5 billion budget gap, but that?s no excuse for failing to make the investments required to improve the economy. A growing economy ? producing jobs, income and tax revenue ? is the best way to close any budget gap as well as offer expanding opportunities to residents. That?s the spirit in which lawmakers should consider proposals to shore up one of Wisconsin?s glaring weaknesses in the competition for economic success ? a scarcity of money to bankroll young businesses. Dane County?s thriving biotechnology business community, much of it based on ideas from UW-Madison research, is an example. In fact, UW-Madison makes Wisconsin a prime candidate to generate the ideas and entrepreneurs to be matched with venture capital. The university annually ranks among the top five universities in the country in attracting research dollars.

A small, nearly-invisible Oshkosh company is poised to make huge leaps in energy storage capacity thanks to the small, nearly invisible particles it creates. Oshkosh Nanotechnology LLC plans to use ceramic nanomaterials it makes in labs at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh to help expand energy storage capacities in high-tech batteries called supercapacitors. Dr. Charles Gibson, a chemistry professor at UWO since 1992, hopes to spin the company off from the university soon to spur business development and high-tech job creation in Northeast Wisconsin.

The city of Madison has been named the fourth-best mid-sized market for business in the nation, according to a report Wednesday from Portfolio.com.

With a population of 562,065, Madison is the sole non-Western market in the top five. Its economic pillars are the University of Wisconsin and the state government. The local unemployment and poverty rates are among the smallest in the nation and it ranks in the top five in the number of management and professional jobs, which tend to pay the highest salaries.

U.S. agriculture and justice officials heard a lot of different concerns about competition within the nationâ??s dairy industry in Madison last week, but one common theme echoed throughout Fridayâ??s workshop was that milk and cheese prices are being influenced by too few at the top. The forum, which is the third in a series of five joint public workshops being held around the nation, was indented to examine competition and regulatory issues in the dairy industry. About 500 people attended the program at the University of Wisconsinâ??s Union Theater.

Dairy farmers say they are being squeezed out of the business. They say the system that determines what they get paid for milk is badly broken. The farmers came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Friday for the U.S. Department of Justice hearing on antitrust issues in the dairy industry. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says heâ??s hearing a consistent message now — dairy producers, large and small, are hurting.

The federal governmentâ??s top antitrust investigator told hundreds of farmers, lobbyists and others at a hearing Friday that the Department of Justice is keeping close watch on the nationâ??s dairy industry. Assistant Attorney General Christine Varneyâ??s said at the hearing on antitrust issues that the department wants to promote fairness in the dairy industry, which has experienced massive consolidation in recent years. “We are keeping a watchful eye on this industry,” Varney told about 500 people gathered for the daylong hearing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. “We know that dairy farmers are concerned about a lack of choices for buyers as well as how their milk is priced.”

For all the complex issues raised at Fridayâ??s workshop on competition in the dairy industry, the question at the heart of it was a simple one: What is happening? Thatâ??s how U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., broke it down to a crowd of about 600 at Union Theater on the UW-Madison campus. The event drew farmers, producers, lobbyists, politicians and economists to discuss a dairy industry that has seen rising production costs and massive milk price fluctuations in recent years.

Dear Editor: Did you know that one company (Deans) now controls 40 percent of all conventional fluid milk in the U.S.; that in 2009 farmers received only 97 cents for every $2.99 gallon of milk and less than $1 for every $4.99 pound of cheddar cheese; that in 2008 Dairy Farmers of America was fined $12 million for market manipulation at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, yet the dairy giants continue these same illegal practices today?

Join family farmers, consumer advocates, and others in calling upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Justice to take antitrust action now:

Topics and speakers have been finalized for Fridayâ??s U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture workshop examining competition in the dairy industry. It is one of five U.S. workshops on agriculture and antitrust enforcement issues. The event will open at 8:45 a.m. with a roundtable discussion featuring U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Christine Varney, assistant attorney general for the Justice Departmentâ??s Antitrust Division. It will be held at the Union Theater, 800 Langdon St., on the UW-Madison campus.