Flavio Solorzano, the executive chef at a fine dining restaurant in Peru who is lauded throughout Latin America, has been in Madison for a week, speaking at the UW-Madison School of Business on the importance of cuisine to an economy.
One year ago, near east side Ald. Bridget Maniaci and former Ald. Brenda Konkel were locked in a fierce battle for the cityâ??s District 2 seat, which Konkel had held for eight years. Now the two find themselves as tentative allies in Maniaciâ??s effort to push back the November downtown rental rush by reviving discussions about when landlords can start showing and leasing occupied apartments for next yearâ??s rental cycle.
Maniaci says the time is right to revisit the decade-old issue, with the downtown rental market changing as more young professionals choose apartments over buying houses.
But before it began operations, Mentor Worldwide LLC decided to abandon the Madison lab, which is valued at $16 million. The company announced Wednesday that they would donate it to the Morgridge Institute, a private research partner with UW-Madison.
University of Wisconsin Athletics announced Tuesday they will postpone plans for a new hockey facility, which would connect the SERF and the Kohl Center and would include a new professional ice rink, due to funding problems.
In explaining how a business does well by doing good, local ad executive Jim Armstrong talks about 18th-century brewing techniques.
Armstrong â?? whose firm, Good for Business, just became the first company in Madison to earn national certification for business ethics â?? recounts the tale of the storied Guinness Brewing Co.
Quoted: Dan Hausman, professor of business ethics in the UW-Madison philosophy department.
For too long, bankers have gotten a free ride from the U.S. Department of Education.
Under current law, taxpayers provide as much as $9 billion each year to subsidize guaranteed student loans issued by banks. The banks earn profits on the interest; if students default, taxpayers take the loss, not the banks. In other words, working Americans pay while bankers get rich.
Meanwhile, educators, engineers and computer scientists — the backbone of the new economy — face crushing debt from six-figure college tuitions. A study of national post-secondary student aid found that in 2008, two-thirds of college seniors graduated with debt averaging more than $23,000. That number will rise as public and private college tuition costs escalate.
Since the first commercial cultivation of genetically modified GM crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six biotech seed companies Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer have become masters at the art of story telling.
Farmers, always looking for the next big technology fix, loved the stories: the promise of better yields, less chemicals needed for weed control, higher profits and of course, a solution to the elusive goal of feeding the world.
Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops.
An assembly committee had a public hearing Wednesday regarding a bill that would put regulations on university and credit card issuer marketing campaigns that target students.
The University of Wisconsin Athletic Department is in the process of giving exclusive health care advertising rights to UW Health, officials said Wednesday.
Dear Editor: Compared to Madison as a whole, the UW-Madison delis severely lack fair trade, organic, and local products. Being part of a city full of fair trade establishments like Just Coffee, SERRV, and the farmersâ?? market, UW seems like a natural candidate for these products. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
The rush to find new drugs to fight cancer is spurring big growth for a Madison company. Founded in 1998 as Tetrionics, the company was purchased in 2004 by a division of Sigma-Aldrich, of St. Louis. Its main product at the Madison building is still the vitamin D compound discovered by UW-Madison professor Hector DeLuca that forms the basis of Zemplar, by Abbott Laboratories.
While much focus in town has been on filling vacant land at Hilldale Mall or the squabble over the downtown Edgewater Hotel, a big development is coming to the far west side that has sort of floated under the radar — the addition of a second University Research Park, or, as its backers call it, “URP2.”
I talked with Mark Bugher, research park director, who says they will break ground on a undetermined date this spring and that he foresees the first occupant there late in 2011 or early 2012. After city approval last fall, Bugher says the project has been moving along and it was decided to name new streets within the park after the five UW faculty members who won Nobel Prizes while at the university.
The annual rush of thousands of high school wrestling and basketball fans to the UW-Madison Kohl Center means big money for area businesses, but it also means moving hundreds of drivers with campus parking permits to lots away from the sports arena.
….The out-of-towners not only mean big bucks, about 26 million of them, to area businesses, restaurants and bars, but they are also an important revenue stream for the university, helping to offset the cost of parking for permit holders.
To get the ball rolling on cars parking in lots away from the Kohl Center, UW Transportation Services is asking permit holders to use alternate lots so visitors can use the lots near the Kohl Center, reducing traffic congestion on campus.
Single-game football tickets will cost $3 more beginning this fall after the University of Wisconsin Athletic Board approved its 2010-11 budget.
Bonnie Bernhardt is proud to have helped nearly 400 Wisconsin residents get back some of their money from an online lender that state attorneys say overstepped its bounds.
The 43-year-old single mother from Verona was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed two years ago against online payday lender Arrowhead Investments. After an out-of-court settlement to the class action lawsuit was approved earlier this month, Bernhardt and the others will split $100,000 in restitution. Another $432,000 in outstanding loans will be closed out and forgiven by Arrowhead, and the Delaware-based company is also barred from doing business in Wisconsin for five years.
Quoted: Sarah Orr, director of the Consumer Law Litigation Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
University Research Park began offering space this month in its new Accelerator building.
Designed for start-ups that have outgrown smaller suites in the parkâ??s incubator building, the 80,000-square-foot Accelerator boasts cutting-edge air-exchange systems, space designed for lab build-outs, and features that could help tenants shave thousands of dollars off their energy bills.Facilities like this are becoming more common in Madison, where a growing number of parks offer young firms networking opportunities and shared resources such as research equipment and phone systems.
Advertisements in the student newspapers and a particularly large banner, which the city forced to be taken down Thursday, have highlighted new strategies implemented by Brothers Bar and Grill owners Eric and Marc Fortney.
The owner of a popular college bar says theyâ??ve put a large banner on the building to draw attention, not for business, but he says to raise awareness of the barâ??s expected move.
Owners of a popular downtown bar that is slated to be demolished to make way for a University of Wisconsin-Madison expansion put up a giant sign to protest the universityâ??s plan.
With demand outpacing supply, local food producers need to shore up delivery systems to get their goods to customers, according to a study out Thursday from UW-Madison and the UW-Extension.
“Scaling Up: Meeting the Demand for Local Food” takes a look at 11 enterprises and organizations trying to fill the middle level distribution role, which has suffered a setback in recent years when established distributors went out of business.
This sign is hard to miss while driving down University Ave. The owners of Brothers Bar and Grill are in the midst of legal battle with the UW Board of Regents in an attempt to prevent the university from taking their property for a new UW-Madison School of Music Building.
Madison-based Cellular Dynamics International has raised $40.6 million, according to a filing the company made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The privately held company, known as CDI, sells stem cell-derived heart cells to Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche and others to help them test the toxicity of drugs. CDI was founded by stem cell pioneer James Thomson and several other University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, along with some people previously associated with NimbleGen Systems LLC.
When Nathan Greenawalt was working on his economics degree at UW-Madison, the vision of his future didnâ??t include traveling to the backwoods of Kentucky to buy a moonshine still.
Pleasant View Road is little more than a dirt path in places right now. Drive west on Mineral Point Road past Target and it is easy to miss the beginning of Pleasant Viewâ??s southern extension, which will connect it to Valley View Road and the cityâ??s burgeoning southwest side.
But stand at the intersection of Pleasant View and Mineral Point at 5 p.m. on any weeknight and look east toward Madison, and itâ??s easy to see why Pleasant View may become one of the most important new roads in the city.
….The majority remains farmland, waiting for the recently approved University Research Park II to be built as one of the cityâ??s largest new economic development projects.
The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that academic inventions spurred the “creation of a record 543 new university spinoff companies in the 2008 fiscal year, while generating more than $2.3 billion in licensing revenue for 154 institutions and their inventors.”
According to this Chronicle survey, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was one of just 10 institutions that reported licensing revenue of more than $50 million. The survey shows UW-Madison ranked No. 9, with $54.1 million in licensing income.
Colleges and universities created 542 companies, issued 2,821 patents, and generated $2.379 billion in licensing income in the 2008 fiscal year, according to an annual survey by the Association of University Technology Managers.
For the second time in less than three years, telecommunications giant AT&T is involved in crafting major deregulation legislation at private meetings in the Capitol. Consumer advocates, meanwhile, appear to lack a seat or voice in the process.
Quoted: Barry Orton, UW-Madison professor of telecommunications
The ongoing struggle between Brothers Bar and Grill and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents intensified Thursday after the owners of Brothers released an open letter to an anonymous donor to the Universityâ??s project for a new music performance facility.
Letâ??s pause for a moment, take a break from the relentless blabbing and blogging about the trials and tribulations of the newspaper industry and consider a few facts.
….We remain bemused by the incessant doom-and-gloom predictions of so many, including some who should know better.
Case in point: in a recent story about the future of newspapers in the Isthmus, a Madison weekly, a UW-Madison journalism professor said of newspapers: “Most of them are effectively bankrupt right now. …”
That is wrong – again, as wrong as wrong could be.
The private sector of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery â?? the Morgridge Institute for Research â?? announced a team of University of Wisconsin researchers who will lead a series of focus areas.
Dear Editor: Readers of the recent Cap Times editorial trashing large farms (referred to as â??factory farmsâ?) should know:
….Dairy farm families, whether they operate a small, large, organic or conventional operation, should be cherished and thanked everyday for the nutritious food they work so hard to produce. Sensationalized and groundless editorials threaten the vitality of the Wisconsin dairy industry, its infrastructure, and all dairy farms regardless of size.
(Ric Grummer is a UW-Madison professor of dairy science)
Necessity isnâ??t always the mother of invention. Sometimes, itâ??s homework. Two upcoming UW-Madison events will highlight student inventions.
Quoted: Tom Oâ??Guinn, executive director of the Center for Brand and Product Management at the UW-Madison School of Business.
The creativity and inventiveness of UW-Madison students will be on full display this week during the annual Innovation Days competition at Engineering Hall.
The competition will feature 23 inventions built by 37 students, vying for more than $27,000 in prizes. The competition is for those inventions and ideas judged to be the most innovative and most likely to succeed in the marketplace.
Future deal-makers from three Wisconsin universities will compete at the Milwaukee Athletic Club on Saturday in a contest that tests their ability to analyze and make recommendations about real-life investment banking transactions.
Quoted: Bob Cropp, an emeritus professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Recreational cycling generates $1.5 billion in economic activity a year in Wisconsin, according to a first-of-its-kind study by graduate students in UW-Madisonâ??s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Madisonâ??s storied Greenbush neighborhood is at a pivot point, says Jim Woodward, president and CEO of Meriter Health Services. Unless steps are taken now to stem an emerging trend of property neglect, the neighborhood wonâ??t be as good a place to live or do business 10 years from now, he says.
So Meriter is preparing to step up and jump-start reinvestment in its own neighborhood with a â??workforce housingâ? initiative to lend employees money to enable them to buy houses in the neighborhood and invest themselves in its success.
While state lawmakers debate whether to help homeowners in foreclosure with a statewide requirement stipulating that lenders must agree to mediation sessions, in Dane County a similar decision already has been made. Starting Monday, Dane County residents facing foreclosure will have the right to request a mediation session that could help them keep their homes. Itâ??s only an option, though, and lenders can decline mediation. UW-Madison Law School students will help families prepare for the sessions.
Businesses in northeast Wisconsin weathered the recession better than those in Dane County in 2009 but both of those regions came out ahead of the Milwaukee area, according to a report being released Friday. In all, more than 1,300 business leaders responded to the poll by the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research at the UW-Madison School of Business.
Discussion was heated Wednesday night at the Vending Oversight Committee meeting as members debated a review draft for the proposed University Avenue vending area.
He admits itâ??s foreign territory for an unmarried, childless, 49-year-old man whoâ??s spent the majority of his time in the commercial real estate business, but Tom Baggot seems to have found his calling running Legacy Academy Activity Center, a 6,000-square-foot, indoor playground for children 12 and under.
The business schools in Madison and Milwaukee say theyâ??re bucking a national trend that sees fewer incoming freshmen wanting to major in business. An annual survey by the Higher Education Research Institute says 14 percent of freshmen want a bachelorâ??s degree in business. Thatâ??s down from 17 percent last year. But the business schools at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Marquette University say applications are holding steady if not rising.
A national study says the number of freshmen wanting to major in business is at its lowest level in 35 years. But administrators at two business schools in Wisconsin say theyâ??re bucking that trend.
The Higher Education Research Instituteâ??s annual survey shows 14.4 percent of freshmen want to get a bachelorâ??s in business, compared to just under 17-percent in the previous year. Itâ??s the lowest rate since 1974, when 14-percent wanted a business degree.
The Joint Southeast Campus Area Committee met Monday evening to discuss the significant redevelopment plans underway at Gordon Commons.
University of Wisconsin campus planners revealed more details about the construction of a new Gordon Commons and the relocation of the McBurney Center at a meeting of the Joint Southeast Campus Area Committee Monday night.
Legislation allowing research assistants at the University of Wisconsin to unionize has met controversy because it excludes international students from the bargaining table.
A high-rise student apartment building is coming to one of the most congested spots on the UW-Madison campus â?? with no new parking spaces.
Monday night, the Madison Plan Commission on a 5-2 vote approved a proposal from landlord Patrick Corcoran for an eight-story apartment tower at 621 Mendota Court.
The â??quiet timeâ? in Wisconsin agriculture — from Thanksgiving to New Yearâ??s or so — has given way to â??the meeting seasonâ? that runs hot and heavy through the WPS Farm Show in the first week of April. After that farmers get anxious to head to the fields, weather permitting, and start the cropping season anew.
UW-Madison Athletic Board officials discussed the possibility of increased ticket prices Tuesday for the 2010-â??11 Athletic Department budget.
The University of Wisconsin and UW-Milwaukee announced a joint grant program this week that would create collaborative research initiatives between the two universities.
Badger fans may see an increase in the price of tickets for the 2010-11 athletic season â?? a change that was described as â??inevitableâ? by a University of Wisconsin Athletic Board committee Tuesday.
The Democratsâ?? plan for creating jobs and improving Wisconsinâ??s economy is scheduled for a vote Thursday in the Senate. The proposal would expand the state program that provides tax credits for angel and venture capital investment and would increase partnerships between businesses and the University of Wisconsin.
MADISON, Wis. — Net farm income dropped in Wisconsin by 56 percent in 2009, according to a new report.
The report by University of Wisconsin-Madison agricultural economists notes the $1.1 billion in farm income last year was the lowest total since 2002.
While UW-Milwaukee aims to expand its research capacity as a way to catalyze new jobs and investment – it is adding programs in engineering and water technology – the school barely registers on one of the nationâ??s most crucial measures of innovation: the annual tally of newly issued U.S. patents. In 2009, the number totaled three.
The stateâ??s flagship research university in Madison, by contrast, ranks near the top of the national tables with 117 patents last year. That puts UW-Madison at No. 3 behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at No. 2 (132 patents in 2009) and the entire 10-campus University of California system at No. 1 (172 patents). Californiaâ??s state system, which includes UC-Berkeley and UCLA, assigns patents under a single entity.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison accounting professor Terry Warfield.
A Wisconsin economist says the stateâ??s economic recovery will closely mirror what happens at the national level. A great deal of uncertainty remains, according to University of Wisconsin School of Business Dean Michael Knetter. â??Certainly a bottomâ??s been reached, but I would say that this is one of those periods in our economic history where thereâ??s probably more uncertainty about the nature about the nature of this recovery than Iâ??ve seen since Iâ??ve been a practicing economist watching the economy,â? Knetter told WisconsinEye.
The economic recovery is under way but muted and fragile, and there isnâ??t much that can be done to hasten it, the dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s School of Business said Thursday.
While the economy should grow at a rate of about 3%, most of the major gains to be had from the stock market rebound already have occurred, Michael Knetter told about 500 business people gathered for the annual Wisconsin Bankers Association Economic Forecast Luncheon at the Monona Terrace Convention Center.
Developers of the hotel across from Camp Randall Stadium have put the stalled 48-room project on the market. Owner Bob Sieger is seeking partners to invest a minimum of $2.5 million in the project.
“Bob has put a lot of time and energy into this and is looking for a partner,” said listing broker David Baehr.
Work was halted in October and the construction company Kraemer Brothers has filed a $3.7 million lien against the developer Sieger LLC.Construction began on the project in November, 2008. The plan was for the 48-room hotel to open in time for part of the Badgersâ?? 2009 football season.
Quoted: Mike Knetter, dean of the UW-Madison School of Business.
