The owners of Brothers Bar and Grill have agreed to drop their lawsuit against the UW Board of Regents, ending a lengthy legal battle just one day before their scheduled trial.
Brothers Bar and Grill dropped a lawsuit Tuesday against the UW System Board of Regents contesting the boardâ??s use of eminent domain to condemn the barâ??s property, just one day before the parties were set to meet in court.
The owners of a popular campus-area bar have agreed to drop their lawsuit and accept the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s $2.1 million offer for their property.
The owners of a popular campus bar have decided to dismiss their lawsuit that sought to stop the University of Wisconsin-Madison from taking their property through eminent domain.
The owners of a popular campus bar have decided to dismiss their lawsuit that sought to stop the University of Wisconsin-Madison from taking their property through eminent domain.
A face off between a popular downtown Madison bar and the University of Wisconsin-Madison wonâ??t happen after all.
MADISON, Wis. AP – A fight between a popular bar and the University of Wisconsin-Madison heads to a courtroom Wednesday in a case that will test the schoolâ??s power to take private property for a public use.
But the Virent story shows whatâ??s possible when lab smarts of the university are blended with the financial savvy of business. There is a lesson here for the Milwaukee region as it works to develop a more nimble and robust economy. [The editorial mentions that Virent was born to commercialize ideas formed at UW-Madison.]
When he founded Phoenix Nuclear Labs LLC five years ago, Greg Piefer wanted to do something simple – like detect nuclear weapons.
But a worldwide shortage of a radioactive isotope used in medical imaging tests has drawn the 33-year-old nuclear engineer, who holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering from UW-Madison, to a more complicated task.
Recent reports reveal that Nike, a UW-Madison licensee, violated several workersâ?? rights laws in India and Honduras.
Although hopes of an NCAA title for Wisconsinâ??s largest university were dashed this weekend, officials are confident the city of Madison has what it takes to make a solid run at another title: Test city for Googleâ??s upcoming ultra high-speed Internet experiment.
Virent Energy Systems has reached a milestone in its quest to create a better biofuel.Madison-based Virent announced Tuesday that it has opened the first biogasoline plant, creating gasoline from plant sugars. The company was formed in 2002 to deploy technological innovations developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Assessing the impact of the Great Recession on Wisconsin is turning into a tale of Madison and everybody else.
While Madison has certainly taken some lumps over the past two years, its unemployment rate has remained among the lowest in the nation.
Feature about Suzanne Dove, outreach director for the UW-Madison Center for International Business Education and Research, or CIBER, a job she has held since 2007. CIBER works with other organizations to help Wisconsin businesses sell their products in other countries.
A program meant to help students explore the riggers of business startups will take place the week of June 20 on the UW campus. Due to generous donations from program sponsors, there is no cost to participants. From new fuel alternatives to embryonic stem cells, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is an international leader in scientific research.
More than 80 state agencies, including UW-Madison, are not in compliance with an open records law that requires all state agencies to report their contractual agreements on an aggregate website maintained by the Government Accountability Board.
This eight-part series concludes appropriately with the biggest idea of all eight opportunities: to advance the region as a knowledge and convening center connecting, translating and integrating ideas to help regional and state businesses advance and compete globally. If you are thinking that this is already happening, you are right. The big idea here is to recognize this knowledge and convening role as an export product in itself and to take it to the next level. We are recognized around the world as an R&D center led not only by UW-Madison and WARF, but also by the expanded UW System that includes the two-year campuses and the county-based UW Extension, our outstanding technical colleges and private colleges, and many leading private sector technology businesses.
When Bob and JoAnn Wollersheim purchased a nearly abandoned property and opened Wollersheim Winery in 1973 – restarting the tradition of a family-run vineyard on the site – it was the beginning of a modern-day fairy tale.
Toyotaâ??s reported sins have given us the scandal du jour, but typically, the media zips past the basic problem. Toyotaâ??s safety irregularities pointedly illustrate instead the failure — if not the virtual disappearance — of regulation, a pattern begun in the 1970s as the nation dismantled and eroded the effectiveness of its Regulatory State. In bipartisan fashion, its origins began with the Carter and Reagan administrations, and then deregulation accelerated and magnified under Clinton and both Bushes.
Itâ??s only fitting for Americaâ??s Dairyland: Madison is hoping to create an ice cream flavor to woo Google Fiber. Not to be outdone by Topeka, Kan., which changed its name to Google for the month of March, Madison wants to tempt the sweet tooth of the Internet giant. UW-Madisonâ??s Babcock Dairy created a test batch of a Google Fiber ice cream that has a vanilla base, M&M candies and granola, said manager Sara Brummel. The M&Ms mimic the multi-colored Google logo and the granola provides the fiber.
UW-Madison is partnering with some of the worldâ??s leading business schools to create a first-of-its-kind graduate degree in global real estate. The unique model for the new Global Real Estate Master will start American and foreign students at one of three international schools and then bring all the participants together for a final semester at the Wisconsin School of Business at UW-Madison.
Itâ??s been 25 years since the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center started on campus, and to commemorate the occasion, a celebration is set for 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Biotechnology Center at 425 Henry Mall.
Dick Burgess, founding director of the center, said there were only three companies working in biotech in Madison in 1985.
“Now we have over 150 biotech firms in the area, and the state is recognized as a premier site for biotechnology research and industry,” Burgess said in a release from the UW-Madison news service.
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.
