Category: Business/Technology

La Crosse County Solid Waste Departmentâ??s program for collecting and disposing of unused medication won an award Wednesday for government efficiency and effectiveness.

The Lloyd D. Gladfelter Award is administered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Political Science, and recognizes problem-solving and resourceful ideas generated by non-elected government employees.

Epic Systems Corp., the Verona-based electronic medical records company, is threatening to pull its business from local vendors who support the state’s largest business lobby over a political disagreement with the group.

First it was a proposed ban on plastic bags. Now, a member of the influential Madison Plan Commission wants to ban the restaurant drive-through — or at least restrict the ubiquitous symbol of America’s auto-centric lifestyle.

“Given the concern about all the carbon going into the atmosphere, I’m not sure we should be building more places for people to sit idling in their cars,” says Eric Sundquist, who was appointed to the citizen panel by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz this spring.

A former newspaper reporter in Atlanta now working as a researcher at the UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Sundquist notes that several cities in Canada have recently moved to ban the drive-through coffee shop or stand-alone fast food restaurant.

A pared-down plan for the redevelopment of the Villager Mall on Madison’s south side drew criticism Wednesday from members of the city’s Urban Design Commission, who panned it as a “low rent” compromise of planning principles.

The high-tech sector is proving to be a double-edged sword for Madison.

Sure, it has produced dozens of companies and created hundreds of jobs for those with advanced college degrees. But many of the most successful firms end up being sold to giant out-of-state corporations.

Madison’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to ban sales of certain sizes of alcohol downtown as part of an initial effort to curb its purchase by some transients who have reportedly harassed downtown residents.

The ban takes the form of modified liquor licenses that apply to grocery, liquor and convenience stores in Districts 4 and 8, which include the Capitol, campus and State Street areas. Stores in those districts could no longer sell beer or malt liquor in sizes smaller than a six-pack — except for imports and microbrews — and they could not sell fortified wine or liquor in smaller than pint-size containers.

….Also Monday night, the commission approved a restrictive convenant to govern design and operation of a $10 million, four-story, 48-room hotel slated for the corner of Monroe and Regent Streets.

The agreement prevents the general public from using the hotel facilities during football games at Camp Randall Stadium or big events at the Fieldhouse. It also includes rules on parking, hotel security and outdoor music meant to reduce impacts on the adjoining neighborhood.

Also Monday night, the commission:

* Approved the Regent Street-South Campus Neighborhood Plan and the Greenbush Neigborhood Plan in separate votes.

Madison Ald. Mike Verveer’s proposal to restrict sales of cheap alcohol downtown is sound public policy that should have an immediate positive impact on a challenge that local officials have struggled to address.

Public intoxication is a problem. It is fueled by sales of individual cans and bottles of beer and malt liquor and small containers (less than a pint) of hard liquor.

Verveer, who represents the downtown 4th District, has proposed a ban on such sales at 11 outlets in the 4th and 8th aldermanic districts.

For UW-Madison engineering Professor John Scharer, a visit from his daughter who lives in New York usually means a drive east on Interstate 94 to Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport.

It’s nothing against the Dane County Regional Airport. Scharer simply can’t justify the additional cost of the plane tickets to Madison.

….UW professor Scharer hasn’t yet flown out of Rockford but does check the fares online, searching for a deal. In addition to visits from family, Sharer also travels for work and doesn’t like to waste precious research grant dollars on pricey airfares.

Concerns about pedestrian safety helped convince members of Madison’s Public Safety Review Board to vote unanimously to reject making part of Gilman Street near State Street a two-way road temporarily.

The 400 block of West Gilman Street, which includes several residential buildings and commercial businesses such as Amy’s Cafe, Laundry 101 and Yummy Buffet, is currently a one-way street, but the resolution rejected by the panel calls for a pilot project that would test the street as a two-way for 120 days, with an additional traffic light regulating cars turning onto University Avenue.

Third Wave Technologies is expected to stay in Madison even though a Massachusetts medical diagnostics company plans to buy the company, experts say.

Hologic, a Bedford, Mass., company with sales last year of $738 million and more than 3,500 employees, said Monday it will buy Third Wave for $580 million cash, or $11.25 a share. Third Wave will become a Hologic subsidiary.

“The combination of Hologic and Third Wave brings together two great companies that employ complementary technologies but share a common mission: to help save the lives of women,” said Jack Cumming, chairman and chief executive of Hologic, in a written statement.

Kikkoman Foods Inc. will open a research and development laboratory in Madison’s University Research Park this fall, chief executive officer Yuzaburo Mogi said Friday.

New boutique owner Kristin Wild hopes to bring something special to Madison’s Capitol Square with her new clothing boutique, Atticus.

“There has been a successful rejuvenation of housing, business and culture on the Square for a few years now,” Wild said. “I think that retail is sort of the last piece of the puzzle that needs to be added, and I’m very excited to be a part of that.”

That’s why, at 24, she leapt at the chance to open her own store in the heart of the city.

When customers telephone Paragon Development Systems looking for help with a balky printer they aren’t patched through to a call center in India, Eastern Europe or the Philippines. Instead, they get a friendly voice from Madison, Wisconsin usually with a Midwestern twang.

….The city’s high-tech profile has also received two more boosts in the past six months with Google setting up an engineering office to focus on software systems design and Microsoft opening an advanced development lab in partnership with the UW-Madison’s computer science department.

Nobody is ready yet to throw around the term “Madison Masala,” but viewing the region as a potential IT outsourcing destination is not so far-fetched. The combination of recent graduates from Madison Area Technical College and the University of Wisconsin, coupled with a wage scale lower than the coasts, provides some distinct advantages.

(Dean of International Studies Gilles Bousquet is quoted in this story.)

Bob Sieger will have to wait two more weeks to begin demolishing his building at 1501 Monroe St. after the Madison City Council voted Tuesday to send his permit back to the Plan Commission for further review.

Sieger has been planning to alter the property, near Camp Randall, for more than three years but has run across numerous complaints from nearby neighborhood associations about the plans, which have included a mixed retail and housing unit as well as a five-story hotel. The building at the corner of Monroe and Regent streets is currently a multi-business structure.

Mentions a report released in March from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That study says that “many skills of the greener future are closely related to the skills of today.”

Graphene Solutions is a 3-month-old company with a patent-pending technology that dissolves carbon nanotubes, graphene nanosheets and other materials so they can be purified and spread in a layer one atom thick.

That could pave the way for electronic components, like computer chips, that are dramatically smaller with much greater capacity.

“If you can very easily, reproducibly lay out a one-atom-thick layer of carbon, this is the new silicon,” said Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, which helped the company get started. WARF is the patenting and licensing arm for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dear Editor: I’m responding to Mike Ivey’s May 21 story “Camp Randall hotel on hold again?”

As a former Vilas neighborhood resident, I opposed Bob Sieger’s original Fieldhouse Station condominiums proposal. I saw a poorly planned project with major retail and traffic details left unaddressed. Pitched as a hundred-year building, the all-glass structure would have looked out of place in the near term and faded and run down 30 years from today. Little mention was made of mixed use other than some occasionally open party bar (as if Madison doesn’t already have enough of those) and possible second-floor office space.

Chuck Oehler is preparing his PowerPoint and pamphlets, getting ready to show off his company, Primorigen Biosciences, to the world.

Primorigen is one of the Wisconsin companies chosen to make a presentation at BIO, the international biotechnology convention being held in San Diego June 17-20.

With an expected attendance of 20,000 from the global bioscience industry, BIO is a chance for Primorigen and hundreds of other biotech companies to see and be seen.

Madison: A Madison developer says an city council member has a personal vendetta against him and his hotel plan across from Camp Randall.

But the council member says she’s just looking out for her constituents.

t seemed that after years of proposals, a Madison developer finally won city approval to put up a hotel near Camp Randall.

But now, the neighborhood’s city alderwoman has filed a last-minute appeal.This development is leading some area residents and business owners wondering whether it’s all legitimate scrutiny or neighborhood overkill.

UW Madison’s biggest building boom in forty years is in full stride, and that means it’s going to be a busy summer and early fall on the sprawling, 935 acre campus. “We’ll be starting and finishing about eight or ten new projects on campus,” says Alan Fish, associate vice chancellor for facilities.