The University Research Park, a 260-acre suburban oasis for start-ups on Madison’s West Side, will be trying to attract young student and faculty entrepreneurs with an edgy new urban incubator in an abandoned industrial building on the near East Side.
A 34-year-old Madison man was arrested Thursday after allegedly robbing the Badger Campus Credit Union, 1101 Spring St., the nab taking place after the suspect was followed on foot by a credit union employee who flagged down a UW police officer, telling the officer the suspect’s location.
Michael Caldwell was taken into custody on a probation hold following the incident, which happened about 11:50 a.m. Thursday.
When UW-Madison MBA students return for fall classes in late August, theyâ??ll find new digs in the form of the $40.5 million east wing of Grainger Hall.
The 131,416-square-foot, four-story addition features enhanced space for Wisconsin Enterprise MBA programs, the Evening MBA and Executive MBA, all of which serve working professionals.
The new tower also features common areas for visiting recruiters, alumni and students –including the multi-purpose Plenary Room on the first floor — as well as the Capital Café and 29 modern classroom and meeting/breakout rooms.
There has been plenty of excitement on the local biotechnology scene, with three local start-ups acquired in the past 13 months.
The most recent deal has the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holdings paying $125 million for Madison-based Mirus Corp. Established in 1995 based on the gene therapy work of UW-Madison scientists, Mirus has about 60 total employees here who are expected to keep their jobs.
Last June, Roche also purchased NimbleGen, a privately held Madison-based genomics company, for $272.5 million. NimbleGen has about 90 employees here. And earlier this summer, Boston-based Hologic Inc. announced a $580 million acquisition of Madison-based Third Wave Technologies that was just recently completed.
The deals have been widely cheered by the local biotech industry, and why not? It sure beats the drumbeat of job cuts and plant closings, the latest from Synergy Web Graphics in Mazomanie and Stoughton
ARLINGTON — Several hundred guests gathered at the UW-Madison Arlington Agricultural Research Station to get their first peek at the newly opened dairy barn and milking facility.
The $5.1 million dairy complex includes two freestall dairy barns, a Double 16 WestfaliaSurge milking parlor, a sand bedding recycling system and 350 dairy cows that are milked twice a day. Soon 450 cows will make their home there.
But the dedication ceremony Wednesday was about more than the technology and details incorporated into the modern dairy facility — there are many other barns similar to this one across the state. It was also about the unusual road taken to get the much-needed facility built.
Madison area Charter Communications customers who have a cable line hooked directly into an analog TV won’t need to do anything when the nation’s TV stations switch to all-digital broadcasting next February, the company says.
Quoted: UW-Madison telecommunications professor Barry Orton
Health care and biotechnology companies in south-central Wisconsin are struggling to attract and hire enough highly-skilled workers.
Grocers in the region say they need easier ways to connect with local farmers to buy and sell fresh produce.
In both cases, the area ‘s young and ambitious economic development booster, called Thrive, is hustling to help.
Powerhouse companies are focusing on the Madison area for acquisitions, and not just to steal away their Midwest technology and talent.
A string of local companies purchased over the past two years features buyers with big names, including Roche and Microsoft. (Numerous UW-Madison spinoff companies are cited.)
….to really gain some insight into Wisconsin’s workforce, one need only look at the recent analysis by Gannett Wisconsin Media of the state’s drinking culture — where boozing goes hand-in-hand with tailgating, snowmobiling, deer hunting and even children’s events.
Gannett scored Wisconsin No. 1 in the nation for imbibing, a ranking based on the price and availability of alcohol, its economic importance and its criminal justice, social and health effects.
Following Wisconsin on the list of top drinking states are North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota. That’s not exactly the kind of company to keep when you’re pitching yourself as the next biotech hotbed.
The year is 1998. Michael Verveer is a 30-year-old member of Madison’s City Council, serving the heart of the city’s downtown.
He is the articulate public voice for the many students in his district who oppose stricter controls on alcohol. When the police announce in September that they have written their first tickets under a new policy to the hosts of an off-campus party with underage drinkers, Verveer tells The Capital Times that “some of my constituents are now facing several thousands of dollars worth of fines for a crime that I don’t think is that bad and that has been going on at the UW for more than four decades; namely, inviting friends over to celebrate a football game.”
….Fast forward to 2008. Madison’s economic revitalization has continued, and the face of downtown has changed as well, with many young professionals and “empty-nesters” moving in to hundreds of new condominium units.
….Verveer is not the only politician whose thinking on downtown alcohol issues has evolved in the past few years. The makeup of the Alcohol License Review Committee itself is a sign of how Mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s views on alcohol enforcement have changed.
Swiss pharmaceutical and biotech giant Roche has acquired Madison-based Mirus Bio Corp. for $125 million, the two companies announced Tuesday.
Mirus Bio is a leader in RNAi (ribonucleic acid interference) technology, a method of determining how genes are turned off and on in cells, with new medicines emerging from RNAi that could prevent disease-causing proteins from being made.
According to a press release from Mirus Bio, Roche will maintain the RNAi research site in Madison.
(Mirus Bio Corp. was founded in 1995 by Dr. Jon Wolff and his colleagues James Hagstrom and the late Vladimir Budker.)
More than 25 government officials and environmental experts from China are in Madison to attend the first â??China-US Water Symposium: A Wisconsin Idea Approach, Connecting Science, Policy and Practice.â?
The gathering is the brainchild of Xiaojun Lu, a UW-Madison microbiology doctoral candidate from Beijing and one of 1,300 Chinese students and 100 Chinese faculty on the campus.
The clock has started ticking on American Transmission Company’s proposal to build a 345-kilovolt transmission line across Dane County.
The Public Service Commission has deemed the 2,000-page application as complete, and will start the formal process leading to approval or denial, a process that could take up to a year.
Thanks to an innovative pair of Madison food entrepreneurs, the lowly cracker gets to be a star at the snack table, rather than just the unsung transport vehicle for cheese or savory dips.
But it’s not just any cracker that chefs like Chicago’s Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill fame are raving about and local consumers are craving.
Not everybody wants a gyro or a slice of pizza at bar time. Those with a sweet tooth might be more inclined toward a warm double chocolate chunk or M&M cookie and some cold milk.
“That is heaven right there,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison student Will Catron, 26, holding up an ice cream sandwich made with two white chocolate macadamia cookies and vanilla ice cream in the middle.
“It’s great,” said Catron, who visits the Insomnia Cookies truck on State Street Mall once or twice a week to get his favorite confection. “This is the cookie I love the most.”
The Big Ten Network announced Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Verizon to be carried on its FiOS service, a cable-like TV service that is delivered to homes over fiber optic lines.
Verizon provides phone and Internet services to several Madison area communities, including Sun Prairie and Oregon, but those local markets are not included in Verizon’s FiOS rollout plans that have been released through 2010.
Meanwhile, Mediacom, which serves about 400,000 households in Iowa, is in “active discussions” again with BTN, Mediacom spokeswoman Phyllis Peters told the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
The average gasoline price in Madison set a daily high this week, topping $4.02 a gallon on Tuesday.
On the same day a federal forecast warned that gas prices nationwide are likely to remain above $4 a gallon for the rest of the year and into 2009.
The higher cost of gas is a costly problem that underscores the importance of proceeding full speed ahead with efforts to develop biofuels as an alternative to gasoline.
Seven downtown Madison liquor stores and one grocery store recently accepted UW-Madison’s offer to participate in an electronic identification scanner pilot program that is designed to help retail clerks ensure that patrons attempting to purchase alcohol or tobacco are of legal age.
Come August, when college students swarm Madison to move into new apartments and dormitories, one major housing unit will remain empty.
The Langdon — a freshman-oriented private residence hall at 126 Langdon St. with 360 beds — has closed after its new owner, local landlord Steve Brown Apartments, bought the property from FirstWorthing, which is folding itself.
….Although a weak economy has created chaos in today’s housing market, the dire situation depicted by Steve Brown Apartments is not a view shared by its public housing counterparts. For the UW Division of Housing’s public dorms, the problem isn’t with lack of demand, but a lack of space.
Isthmus, a Madison weekly newspaper, is considering layoffs to cut costs in the wake of the advertising-draining technological revolution that is shaking the news industry.
“We are making plans that may involve layoffs. Nothing is decided,” Isthmus Publisher Vince O’Hern said Monday. “It may involve some people taking leaves, and some people not being on staff anymore.”
Quoted: Professor James Baughman, director of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication
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.
Companies like Virent that spin off research at the university are magnets for biocapitalism, pumping money into the Capital Region economy via property taxes, purchases and payroll.
From the Halliburton Geoscience Visualization Center to the Kikkoman Lab of Microbial Fermentation, corporate names are sprinkled throughout the hallways and mailboxes of the UW-Madison campus.
Wisconsin is far better positioned in the knowledge economy than it was four years ago, with larger pools of risk capital and better coordination of the stateâ??s best research.
That’s one way to read a new report from the well-respected Milken Institute. The state finished five spots higher at No. 22 in Milken’s State Technology and Science Index (www.jsonline.com/765102).
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.
Wisconsin just received four reminders of where the state ‘s economy is heading: toward growth generated by innovations in science and technology and away from the old foundation of traditional manufacturing.
Policymakers — from the Doyle administration to Thrive, the economic development arm for the Madison region — ought to pay close attention.
The Wisconsin foundation that holds several key embryonic stem cell patents said Thursday that it has received certificates signaling the end of a long-fought challenge to the patents.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, known as WARF, received the so-called re-examination certificates from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week, WARF spokeswoman Janet Kelly said. The certificates confirm the patent officeâ??s ruling in March to strike down a challenge to the patents that started in October 2006.
Cable subscribers’ increasing embrace of digital services helped lead to a carriage deal between Comcast and the Big Ten Network, and could do the same for Charter Communications and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two dominant cable providers.
BTN from its beginning insisted on being carried on a basic level of cable service — such as Charter’s Expanded Basic — in the Big Ten Conference states in order to reach a maximum number of subscribers. BTN has since made a partial concession on that point in its deal with Comcast that was driven by the company’s growth in digital subscribers.
In its markets in Big Ten Conference states, Comcast will carry BTN on its expanded basic level from its launch Aug. 15 through the end of the 2008-09 college basketball season. But after that, it will be allowed to move BTN to a “broadly distributed digital level of service in most of its systems in the Big Ten states,” the companies said in their news release announcing the deal.
MADISON, Wis. — Madison’s annual Rhythm and Booms fires off this Saturday at Warner Park.
The event, which starts at noon, is expected to draw around 250,000 people. But, one big change this year will be that Madison Metro will no longer be providing the shuttle service between Warner Park and the MATC parking lot.
New federal regulations that went into effect in April prohibit federally-funded transit systems from providing shuttle services for community events.
“It’s a federal rule that’s trying to help out the private companies,” said Metro transit marketing specialist Mick Rusch. “We feel like we’re passing the torch. We understand the spirit of this legislation.”
The new federal rules also mean Metro buses will no longer be able to provide shuttle service at University of Wisconsin football games or WIAA sporting events. Metro buses moved 50,000 people a year on these community event shuttles, WISC-TV reported.
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.
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, who late last year announced he would leave his position in September, has been named interim director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the public portion of a public-private, $150 million research center expected to be completed on the university’s campus in 2010.
With its investment in biosciences and bioenergy research, and leadership in stem cell research, Wisconsin has continued to expand its knowledge economy, a new report by the Milken Institute shows.
The state ranked 22nd in the instituteâ??s State Technology and Science Index, moving up from 27th in 2004, the last time the report was done
Private dollars invested in Wisconsin start-up companies operating in high-growth sectors — such as biotechnology — grew 43 percent in 2007 to a record high, according to a report released Wednesday.
That exceeds the 1.8 percent national growth estimate provided earlier this year by the Center for Venture Research, the Wisconsin Technology Network reported.
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.
As expected, the Big Ten Network and Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, finally have reached a carriage deal.
But while the deal announced by BTN and Comcast in a news release Thursday may provide a potential framework for deals between BTN and Charter Communications and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two major cable providers, a UW-Madison professor of telecommunications who follows cable issues closely is pessimistic about deals being done in time for the 2008 college football season.
The University of Wisconsin’s first football game is Aug. 30 — ironically the one-year anniversary of the launch of BTN.
Hiring students for the summer can be mutually beneficial. Students can apply their training to real business challenges and you, as a business owner, will discover talent that is locally available and reasonably priced.
Nick Winter was watching a friend play video games in a Beijing apartment when the idea came to him: Could the technology that translated jabs of a digital stylus into on-screen movements help students learn to write and recognize Chinese characters?
As a mathematics, computer-science, and East Asian-studies major at Oberlin College, he knew firsthand the laborious task of memorizing hundreds of basic Chinese characters. A computer program that incorporated both handwriting recognition and self-testing, he thought, might help students, especially those just starting out.
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.
The income gap between Wisconsin’s richest and poorest families is widening, according to a report by UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy.
Average real incomes of the state’s richest families grew 36 percent from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, more than five times the 7 percent income growth of the poorest families.
In the late 1980s, Wisconsin’s richest families earned average incomes 4.7 times the income of the state’s poorest families.
One of the most successful coaches at the University of Wisconsin is running away.
Jerry Schumacher, the Badger men’s cross country and track distance coach, is leaving the program to take a position with Nike coaching elite distance runners in Portland, Ore.
The position was created especially for Schumacher, who will take with him a stable of current professional runners he is now coaching in Madison – most of them ex-Badgers.
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.
Wisconsin has a great story to tell at this week’s BIO 2008, an international convention in San Diego for the biotechnology industry.
And this fall, Wisconsin will bring the world here to see for itself.
Madison will host the World Stem Cell Summit in late September at the Alliant Energy Center. The event is expected to attract up to 1,000 researchers, philanthropists and business people.
This week, 270 dairy cows from UW-Madison ‘s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences will be moving into a new dairy research facility at its Arlington Agricultural Research Station in rural Arlington, about 20 miles north of Madison.
With a price tag of $5.1 million, the new facility can house 500 cows, doubling that of the old Emmons Blaine Dairy Cattle Research Center next door. It will be able to milk 64 cows at once. It features state-of-the-art housing, waste-management and milking technologies that dairy experts say are necessary for producing the kind of research needed by farmers in Wisconsin ‘s $20.6 billion dairy industry.
More than three months after the Big Ten Network and Comcast Corp., the nation’s biggest cable company, were reported to have agreed on the framework of a deal, the deal is essentially completed, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday.
“For all intents and purposes, it’s done,” one source close to the negotiations said Sunday, the Tribune reported Monday. Sources expect the deal will be completed and unveiled this week, the paper said.
Such a deal is significant here because a BTN-Comcast deal is seen as providing a potential framework for a deal between BTN and Charter Communications and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two major cable providers.
“It’s Comcast first, Time Warner a distant second, and Charter third,” UW-Madison professor of telecommunications Barry Orton said of the size and pecking order of major cable companies serving states in the Big Ten Conference.
It’s time to go. I spent the past four months dreading this moment. School had become comfortable, and I didn’t want to leave. I had class only two days a week, and my day started at 2:30 p.m. Life was easy, and I didn’t want to go back to the real world. Now I can say I’m happy the time has come. It is time to move on, time to be a grown-up again, time to step into the unknown, time to continue to grow
Agriculture experts say crop losses due to heavy flooding in Wisconsin could reach the tens of millions of dollars.
Agriculture experts say crop losses due to heavy flooding in Wisconsin could reach the tens of millions of dollars.
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.
The firm that built the world famous Santiago Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum has been named construction manager of the new South Campus Union at the UW-Madison.
Milwaukee-based CG Schmidt will head the $82 million project, which includes demolition of the existing Union South and building a replacement at the same site on Randall Avenue. It will manage the job out of its Madison office, with work to begin in January, 2009.
Madison – The Federal Reserve Board is done cutting interest rates for at least a while, but don’t look for higher rates before fall, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said Friday.
Speaking at a conference on housing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, James Bullard said the Fed’s aggressive rate-cutting since last August has stabilized the economy, and inflation is now becoming a larger concern.
Speaking Friday at the 2008 Wisconsin Housing Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Morris Davis, an assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics at UW-Madison, said Wisconsin has a higher income-to-housing-cost ratio than other areas of the country.
Kikkoman Foods Inc. will establish a research and development laboratory as well as an environmental studies scholarship in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The new lab, which will open this fall, will be located at University Research Park in Madison. It will be led by one of the company’s research scientists from its research and development facility in Noda, Japan.
MILWAUKEE — The state film’s incentives have been successful by anyone’s measure: They’ve attracted a big-budget Johnny Depp movie, independent films and TV shows. Businesses supporting the industry also are popping up.
But the architects of the 25 percent tax break for filmmakers want to rejigger the law to attract even more productions.
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.)
