Category: Business/Technology

Among the largest housing projects started during the past year, the emphasis — except for Capitol West condominiums ($37.6 million) — was on apartments and student housing, including Steve Brown ‘s Lucky apartments at University Square ($36.1 million), UW-Madison ‘s new Ogg Hall ($27.9 million), Parmenter Circle Apartments in Middleton ($15.9 million) the Pres House dormitory ($11.3 million) and Edgewood College ‘s Dominican Hall ($10.6 million).

When Mark J. Ready visited the floor of the New York Stock Exchange while working on his doctorate in finance during the last 1980s, he fell in love. Not with a woman. The New Jersey native was a happily married man with a young family back in Ithaca, N.Y., where he was attending Cornell University.

Instead, Ready fell in love with the market itself, with its ebbs and flows of information among a sea of humanity striving to make a profit at every turn.

That infatuation has defined the rest of his career, which in 1990 brought him to a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. On Wednesday, he will take over one of the gems of the school, the Stephen L. Hawk Center for Applied Security Analysis, becoming just the fourth director in the center’s 37-year history.

If “not in my backyard” is a high priority goal in placing a proposed 345-kilovolt power line across Dane County, the Beltline route seemingly would win out, because it has far fewer residential backyards to run through than the route cutting across the southernmost tier of towns, according to power line builder American Transmission Company.

MADISON, Wis. — Two proposals for a new 345-kilovolt power transmission line through the Madison metro area will be forwarded to the Public Service Commission, but neither include an underground option.

American Transmission Co. announced on Wednesday that it won’t recommend one plan over the other to state regulators. The controversial Beltline proposal is included in the recommendation, but so is a southern Dane County route that would affect mostly rural areas.

….Critics of the Beltline route â?? including Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum officials and the state Transportation Department, which doesn’t want 345,000 volts of electricity pulsing above or below the heavily-used freeway — asked ATC to put the line underground.

The Beltline could be the backbone for American Transmission Company’s new 345-kilovolt transmission line, one of two route options being submitted in October to the state Public Service Commission.

Company officials announced their two route options, with two alternate variations to those base routes, at a press conference at company headquarters this afternoon.

“We need this to keep the lights on,” said Mark Williamson, ATC vice president of major projects. “Even with recent improvements, the transmission system is operating at near maximum capacity.”

Gov. Jim Doyle announced the availability of $450,000 for 16 agricultural development projects ranging from renewable energy to specialty potatoes.

Included are $22,500 to the Horticulture Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, to research the economical feasibly of large-scale organic vegetable crop production, another $15,000 to the Horticulture Department to promote and develop specialty potatoes for the fresh market, and $22,500 to the West Madison Agricultural Research Station, Verona, to grow and test production methods for seedless table grapes for the fresh market.

The other day on his Web site, waxingamerica.com, a tongue-in-cheek Paul Soglin suggested that we move the University of Wisconsin’s Camp Randall to Belmont, the little southwestern Wisconsin town that was the state’s first capital.

His remarks were aimed at the difficulty that architect Bob Sieger is having trying to get the city’s Plan Commission to let him construct a building at the corner of Regent and Monroe Streets, smack dab across the street from the Field House and football stadium.

Dairy science students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will see more wear and tear on the soles of their boots and less on the seats of their pants this school year, thanks to curriculum changes aimed to help students build their technical and analytical skills.

Dear Editor: I was shocked to read of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s concern about vendors needing to pay third-party fees to present their ideas and products to UW-Madison officials on energy efficiency.

The UW shouldn’t be constrained to sifting through every hare-brained idea in order to find the ones that make sense. The organizer of such an event performs a vital service. Taxpayers should applaud the UW for finding inexpensive ways to build a better and greener university.

Kyle Stiegert, Fitchburg

(MADISON) A California botox maker is coming to Wisconsin. The anti-wrinkle product was discovered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and thatâ??s one reason the Mentor Corporation chose to build a new plant here.

The late Ed Schantz was a UW-Madison researcher in 1946 when he discovered the toxin that paralyzes muscles. The University of Wisconsin still holds the botox patent and licenses it out to different companies. One of them is the Mentor Corporation based in Santa Barbara, California. It is building a large production facility at the University Research Park on Madisonâ??s west side.

Wisconsin cannot afford to let a “not in my backyard” reaction to ethanol plants shut down the state’s effort to be in the forefront of biofuel development.
That is a lesson Wisconsin communities should learn from the feud that threatens to squelch plans to build an ethanol plant at Sparta.

Two key UW-Madison officials attended a conference at a New Mexico resort where vendors who paid large fees were promised one-on-one meetings with university, school and hospital officials who attended.

Vendors participating in the “Sustainable Operations Summit” in June each paid $18,500 to event organizer CraigMichaels Inc. for 15 one-on-one sales meetings with officials at the summit, or $25,500 if the vendor sent two representatives to each meet with 15 people, according to the event organizer.

The higher-ranking UW official who attended denied knowing about the fees, but Mike McCabe, executive director of the government watchdog group the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said the practice appeared to be “a dire sign of the times. The university should resist a temptation to act the way people at the State Capitol act. That people can pay to get a higher degree of access to you is dead wrong.”

A new Mark is about to be stamped on the Applied Security Analysis Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.

Mark Fedenia is stepping down after 21 years at the helm of the nationally known program that has graduate students managing a portfolio of more than $44 million in university money.

BrainReactions provides teams of trained, Generation Y idea-makers who are professionals in structured brainstorming sessions that on average provide 700 ideas per two-hour session, or an idea every 15 seconds.

The company, which is self-financed and currently running off its earnings, employs 10 people and names Bank of America, BMW and the U.S. Peace Corps as clients. The company was founded in 2004 by Anand Chhatpar, himself of Generation Y, who started the company in his senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In retail terms, a “loss leader” is merchandise sold below cost in order to increase store traffic and sales of other items on shelves.
A store owner might lose a few bucks selling one heavily discounted gadget, but make up for it handsomely through other sales.

Wisconsin’s high-tech loss leader these days are human embryonic stem cells. No one is making much money – yet – on sales of stem-cell licenses or products, but the state’s highly advertised expertise in the technology is forcing others to look at what else is inside the store.

The Majestic Theatre was sold today, with the new owners confident they can transform the King Street site into a nationally known live music venue.

A small investment group from outside Wisconsin paid $1.35 million for the historic vaudeville theater at 115 King St., a price that includes the building and equipment left from its previous life as a dance club featuring hip-hop DJs.

“This is going to be an entirely different operation. It’s not going to be $12 all you can drink,” said Matt Gerding, a native of Kansas City who spent the past three years working in Los Angeles, booking acts into Midwest clubs, including Madison’s High Noon Saloon, the Annex and the former Luther’s Blues.