Quarterly newsletter
Articles
- Area business owners complete Fast Trac class (Nov. 13, 2009)
- NDC honors three local businesses (Oct. 9, 2009)
- First Regional EntreBash! Networking Event held in Iowa Innovation Gateway Region (Sept. 29, 2009)
- Work plan (July 2000)
- In a former factory town, clean-energy jobs bring hope (July 19, 2009)
- Springboard Engineering wins award (June 4, 2009)
- Jasper
- Newton Development Corporation: Keeping the community together and economically strong (April 2009)
- Rebound of Iowa community offers hope for Janesville (March 29, 2009)
- Iowa's green energy policy struggle (Feb. 6, 2009)
- NDC's economic development work continues despite hard times (February 2009)
- Renewable surge: Washers to windmills (January 2009)
- 2008 news archive
- 2007 news archive
Nov. 13, 2009
Area business owners complete Fast Trac class
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| Front, from left: John Lee of John Lee Photography; Chad Klein of Eye Care Center of Newton; Facilitator Lori Day; Fran Conn of Starnes TV and Appliance; Patti Hayes of Hammer Medical Supply. Back, from left: Lee Cochran of Newton Manufacturing; Dean Ward, volunteer business counselor with SCORE; Tanya Michener of Sign Pro; Brad Magg of Goldie's Ice Cream Shoppe; Pam Weigle of Papa Georgio's; Kathy Dickerson of Dickerson Mechanical; Kurt Brannian of SoyClean; and Harlan Van Whye of Sully Plumbing and Heating. Not pictured: Jessica McMaster of Hammer Medical Supply; facilitator Paul Koeniguer. (photo by Andy Karr, Newton Daily News) |
On Nov. 9, 12 area business owners gathered at the
The Fast Trac Growth Venture class is an eight-week curriculum designed for business owners with a business that’s been established for at least two-three years. This comprehensive program focuses on the specific needs of business owners who want to take a step back, look at the big picture, and work ON their business, not just IN their business. Business owners are challenged to think critically, practice decision-making skills, and ensure all aspects of their business are aligned for long-term sustainability and growth. Participants benefited from non-traditional learning methods and opportunities to network with business peers, business coaches, and guest speakers.
Fast Trac graduate
Lee Cochran,
Fast Trac Growth Venture was offered as a part of the Jasper County Entrepreneurial & Business Support Plan. The next Fast Trac class will be the New Venture class for business owners that have owned their business for one-two years and also for entrepreneurs interested in starting their own business. This class will begin on
Oct. 9, 2009
NDC honors three local businesses
By John Jennings, Newton Daily News
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| Pictured (left to right) are NDC interim Executive Director Frank Liebl; W.B. Jones, Trinity Industries Inc. regional operations manager; Jordan Bruntz, president and CEO of Springboard Engineering; Lee Cochran, president of Newton Manufacturing; and Dick Davidson, NDC Board chairman. (photo by John Jennings, Newton Daily News) |
The Newton Development Corporation hosted its annual Salute to Business and Industry Luncheon Thursday at the Newton Country Club.
Dick Davidson, NDC Chair, gave the opening remarks.
"The NDC is unique in that we're a public/private partnership with the state, county and city," Davidson said.
Following the opening remarks, awards were presented to three Newton businesses.
W.B. Jones, regional operations manager for Trinity Structural Towers, was presented with the New Business Award from the NDC.
Jones said Trinity is a part of a larger, $4 billion corporation, which also manufactures rail cars and couplers, highway guard rails, propane tanks and inland bargers in addition to the wind energy towers.
Trinity's Newton plant is currently at 135 employees, and Jones anticipated employing 165 by the end of the year. The company is manufacturing six 80-meter towers per week, with a capacity for 10 towers per week, and shipments are being made to Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota and Indiana. Jones said it was his second visit to Iowa, and he praised Newton's workers.
"Midwestern folks are great folks," he said. "They have outpaced every performance indicator we have, and they continue to improve."
The Existing Business Award went to Newton Manufacturing Corporation, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. The award was accepted by Newton Manufacturing President Lee Cochran.
"Newton Manufacturing was founded when a need was recognized, an innovative solution was provided, and value was realized by the customer. Throughout our history, this basic but powerful formula has helped the company evolve, grow, overcome, and succeed."
The Jim Tyler Entrepreneurial Award went to Springboard Engineering. Founder, President and CEO Jordan Bruntz accepted the award for Springboard.
"We don't have any huge towers that we can point at to show you what we make," Bruntz said. "We help other businesses." In fact, Springboard works in three different categories to help its clients. Engineering services include mechanical, electrical and software. The company also works in fabrication, creating prototypes for new products, and performs reliability and performance testing for a variety of products.
In addition, Springboard provides other services, including specification writing, custom manufacturing, and serving as expert witnesses.
NDC's interim Executive Director Frank Liebl praised the three companies for their successes the past year and for making Newton a vibrant business community.
Sept. 29, 2009
First Regional EntreBash! Networking Event held in Iowa Innovation Gateway Region
Representatives from more than 29 start-up and existing businesses of the seven-county Iowa Innovation Gateway region came together earlier this month at the first in the state of Iowa regional EntreBash! The event was held at the Grinnell Campus of the
During the networking event, many attendees spoke directly with experienced business counselors who provided referrals to individuals and organizations for assistance with obtaining financing, increasing sales, doing business on the Web, reducing costs, finding new markets and other business services. In addition, those at the event heard directly from Kelly McDonald, a nationally known presenter and small business owner who has made her niche marketing to diverse customers.
Recalling the excitement of the evening, Maureen Collins-Williams, director of the
The Iowa Innovation Gateway regional collaborative organized the event with its local partners (Newton Development Corporation) to help create a culture of entrepreneurism in
For more information, contact Kim Didier, Iowa Innovation Gateway at (641) 791-5132 or Frank Liebl, Newton Development Corporation, at (641) 787-8209.
July 2009
Work plan
By Barry Yeoman, Audubon Magazine
At the edge of a cornfield, inside a sprawling, low-slung brown building, a Midwestern town’s dying economy is humming back to life. Newton, Iowa, population 15,000, was best known as the headquarters of the Maytag Corporation. For 113 years the two names were practically interchangeable. Maytag employed 4,000 local workers at its peak and underwrote many of the town’s athletic and cultural organizations. Factory workers swam in a Maytag pool, sent their kids to college on Maytag scholarships, and spent their union wages at businesses clustered around a neoclassic courthouse. Once a year families descended on leafy Maytag Park to watch the crowning of the Maytag Queen – inside an amphitheater called the Maytag Bowl.
“The town ran around Maytag,” says Jay Barnes, a bandana-wearing 56-year-old with blue eyes and a gray ponytail. “It was the big fish in a small pond.” Barnes spent 24 years assembling washers, dryers, and parts for the company, and his wife cleaned executives’ houses. That was before Maytag was bought by its competitor Whirlpool in 2006. The new owner shut down the Newton factories and offices, eliminating the last 1,800 jobs. Unemployment in the county reached 9.5 percent, the state’s highest. Local businesses began to flounder. Barnes found himself jobless – and “terrified,” he says. He searched for work for six months and learned that “at my age, nobody really wants to hire you.”
But now Barnes builds something closer to his heart than washing machines: resin-and-fiberglass windmill blades, as tall as 10- to 15-story buildings and resembling giant elephant tusks redesigned by a Scandinavian minimalist. With its flat expanses, Iowa is ideally situated for wind power, and the state and Newton have aggressively pursued companies that assemble blades, turbines, and towers. “The blade industry is the future,” says Barnes, who works for TPI Composites. “With the greenhouse effect happening everywhere, only a fool doesn’t see it.”
As the nation’s industrial base contracts – 791,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared in 2008 alone – a growing number of community leaders are hoping to replicate the experience of Newton, where three renewable-energy companies helped stabilize the town’s economy by hiring more than 400 “green-collar” employees. Advocates say that by pursuing environment-friendly policies, the United States will not only chart a more sustainable course, it will also put people back to work.
“The green economy is a more labor-intensive economy,” says Van Jones, founder of Oakland, California-based Green for All, a group that links sustainable environmental policy with the fight against poverty, and now the White House special adviser on green jobs. “You’re relying less on big, dirty, polluting machines and more on beautiful people.” Jones sees opportunities, in particular, in cities and towns like Newton. “Where you have a lot of industrially zoned land and the remnants of an industrial workforce, a great deal of the greening process is about building stuff,” he says. “People talk about energy independence. Well, it’s not energy independence if you go from importing your oil to importing your wind turbines.”
After eight years as political outsiders, green-job advocates like Jones finally have an ally in the White House. President Barack Obama kicked off his administration with a stimulus plan that includes almost $100 million in environmentally beneficial spending and tax breaks. That was just the prelude: Obama’s 2010 budget echoes his campaign call for a 10-year, $150 billion investment in renewable energy, habitat restoration, advanced biofuels, wildlife migration corridors, energy efficiency, and plug-in cars. “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice is between prosperity and decline,” said President Obama when he visited the former Maytag plant in Newton on Earth Day. “We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy.”
In his State of the Union address last February, Obama called on Congress to fund his program with a cap-and-trade system that reduces carbon emissions by auctioning off a shrinking number of pollution credits. He says the revenues from this plan will generate five million new jobs. “We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century,” Obama said during the address. “To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.”
A slew of new research shows that environment-minded strategies really do produce jobs – and that staying the fossil fuel course could eventually bankrupt us. But historically, environmental protection and job creation have been cast as rivals. Policy choices were either-or: Either pass the Kyoto climate treaty or preserve five million jobs. Reduce industrial emissions or keep factories stateside. Save northern spotted owls or save loggers. It’s an ingrained trope in the American political dialogue.
But the past few years have seen a paradigm shift as environmentalists have finally come off the defensive. Backed by new data, they argue that earth-friendly initiatives are the very boost our economy needs, generating jobs while forestalling the cataclysmic upheavals that global warming threatens to bring.
“I don’t think there’s any question that with dependence on foreign oil, climate risk, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and now a meltdown of our financial system, we face enormous economic challenges,” says former California state treasurer Phil Angelides, who heads a labor-business-environmentalist partnership called the Apollo Alliance. “The question is: What’s the driving dream that’s going to propel the American economy in the 21st century? I look at the possibility of creating a green economy as America’s best hope.”
Last September the Apollo Alliance unveiled a $500 billion plan to shift the nation’s energy use toward wind and solar; improve the efficiency of existing power plants; modernize the power grid; build transit systems; develop high-efficiency vehicles; retrofit buildings to conserve fuel; and train workers for the five million jobs the Alliance claims will be created in the process. It’s a more ambitious scheme than Obama has outlined, and Angelides says federal support will be essential. “What’s striking about America,” he says, “is that at critical moments in our history, it’s been national policy that has driven us forward.”
Equally striking is the fact that, with little support from Washington, private-sector endeavors are already taking off. Ford is going to start building new car models at its Michigan Assembly Plant beginning next year. The company plans to make all-electric cars there by 2011.
While metropolitan Portland, Oregon, has lost manufacturing jobs, 65-year-old Oregon Iron Works in nearby Clackamas is building equipment to harness ocean-wave energy and fabricating the first modern-style domestic streetcars. With cities like Washington, D.C., and Portland equipped with streetcars from a Czech company, Oregon Iron Works could compete with them for business in the future. “We’ll be trading European suppliers with U.S. suppliers,” says company vice president Chandra Brown. Both projects are in the prototype stage, but Brown says they will generate union jobs for iron workers, electricians, and machinists that pay about $20 an hour.
In Pipestone, Minnesota, a town that saw its population drop by 10 percent between 1990 and 2007, to about 9,300, publicly owned Juhl Wind has helped local farmers develop their own commercial-scale wind farms. “It takes very little [land] out of ag production,” says CEO Dan Juhl, and “it creates a whole new cash crop called electricity that provides an income stream no matter what happens to the price of other commodities.” In 2006 the Indian company Suzlon built a turbine factory in Pipestone that currently employs 400. Jobs are so plentiful that the company buses in workers from Worthington, an hour away.
Green-collar training programs are cranking up all over. In New Jersey, Newark’s government teamed up with the Laborers International Union of North America to teach fledgling construction workers how to weatherize the city’s post-World War II housing stock. The first 14 trainees, many from a prison reentry program, earned $15 an hour insulating senior citizens’ homes. “We instill in them a sense of giving back to the community,” says Pastor Thomas Reddick, who runs a nonprofit construction company. “The jobs bring financial support, but it’s really about dignity.”
Few people in Newton were thinking green when Whirlpool bought Maytag in 2006. The central Iowa town was rooted in its traditions: butterscotch malts at the Snook Inn (“Since 1939”), nighttime card games at the Rialto Barber Shop, and factories churning out appliances for American homemakers. Maytag jobs were considered as reliable as its washers, and Plan A was to keep those jobs from leaving. “Even though I knew in my gut that the majority of it was going, I still thought there were opportunities to make a business case to stay here – at least some pieces of it,” says Kim Didier, former executive director of the Newton Development Corporation. “Even though you anticipate the call” – announcing a complete pullout – “it still takes your breath away.”
Didier, an athletic 43-year-old with a short haircut and an all-business demeanor, remembers the months after Maytag’s pullout as “gut-wrenching.” Some of her friends moved away to work at Whirlpool’s Michigan headquarters, leaving “the rest of us stuck here, trying to figure out how to make it through.” As the head of a one-person economic-development office, Didier was so overwhelmed by responsibility that at times she felt physically sick.
Still, Didier flew into action, joining with other local leaders to create the Newton Transformation Council. One of their first acts was to hire David Beurle, a rural economic-development specialist from Australia, to help Newtonians rethink their future.
Beurle is tall and mop-haired, with an easy smile and a kinetic presentation style. He arrived in Newton to find a company town in mourning. “You had this enormous culture of dependency,” he says. “There was always a clear pathway for people.” Now that pathway was gone. When 300 people showed up for a Town Hall meeting, Beurle tried to move them past their grief. “The world you’re going into is distinctly and profoundly different from the world you’re coming from,” he said. Yes, that seems “daunting,” he explained, but “it’s also an opportunity.” Beurle described life after Maytag as a maturing process, like a tadpole’s metamorphosis. “What kind of frog do you want to be?” he asked.
As residents discussed possible futures, renewable energy naturally surfaced. Iowa officials had been promoting “energy independence” as a job-creation strategy. A startup firm called Central Iowa Energy had begun hiring former Maytag workers for a plant that would turn vegetable oil and animal fat into biodiesel. Windmills were producing power elsewhere in the state. Add Newton’s pool of skilled manufacturing workers, Beurle says, and “people were able to connect all the dots and say, ‘God, this is a sweet spot here.’”
That day the Newtonians crafted a vision statement that said, in part, “We strive to create systems that fuel the world with renewable energy.” Local officials set off to recruit wind companies.
Meanwhile, TPI Composites, which supplies blades for General Electric turbines, was looking for a domestic manufacturing site. With wind power growing exponentially in the Upper Midwest, it was not cost-effective to ship six-ton blades from its factories in Mexico and China. “Proximity matters,” says the Newton plant’s general manager, Crugar Tuttle. TPI liked Newton’s location and workforce, and government incentives helped clinch the deal.
The facility opened in September 2008: a brightly lit hangar of a building with high ceilings, steel beams, and concrete floors that supervisors traverse on bicycle and tricycle. Working around the clock and weekends in four shifts, workers cut large, silky fiberglass sheets and lay them onto enormous sea-green molds along with resin and glue. The molds are folded shut, heated, cured, and finally sanded and painted. “It’s a craft,” says human resources manager Terri Rock – and indeed the place feels more like an indoor shipyard than a factory. That’s no surprise for a company founded as a boat maker.
For Barnes, the former Maytag employee, working at TPI has meant coming full circle. In the 1970s he installed solar panels and small wind generators, but the timing was wrong and his employer went under. A devotee of Mother Earth News, Barnes waited for a time when renewable energy would become viable. TPI’s arrival, he says, “brought back hopes in my mind that the world’s coming back around.”
One area where TPI does fall short is wages. At $13 to $15 an hour, it doesn’t match the union scale Maytag offered, which typically exceeded $20. Still, the pay is competitive for the county, where entry-level manufacturing wages average $14.39. Plus, working in Newton – rather than Des Moines, 35 miles away – means shorter commutes. “You’re not going to make much more anywhere,” Barnes says. “And you’re going to have to pay that big gas bill.”
TPI now employs 318 Newtonians and expects to reach 500 by year’s end. Another GE contractor, Dallas-based Trinity Structures, has moved into a former Maytag factory in Newton and is staffing up toward 140 employees. Counting the biodiesel plant’s 24 workers, Newton has become something of a green-collar hub.
What’s ironic, says Charles “Chaz” Allen, Newton’s mayor, is that the town never set out to become an environmental leader. “Jobs were our focus,” he says. “TPI and Trinity changed our mindset.” With so many alternative-energy companies nearby, residents have started discussing how they can reduce their own fossil fuel consumption. “We talk about, ‘How do we get a windmill put up in Newton?’” Allen says. “Two years ago we would have never had those discussions.”
Is what’s good for Newton also good for America? Clearly that’s President Obama’s assumption as he focuses much of his job-development efforts on the green-collar sector.
The stack of studies confirming Obama’s thinking grows taller each year. In September researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst forecast that a two-year, $100 billion federal investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency would generate two million jobs “across a broad range of familiar occupations,” including welders, electricians, truckers, and scientists. (The report was co-published by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank.) Clean energy is more labor-intensive than fossil fuels, says Robert Pollin, co-director of the university’s Political Economy Research Institute, and more of those jobs will be in the United States.
Other researchers using different models have arrived at similar conclusions. University of Tennessee agricultural economist Burton English found that extracting one-fourth of the nation’s energy from crops like switchgrass would generate 5.1 million jobs by 2025, most of them in rural communities. Suzanne Tegen, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, looked at Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan and concluded that new wind-power facilities would benefit the states’ economies more than fossil fuel plants. In February, Vice President Joseph Biden’s office released a report saying that green jobs pay 10 to 20 percent more than other jobs of all types – in some cases up to $50 an hour in wages and benefits.
“Green-job creation is not some kind of myth,” says Dan Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s not a small effect. We find that there’s three to five times more jobs generated per dollar invested in green technology than when you do additional fossil fuels. It’s a significant producer of new economic activity.”
Such calculations don’t even factor in the cost of not going green. In 2006 Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist for the World Bank, investigated the consequences of climate change for the British government. He reported that a two- to three-degree Celsius temperature rise could depress global economic output by up to three percent by killing fish, reducing water supplies, lowering crop yields, and displacing people along coastlines. At a five- or six-degree rise –which Stern says “is a real possibility for the next century” –the loss could reach 10 percent. Increases above that “would take us into territory unknown to human experience,” Stern wrote, “and involve radical changes in the world around us.”
Even so, the green future has its skeptics. Last year the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), a business group that favors smaller government, and the National Association of Manufacturers released a study arguing that a shift toward cleaner energy would shave up to 2.7 percent off the gross domestic product and cost up to four million jobs by 2030. “Wind, solar, and biomass are still more expensive than conventional fuel,” says Margo Thorning, the ACCF’s chief economist. Under a green strategy, she says, “the gears of our economy are gummed up by higher energy prices. That means industries that depend highly on energy tend to move, if they can, to countries where they don’t have these kinds of restrictions. You get more jobs in renewables, but you’re going to lose jobs overall because the economy has got a ball and chain around its foot.”
Other economists, though, insist the ACCF’s study is based on a pessimistic view of human behavior. “All of these models freeze the economy and don’t allow for adaptation, innovation, and technological change. So they always spit out horrible results,” says natural resource economist Thomas Power, a professor emeritus at the University of Montana. “They’re defaming market economies and entrepreneurial innovation by acting as if we’re all morons.” Even if the ACCF model holds true, Power notes, it still forecasts rapid growth under all scenarios –“but ever-so-slightly slower growth” with renewables. “The outcome they depict is in no way some sort of economic catastrophe.”
Moving toward a green economy will take steady government commitment, something that until now has been missing. “Let’s face it, the United States was really the leader in most of these technologies in the beginning,” says Marlene O’Sullivan, an industrial engineer at the German Aerospace Center in Stuttgart. “Then it just didn’t make it anywhere because there was no support politically.”
Americans get four percent of their electricity from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal sources. Germany, by contrast, derives more than 10 percent of its electricity from these sources and plans to pass the 25 percent mark by 2020. A “feed-in tariff” allows Germans who generate their own renewable power to sell some of it back to the grid at above-market prices (see “Clean Break,” March-April 2009). The government also underwrites photovoltaic research and provides incentives for companies to locate in financially beleaguered eastern Germany. That has turned the east into a solar hotbed – “a minor Silicon Valley,” says Ulrike Lehr, an economist and physicist at the Institute of Economic Structures Research in Osnabrück.
Feed-in tariffs have now triggered interest in the United States. In Florida the Gainesville Regional Utility implemented the nation’s first tariff, in March, starting with 27 businesses and eight households that use solar energy, according to the Gainesville Sun. Similar schemes are under consideration in states including Michigan, Oregon, California, Hawaii, and Washington.
Perhaps the most critical piece of a clean economic-development strategy is a massive federal investment in research and infrastructure. Green jobs will largely come from the private sector, but currently not all renewable energy is financially competitive with cheap fossil fuels like coal. It will be up to the government to tilt the balance. That’s why green-job advocates eagerly followed President Obama’s stimulus legislation as it progressed through Congress last winter. Many were pleased by the results. By the Center for American Progress’s middle-of-the-road calculation, the $789 billion package includes $71 billion in spending on clean energy projects and $20 billion in tax incentives for projects that benefit the environment. “It is actually the largest single topical component of the stimulus package,” notes Kammen, the Berkeley energy professor. “This in itself is remarkable, and is more than then-candidate Obama called for.”
A good chunk of the money goes to energy efficiency, including $5 billion to weatherize houses, $4.5 billion to renovate federal buildings, and $6.3 billion in grants to state and local governments. The bill also includes $17.7 billion for transit and rail construction, $11 billion to modernize the electric grid, and $6 billion in loan guarantees for renewable-energy projects. It sets aside $500 million for green-job training. It funds research into renewables, efficiency, automobile batteries, and carbon sequestration. Obama says the stimulus will double the nation’s renewable-energy generating capacity over the next three years.
The stimulus bill does not fundamentally change the structure of the market, which favors cheap fossil fuels by failing to put a price on carbon. Obama plugged a cap-and-trade system, which would reverse that equation, during his State of the Union address and again in his budget plan. With Democrats divided by region, the question of whether to auction off greenhouse-gas permits might prove one of the most bracing debates facing Congress.
More likely to pass this year is legislation requiring that a specific share of the country’s electricity come from renewables. “If we are going to make the changes we need, conservation cannot be an act of personal virtue and renewable fuels cannot be luxury alternatives,” said Senator Tom Udall (D-NM), who sponsored one such bill calling for 25 percent by 2025, in a recent floor speech. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates a national mandate like Udall’s would create at least 185,000 jobs.
As the debates unfold, Newton mayor Chaz Allen will be following them closely. With the trio of new businesses, he says, “we’re getting our confidence back.” The transformation, he believes, is hardly finished. “If the federal vision comes to fruition, I think there will be more jobs in Newton than when Maytag was at full song.” Allen imagines not just more windmill manufacturers but also their suppliers, along with solar companies and more biodiesel producers.
“It could be a whole renewable-energy center,” he says. “We can put American people back to work.”
July 19, 2009
In a former factory town, clean-energy jobs bring hope
By Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Staff Writer
Arie Versendaal spent 20 years stamping steel into washing machines at Maytag, following his grandfather and uncle into the factory that provided the ticket to prosperity here for more than a century.
He figured eventually he'd get the traditional "30 and out" plant walk-through that ushered the Maytagger into a generous retirement. Instead, the plant closed for good in October 2007. Versendaal carried his personal tools to his truck, past work boots dangling from the gates.
"I haven't thought about it in two years. When you work someplace like that, the people become family – and a lot of 'em you don't see again," he said, his voice thickening and eyes misting. "It hurts."
But the story didn't end there, for Versendaal or Newton. In April, President Obama flew in to celebrate Newton as a bright spot in the transition to a new industrial economy of clean-energy jobs that his administration wants to encourage – though full recovery in Newton, as in the rest of America, is still a long way off.
Once, Maytag jobs financed the middle-class dream in this former company town about 35 miles east of Des Moines: houses, steaks on the grill, vacations at the lake, college for the kids. Now, Maytag is just a nameplate on appliances made by Whirlpool at factories in Mexico and Ohio.
When the plant closed, a victim of globalization, confidence in a way of life was shattered, an all-too-common occurrence in the manufacturing belt of the Midwest.
Luckily, with the help of state and county tax incentives, Newton attracted two new factories in the burgeoning clean-energy industry.
One, TPI Composites, makes the massive blades for turbines that turn wind into electricity. Nearby, Trinity Structural Towers has retrofitted the old Maytag No. 2 plant, location of the former production line, to build the towers that hold the blades and turbines.
After a time commuting nearly an hour to a job at a heavy-equipment plant, Versendaal, 56, works at TPI as a team leader.
"It's exciting," he said. "Now I'm working on something that could benefit all mankind and make the country more energy-independent. I think wind power is going to be a big thing."
So does Obama. "You are helping to lead the next energy revolution," he told Trinity workers on Earth Day, standing beside a section of tower that looked as big as an old Saturn moon-shot rocket.
The president also acknowledged that it would take more growth to replace the 1,800 jobs that went away when Maytag closed: "I know ... this community is still going through some tough times."
Indeed, county officials estimate that 300 people work at the TPI blade factory, with about 140 employed at the tower plant. The manufacturing jobs pay less than Maytag did – $12 to $15 an hour, versus $17 to $20 plus incentives – but nobody is complaining.
"You learn to cut corners where you can. We haven't had a vacation in a while," Versendaal said. "Money is not everything in life. All you can do is dig in and go on. If you just sit and mope, you can't do nothing."
On the southern edge of town, new hotel rooms are being built, driven by the Iowa Speedway, which opened in 2006 and hosts NASCAR series races. Iowa Telecom moved its headquarters into the abandoned Maytag corporate offices downtown. And many people went back to school or started businesses.
"I call it reinventing the city," said Nancy Watt, 60, the owner of Uncle Nancy's Coffee Shop, an oasis of espresso drinks, pastries, and conversation on the courthouse square. "We were fortunate to have people who didn't wait till the grape fell off the vine to get going, start making plans."
Optimistic but anxious
Iowa went a long way toward making Obama president, with his upset of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses in January 2008.
In the fall, Obama carried Newton and Jasper County handily on his way to capturing the seven electoral votes of Iowa, which has been a swing state in presidential elections.
A recent visit to Newton found many people optimistic about the future – theirs, the town's, and the nation's – but also anxious. TPI announced last week that it would cut 80 temporary employees as it slowed production.
Overall, Obama remains popular in Newton. Some expressed frustration at the slowness of the economic recovery and worry about the growing federal deficit, among other concerns, but most voters interviewed credited his efforts.
Hairstylist Clarice Gilliland said she liked Obama's activist approach to the economy so far and would remain patient.
"It still scares me, what's going to happen, but Obama has a lot of good ideas and goals, and he's on the right track," said Gilliland, 47. "It's going to take some time to get it back in order."
Kevin Tish, 51, a former Maytagger who sells Yellow Pages advertising throughout central Iowa, isn't so sure. "The government is spending too much money," he said. "All the stimulus plans and bailouts. What's happening with the little guy who goes bankrupt? He gets nothing."
Tish was watching his son Brandon play for the Newton Cardinals high school baseball team at Eversman Field. He debated politics with his parents: They support Obama; he voted for John McCain.
"Obama's interested in things that are going on – he's a thinker – and he's not real old," said Earl Tish, 75, Kevin's father. "Plus he's a great talker."
It was a chilly July evening, and many spectators were bundled up in blankets between trips to the concession stand, featuring specials on homemade burritos and spicy pork sandwiches.
Warren Braun, one player's father, took the microphone late in the first game of a doubleheader and led the crowd in "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
He lost his Maytag job in 2006, in one of the periodic cutbacks that preceded the shutdown.
He was making nearly $50,000 a year at Maytag and was unemployed for 14 months before he got a job at the motor-vehicle agency in the county treasurer's office.
His wife, Leslie, works in customer service for a trucking firm. Overall, she said, the family income is half what it was in the Maytag years.
"Honestly, I don't think we'll ever recover, financially," she said.
Warren, 49, said he has made peace with what happened and enjoys life. "You can give up," he said, "or you can get up in the morning and do what you have to do."
Company's lasting legacy
Maytag's decline played out over a long time, as foreign competition flooded the United States with cheaper washers and dryers, and big-box stores elbowed aside Maytag's traditional dealer structure.
"Getting those two new plants was huge," said Mayor Chaz Allen. "We didn't have to turn out the lights and give up, like a lot of people thought."
It took about $10.5 million in incentives from the state, county, and city governments, said Craig Hamilton, executive director of the Jasper County Economic Development Corp. He estimated that the two plants, the racetrack, and smaller projects have created 900 jobs in the 21 months since Maytag closed.
Reminders of Maytag abound: Maytag Park, the Fred Maytag Pool, and the Maytag Bowl, a music amphitheater. The family still runs Maytag Farms, a dairy operation, and its foundation supports local charities.
"The saying is these people bleed blue, and it's still true," Allen said. "Maytag is Newton, and Newton is Maytag."
Making adjustments
On the shelves of Varieties, a consignment gift shop downtown, a large selection of Maytag memorabilia is for sale, including statues of Ol' Lonely, the iconic repairman who had nothing to do because Maytag appliances were so reliable.
After the plant closed, many people wanted to dump reminders of the company, Susan Miller said.
"I kept my stuff," she said. "I'm not sure why. I think it was just sentimental. I don't have any ill feeling. Well, I did, but now I don't. You have to move on with your life."
She worked at Maytag for 20 years, moving 18,000- to 25,000- pound coils of steel around the plant on forklifts, making $20 an hour at the end. Now she earns $7.25 an hour at Varieties, a side business started by her former Maytag colleague Versendaal.
Times are tight for Miller, 60, and her husband, who took early retirement from Maytag in 1992 and learned upholstery, "the smartest thing he ever did." He gets a $1,400-a-month pension, but the company no longer provides 100 percent insurance to its retirees. Now, Miller said, the couple pay $340 a month in premiums. She has osteoarthritis from the years of factory work, and takes stomach and heart medication.
"Our coverage is better than most people's, but it's tough on a limited income like we are," said Miller.
'Blue-collar tsunami'
Bill Sellers parked his black pickup in front of the 100-year-old Jasper County courthouse, with a golden Lab puppy tied up in the bed. He had driven in from the nearby hamlet of Monroe. "Government's got too much control," said Sellers, 61, a long-haul trucker who owns his rig. "I like Reaganomics – less for the government, more for the people."
Doug Bishop, on the other hand, sees the value of government programs. A third-generation Maytagger and United Auto Workers union representative, Bishop took eight months of community college classes in accounting with federal grant money for workers displaced by global trade.
Bishop got an entry-level position in the county treasurer's office. Eventually, he won election to the top job.
"We got caught up in the blue-collar tsunami," he said. "You can't compete against people who will work virtually for free. You just can't."
But Bishop remains optimistic about Newton. "We're all about the green jobs," he said. "Clean energy is the future."
Down on their luck
To Melissa Mason, the middle class sometimes seems out of reach as she staffs the night shift at the Git-n-Go convenience store on the west side of Newton. Mason spent five years at Iowa Telecom, in the billing department, but was laid off last year when the company automated her job.
"I lost my home, my jeep. I lost my dignity," said Mason, who now lives with a friend. She was making $35,000 a year, and hopes to earn $18,000 this year at Git-n-Go.
"I'm 45 years old, with no retirement, no benefits. Nothing," she said. "I make $8.25 an hour as the assistant manager." She sighed. "You gotta do what you gotta do."
A New Jersey native who moved to Iowa for a job 25 years ago, Mason feels at home in Newton, where most people are scratching to survive.
"One blessing is I have good friends," she said. "There are really good people in this town. It seems like we've all been through worse times."
One of the regulars, a young man named Ryan, came in and bought a pile of scratch-off lottery tickets, bending over to scrape them off right on the counter. As the line of customers waiting to pay backed up behind him, she persuaded him to move to the drink counter.
He worked his way through the cards, hunched over, the gray scratch-off material flying like metal shavings.
As for Obama and what is happening in Washington, Mason finds it mostly irrelevant to her life. She believes that "big-dollar people" will continue to get ahead.
"I know he cares about people, and he's trying," Mason said of Obama. "But I haven't seen anything yet."
She said she wanted to better herself, maybe own a business someday. "I have a degree in interior design," Mason said.
"I have a degree in lottery stupidity," said Ryan, looking up from his cards.
June 4, 2009
Springboard Engineering wins award
Adapting, learning and reinventing are concepts familiar to the employees at Newton-based Springboard Engineering. That spirit drives their success and has led them to be named Renew Rural Iowa Entrepreneur of the Month, awarded by Iowa Farm Bureau Federation (IFBF).
Springboard Engineering was brought to life when another Newton-based company, Maytag, closed its doors. Jordan Bruntz, Springboard Engineering president, was among several engineers working to develop small appliances and equipment for Maytag when Whirpool bought out the company and offered him a job in their new facility half-way across the country. But moving did not interest Bruntz or many of the engineers he worked with.
“Many including myself thought, ‘Wow, I don’t want to leave Iowa ... can we do something else?’” Bruntz said.
Springboard Engineering was born.
Bruntz and his fellow engineers learned how to apply their skills to more than laundry and other appliances. The company now provides services, including concept creation, engineering, prototyping and production start-ups to upwards of 50 different unique clients around the globe. Their clients specialize in everything from agriculture and medical equipment to alternative energy and music.
“We certainly enjoyed our heritage with home appliances, but to see that transfer into so many other products is exciting,” Bruntz said.
Renew Rural Iowa is pleased to tout a business that is leading the way for rural Iowa, said Sandy Ehrig, IFBF economic development administrator.
“Springboard Engineering truly is a story of renewal,” she said. “Here is a group of people who believe so much in their community that they are willing to start over with their careers so they can stay and make their local business climate stronger and more vibrant.”
To learn more about Iowa Farm Bureau’s Renew Rural Iowa, visit www.renewruraliowa.com.
May 6, 2009
Jasper
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| Front row: (from left) Sharon Mabie, Phyllis McDonald, Lori Gowdy and Sandy Van Zee. Second row: Nathan Bennett, Charlotte Phillips, Toni Werden, Gayle Kingery and Jen Timmins. Back row, from left, Martin Kunkel, Andy Elbert, Robert Claypool, Ron McCarthy, Jeff Maki, Jamie Grout and Adam Otto. (photo by Andy Karr, Newton Daily News) |
On April 28, 16 Jasper County residents gathered at the Newton DMACC campus as they had for the previous seven weeks to attend the Leader Development Program designed to help all Jasper County residents develop individual leadership skills to more effectively participate in community leadership opportunities with government and organizations throughout Jasper County.
The leadership students graduated from the most recent Jasper County Community Leader Development Program offered through a partnership of the Newton Development Corporation, DMACC, Jasper Community Foundation, Jasper County Economic Development Corporation, Iowa State University Extension, City of Newton, Newton Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Greater Newton Area Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Jasper County. Community and business leaders hosted a graduation reception in their honor.
The Jasper County Community Leader Development Program is an eight-week curriculum that allows Jasper County residents to develop their leadership skills and gain confidence that will serve them well as they make a difference in their community and workplace.
Don Broshar with Iowa State University Extension, and Buzz Hoffman with DMACC conducted the training.
Dan Skokan, chair of the Jasper Community Foundation, announced, “We were excited to partner in this leadership training opportunity as the Foundation provided a 50 percent tuition reimbursement to the 16 graduates who successfully completed the program by meeting the attendance and training requirements. Our board is committed to building leadership capacity in Jasper County.”
Jasper County Community Leaders Development Program was offered as a part of the Jasper County Entrepreneurial & Business Support Plan. The next Leadership Development Program is slated for Spring 2010.
April 2009
Newton Development Corporation: Keeping the community together and economically strong
By Michael Watkins, IA Biz Special Edition Magazine – Best of
More than three years ago when the Whirlpool Corporation bought Maytag and announced its departure from the Newton community, the town's business and civic leaders chose to be proactive.
Rather than prepare for the worst – Maytag employed more than 3,900 at its highest capacity in a town of more than 15,000 residents – the town, led by the Newton Development Corporation, immediately circled the wagons and put together a plan to keep the community together and economically strong.
"We tried to prepare as well as we could ahead of time, and we went through the normal grieving process before admitting we couldn't control what was happening, but we could control where we were going from that point," says Kim Didier, the former executive director who left in December to lead the implementation of the seven-county Regional Economic Development Strategic Plan.
The plan was developed with the support of a Regional Innovation Grant (RIGS). "There are still some people hurting, but we gave everyone an opportunity to participate and put their energy into something practical," says Didier. The result of the plan was a strategy to find buyers for the Maytag corporate headquarters and manufacturing facilities, as well as to lure new employers into the community while continuing to develop and support area businesses and entrepreneurs.
A strong selling point for Newton is the highly skilled labor force available, largely due to the nature of the work done at Maytag. Most Maytag employers found work in neighboring communities or in Newton because of their high skill levels and ability to adapt to new jobs.
"Our people and our great quality of life are just a couple of things that make Newton so attractive to new businesses, plus we have lots of room for growth and expansion," says Frank Liebl, a longtime board member who is filling in as the interim director of the organization. "When Maytag left, people were writing our epitaph, but we developed a plan to reorganize, refocus, redistribute and reinvest in ourselves."
Over the past year, Newton has welcomed TPI Composites, a company that builds the enormous blades for wind turbines and employs 300, with growth potential to 500 by next year, and Trinity Towers, which builds the tower components for wind turbines and is ramping up to 140 employees by year's end.
Iowa Telecom, already headquartered in Newton, consolidated its employees by purchasing the Maytag corporate building and then leased space in the building to Caleris, an information technology company that specializes in corporate IT and helpdesk services, for a new call center.
Whirlpool transferred two Maytag plant buildings to Des Moines Community College campus in Newton. In cooperation with the school districts in Jasper County, these buildings will house the college's career academy classes.
Other community and civic ventures supported by the Newton Development Corporation that have brought life to the town and the region include the Iowa Speedway, which welcomes nearly 250,000 visitors each year, a New Center for Artists, supporting entrepreneurial artists, and the revitalization and renovation of Fred Maytag Park.
March 29, 2009
Rebound of Iowa community offers hope for Janesville
By Jim Leute, The Janesville Gazette
The similarities between Newton, Iowa, and Janesville are eerie.
For decades, the biggest employer in town supported a middle-class lifestyle for thousands of workers and their families.
Then, the unthinkable: The employer shuttered its operation and left workers on the short side of a generous “30 and out” contract that paid full pensions and benefits.
Other local businesses suffered as well.
Economic gloom cast a shadow over town.
But in the 18 months since Whirlpool slammed the lid on “Washer Town USA,” Newton has done what Janesville and other communities dream about.
The central Iowa city of 16,000 has added nearly 1,000 jobs, many of them in the emerging alternative fuel industry. Many jobs involve workers from Maytag, a company and appliance brand that became synonymous with Newton after starting 113 years earlier as a farm implement manufacturer.
After a short courtship, Whirlpool bought Maytag and announced in May 2006 that it would move the Newton operations to other states. The consolidation put 1,800 workers out of work by October 2007.
“When that announcement was made, we got lots of letters to the editor saying that Newton would be a ghost town,” recalled Andy Karr, editor at the Newton Daily News.
Thanks to a regional approach to economic development and a healthy dose of good timing, Newton has survived.
Wind beneath its wings
TPI Composites and Trinity Structural Towers now call Newton home. The two manufacturers of wind energy components came to Newton with their eyes on a portion of Maytag’s 2.6 million-square-foot plant on the north side of town.
The space didn’t work for TPI, which makes massive blades for wind turbines. With $6 million in state incentives, TPI instead built a 320,000-square-foot plant nearby and employs 350 people, many of them former Maytaggers.
The company is adding workers weekly as it marches toward its goal of 500 by 2010.
Trinity’s 70 workers started building turbine towers a week after Whirlpool vacated the facility. It expects to eventually employ 140.
Iowa Telecom, the state’s second-largest telecommunications provider, bought the older Maytag plant, a 1 million-square-foot downtown facility that most recently served as Maytag’s corporate headquarters and training facility.
The company created 150 new jobs in Newton. It leases space to Caleris, a company that specializes in outsourcing business services.
Caleris offers 24-hour technical support, inbound call center services, content and Web site moderation and ISP tech support. Its 150 workers include former Maytag employees. They serve more than 100 clients – Microsoft and Rubbermaid included – under the motto of “Outsource to Iowa, not to India.”
Newton rests comfortably on its location and Midwestern work ethic and values.
"Part of our advantage in going through the loss of Maytag was that there was a brand recognition around Maytag that went far beyond this city,” said Kim Didier, the former executive director of the Newton Development Corp. “It was quality and dependability, Mom and apple pie.”
Way, wages of life
A childhood in Newton meant a strong likelihood of a career working for the Maytag family, whose corporate citizenship is widely apparent.
Fred Maytag paved streets and built buildings. Maytag Park is home to the Fred Maytag Bowl, the Fred Maytag Pool and the Maytag Park Disc Golf Course.
"There were two tracks to Maytag,” Didier said. “Some kids knew that if all they did was finish high school, or maybe even not finish, they could get a job on the floor at 18 and retire at 48 with a full pension and benefits and start a second career.”
With hourly wages between $20 and $25, production workers could lead a substantial middle class life.
Others, she said, went off to college for degrees in engineering or marketing. They returned to Newton and an even higher standard of living.
But what created stability in Newton also put the community in a dangerous position.
"Because of the wages Maytag was paying, it was hard to grow the community,” said Frank Liebl, the development corp.’s interim director. “The population has never really changed.”
Outside companies routinely looked at Newton, a city selling its prized location and workforce.
But those companies continued down the road when they learned of Maytag’s wage scale.
"For lack of better terminology, for many years we were a one-horse town here,” Liebl said.
Maytag’s wages also created pressure for existing businesses.
Didier saw that firsthand when she came to town in 1999 as an assistant city manager. She heard the talk that she’d taken the city job and would later move on to a better paying job at Maytag.
Didier did move on, although she said she joined Maytag for other reasons. She eventually left Maytag for the development corporation and now works with the Iowa Association of Business & Industry.
"The wage structure was certainly in everyone’s thought process,” she said. “Since Maytag left, we have been somewhat successful in retaining a lot of that talent and converting it to other companies in the community.”
Because state incentives were involved, TPI and Trinity pay starting salaries of $13.40 plus benefits. The average wage at the new companies is about $18 an hour.
Caleris, the call center company, pays wages competitive with Maytag’s call center.
"There were certainly people who were making way more than that,” Liebl said. “It was tough for them to come down, but there are plenty of people who are grateful to have a job.”
Karr, the newspaper editor, said many former Maytag workers have landed good jobs in Newton and nearby towns. Many others, he said, have launched their own businesses.
"There have been people who haven’t been successful or who just left town,” he said. “But there are a lot of resourceful people around here.
"Times are still tough, but Newton is doing better than it probably should be.”
Challenges linger
Didier was shocked to learn that the county’s recent unemployment rate was 9.2 percent, just shy of the high-water mark recorded right after Maytag’s closing.
Only four other Iowa counties had higher rates.
The unemployment number reflects layoffs at companies in the region and not necessarily in Newton or Jasper County, Didier said. Unemployment claims are based on where a person lives, not where he or she works.
"Economic development is now regional, and the workforce is regional,” she said. “A lot of people who want to stay living in this community have been able to find jobs elsewhere in the region within a 30-minute commute.”
Last July, the county’s unemployment rate dipped to 6.8 percent.
Didier and Liebl shudder when asked what the local unemployment rate would be if TPI, Trinity, Iowa Telecom and Caleris hadn’t created nearly 1,000 jobs in Newton.
"We say that Newton hit the lottery when we landed TPI and Trinity,” Liebl said. “Then you look at the other people who stepped in – Iowa Telecom and Caleris.
"The alternative picture is very bleak. We’re not out of this crisis yet, but we’ve been very fortunate.”
Didier is more blunt.
"Not to be callous, but we’d be right where (Janesville) is,” she said. “That’s the toughest situation because everyone’s going through it. We had the luxury of being the first and moving through it when the competition for new companies was less.
"Now, we would be in an incredible amount of world of hurt. You never wish it upon yourself, but we were so fortunate that it happened to us when it did.”
* * * * * * * * * *
News that Whirlpool would close its Maytag operations in Newton reached Scott Griffith’s home before he did.
"I walked in, and everyone was crying, and one kid was throwing up,” recalled Griffith, an engineer with 22 years at Maytag.
Griffith’s family is happy these days.
Dad is one of 41 former Maytag employees working at Springboard Engineering, a company that engineers, prototypes and tests products for a growing list of customers.
Springboard is the brainchild of Jordan Bruntz, a 20-year Maytag engineer who couldn’t fathom leaving Newton for another job.
Whirlpool bought Maytag and announced in May 2006 that it would move Newton operations to other states. The consolidation put 1,800 workers out of work by October 2007.
Springboard still does work for Whirlpool, but it does so from a former Kmart on the east end of Newton.
"We had 140 to 150 engineers at the height of our grandeur, but Whirlpool had capacity issues and decided to close us,” Bruntz said. “We still were doing a lot of work, and engineering is engineering.”
But start-up engineering firms and Newton haven’t historically gone hand-in-hand.
While Whirlpool ramped down its operations, Bruntz and his partners ramped up their business plan. It was panned in the business and banking communities.
"They said we didn’t know what we were doing,” Bruntz said. “But we did; it’s what we had been doing. The business is similar, but now we have more than one customer.”
Community leaders are grateful that Springboard was able to keep high-paying jobs in Newton. Springboard’s wages are just short of those paid to Maytag engineers, but they’re still the highest in the county.
Bruntz is quick to point out Whirlpool’s significance in the start-up of his company.
"It’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “If it weren’t for the Whirlpool connection and opportunity for work, we would have never done this.
“But it was also Whirlpool that pushed us to the edge of the cliff. You had to jump, but the jump was easier with the courage that was thrust upon us.”
Until the day Whirlpool closed, Bruntz and Griffith had coworkers who couldn’t accept the fact that their company was shutting its doors.
“They said it couldn’t happen to a company that had been in the community that long,” Bruntz said. “There was a cloak of security that had enveloped everyone that the company would never go away.
“Well, it went away.”
That cloak doesn’t exist at Springboard.
“We’ve been successful, and I’m optimistic, especially because we were able to start this business in this business climate,” he said. “But our eyes are open here.”
Outsource to Iowa
Judy Stevens sits in a small conference room and describes her job with Caleris as a lifesaver.
A self-described “older person,” Stevens lost her job when Whirlpool closed its Maytag call center.
She and Angela Nichol, however, were the first two employees hired when Caleris opened an office in Newton.
Caleris offers 24-hour technical support, inbound call center services, content and Web site moderation and ISP tech support. Its motto is that its call center help is available in Iowa, not India.
Stevens and Nichol literally walked across the floor to their new office, which Iowa Telecom bought from Whirlpool. Iowa Telecom, the second-largest telecommunications provider in Iowa, runs its business from the building and leases space to Caleris.
“I wanted to set some boundaries on how I worked,” said Stevens, who worked seven years at Maytag and now is Caleris’ corporate trainer. “Time in the community is important to me, as is time with my grandchildren.
“I needed to find something that would allow me to serve and be a part of my the community.”
Stevens and her colleagues are serving more than their immediate community. One of Caleris’ jobs is to monitor content on the photobucket.com Web site. They’ve tipped off authorities and helped send child pornographers to prison.
One guy got a 1,000-year sentence, Stevens said proudly.
“Our people are certainly offended by what they sometimes have to see, but they really feel good about helping to clean it up,” she said.
Since opening two years ago, Caleris has grown to serve a diverse client base. It now employs 150, some of them former Maytag workers.
“I’d like to be able to hire them all,” said Nichol, who manages the Newton operation. “But Caleris is a business, not a charity, and sometimes the skill sets just don’t line up.
“Maytag’s closing was a real dark time. You see your friends and neighbors suffering, and we felt guilty. We were quite fortunate.”
The waiting list for jobs is long. The pay and benefits are comparable to Maytag’s package.
“We are very diversified in our client base, which is wonderful,” Nichol said. “When we lose a business, we always seem to have others that come on board.
“We hope to keep growing in Newton, but today’s economy is tough. I’m confident, though, that we won’t get smaller.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Kim Didier describes Whirlpool’s decision to close its plants in Newton, Iowa, as a point-blank shot to the community’s head.
Quick and painful but survivable, she said.
Whirlpool announced in 2006 that it would close the former Maytag operations in Newton the following year. Nearly 2,000 jobs would be lost.
Community leaders formed a retention committee to try to keep portions of the Whirlpool business in Newton.
The retention group structured itself so that it could immediately turn its focus to charting the community’s course without Whirlpool.
It rallied leaders, resources and the community.
A community meeting four months after Whirlpool’s announcement produced a vision statement charting Newton’s future as a “center of excellence with world-class education, technology, research and development and an innate culture of entrepreneurship.”
“What we said at that meeting was that we can’t control what happened to us, but we can control how we respond,” said Didier, who at the time was running the Newton Economic Development Corp. “Our sense of uncertainty is gone. Now we can move forward.”
In the short term, the leadership group developed strategies to help people with training, education and entrepreneurial opportunities.
It successfully focused on getting local control of the massive Maytag buildings, two of which were donated to the local Des Moines Area Community College for vocational and technical training programs.
“The people and the buildings were incredible assets that provided value to our community,” Didier said. “We didn’t want them sitting around like a huge vacuum that would suck the morale out.”
Leaders quickly adopted a regional approach to economic development. They marketed the resources of a seven-county area.
“The fact that labor markets are regional markets is clearly evidenced by the fact that many of the 1,800 former Maytag employees have been able to find employment in the central Iowa region,” Didier said. “On the flip side, many of the new companies that we have recruited to Newton are employing individuals from all over the region.”
Didier said education, workforce and economic development resources were realigned to support the regional workforce.
“Regions that demonstrate the ability to develop a constant stream of talented people that can transform new ideas and new knowledge into advanced, high-quality products and services will always succeed,” she said.
The concept of regional economic development was relatively new in Iowa.
“Maytag didn’t just employ Newton residents,” she said. “The labor force is regional, so the resources that we were going to need to get through didn’t just reside here.”
Economic development, education and government structures historically are parochial, she said. The folks in Newton spent too much time worrying about beating the town 16 miles away on the football field and in the economic development arena.
“We never really had to recruit any businesses to Newton because we had such low unemployment,” said Frank Liebl, director of the Newton Development Corp. “Now, companies want to know what the region offers, not what Newton offers.”
The Newton area received $1 million from the U.S. Department of Labor, spawning the Regional Innovation Grant program.
Didier admits the region had timing on its side.
The state was pushing growth in alternative fuels and wind energy.
When TPI Composites and Trinity Structural Towers were looking at production sites, Newton had the buildings and workforce that would make shipments of the massive products much more cost efficient than production sites in Mexico.
“Everything really came together for us,” Didier said. “Even before Maytag shut down, we started on some projects that fortunately came to fruition at the right time.”
One of those, the Iowa Speedway, emerged from cornfields just across Interstate 80 from downtown Newton. The $70 million raceway opened in September 2006 and has created a significant tourism industry.
With grandstand and suite seating for 30,000, the speedway attracted 39,000 people for an Indy Car race in 2007. Season ticket sales have jumped from 5,000 to 20,000.
“As Maytag was singing its swan song, we were getting ready to open,” said Craig Armstrong, the speedway’s general manager. “People had something to look forward to, they didn’t have long to mourn.”
Armstrong said the investment showed that the Newton area was someplace special. He routinely welcomes executives from companies considering relocation to the Newton area.
And they’re always impressed, he said.
“Everyone’s offering TIFs, credits and other tax abatements, but not everyone has a $70 million motor sports facility,” he said. “I think it’s a magic bullet in the gun that also includes a stable population and an educated workforce.”
Newton’s easy work is done, Didier said, but tough questions remain.
Why are some people being turned away from the new jobs?
What can be done to improve training and education programs so the area has a larger talent base?
What quality of life improvements will make it easier to recruit new talent to central Iowa?
“The work we’re doing now is focused on systematic changes that take a long time,” Didier said. “But clearly, we are in a better place right now than we were four years ago because of the diversification.”
Feb. 6, 2009
Iowa's green energy policy struggle
By Scott Simon, BBC News, Iowa
The presence of prairie winds and rich soil makes Iowa literally fertile ground for developing alternative energy sources from wind turbines and biofuels.
But the landscape is also a reminder that achieving energy independence is a formidable challenge and making an agricultural economy green is not easy.
Farm workers cannot take subways to work, farmers have to drive long distances into the fields to sow and harvest their crops and to deliver them to markets.
Farm animals themselves, not to put too fine a point on it, produce methane – a powerful greenhouse gas – that is trapped in the atmosphere.
Those challenges have not stopped the state setting itself ambitious goals.
Energy pioneers
The Iowa Climate Change Advisory Panel recently wrote a report for Governor Chet Culver setting out how the state can reduce carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2030.
The state has set up an Office of Energy Independence – surely the perfect place, I thought, to test how easy it will be for President Obama to achieve energy independence for the whole of America.
There are plenty of energy pioneers to be found in Iowa.
Roger Neuberger, a farmer, lives near Clear Lake in the northwest part of the state – where the wind blows hardest.
He gets money from an energy company each year for making room for two wind turbines on his land.
Mr. Neuberger has promised the energy company that he will not publicly reveal how much he is being paid, but other farmers have let it be known that, depending on when their contracts were signed, they can receive somewhere between $2,000 and $4,000 per turbine every year for the next 30 years.
Mr. Neuberger is very happy, if rather modest about his role at the new frontier.
Asked if he felt like a pioneer, he replied: "Yeah, I suppose so."
"There were a number of farmers who didn't want to do this because they didn't understand – they were concerned how they were going to be treated. We've been treated wonderful. I couldn't ask for anything better."
Foreign oil
Iowa hopes that wind energy will deliver more than just electricity – and that investment in wind technology will help to transform towns depressed by unemployment.
Towns like Newton, which is just to the east of the capital, Des Moines.
Nearly 2,000 people lost their jobs in Newton when the town's biggest employer, Whirlpool, shut its doors in 2007.
Hundreds of those same workers, who once made washing machine parts, now make blades for wind turbines at the TPI factory.
But the jobs did not come cheap.
The state gave the manufacturer $6m in subsidies and tax breaks – in return the company promised to hire 500 people.
Larry Crady worked at Whirlpool for 23 years, making coin-operated laundry machines.
"It just wows you when you see a blade open and close," Larry says. "When you pull that blade out of the mold it's exciting, I feel like I'm doing something more than just building a washing machine, I'm building something for everyone to capitalize on."
Mr Crady's sense of wonder is understandable – the plant certainly has the "wow" factor.
The turbine blades are as long as a 747 jet and the factory is longer than an aircraft carrier.
It is fitting, then, that – according to the plant's manager – so many of those that work there feel that making the blades is as much about national security as it is about electricity.
"A lot of us in this company and in wind energy have a sense of calling to this," Crugar Tuttle says. "I think in the interview process it comes out with a lot of our veterans that this is about weaning us off foreign oil."
But wind energy is a long way from delivering independence for Iowa any time soon.
It provides just 8 percent of Iowa's energy needs.
If it is to go any way towards making the rest of the country energy independent, a distribution grid would be needed.
Controversial
President Obama has promised to invest $150 billion in renewable energy over the next 10 years.
He hopes to increase dramatically the contribution that wind, solar and other renewable sources can make to the country's energy supply.
According to current projections, renewables will still be providing only 8 percent of the country's energy supply 20 years from now.
Certainly, energy independence will not be possible without replacing the foreign petrol used in cars.
Many Iowans think the solution is biofuels (as do most presidential candidates – albeit only while they are campaigning in the crucial Iowa caucuses).
Refineries across the state produce 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year – enough to replace 10 percent of the petrol in America's cars.
But biofuels are controversial.
A UN report says they drive up the price of food.
And is ethanol really clean?
We visited POET's ethanol plant in Hanlontown in the northern part of Iowa.
The plant, like most in the state, is powered by fossil fuels.
I spoke to POET's Vice President for Project Development, Larry Ward.
He insists that despite the use of natural gas in the production of ethanol, it is a good bargain.
"There's a tremendous net gain from an energy standpoint. Using natural gas to produce ethanol you have a gain – for every unit of energy you put into the plant you get two units of energy out."
The trouble is, many of Iowa's ethanol refineries use coal – the dirtiest fuel of all.
It is one of the reasons why Iowa will soon be building another coal-fired power plant.
More than half of all the electricity produced by the new plant is expected to be used to fuel the state's ethanol refineries.
King coal
Another problem is that Iowa gets very cold in winter.
How many Americans would risk living in a place where January temperatures hover around -18F, if they had to rely on sun or wind power for heat?
What happens when the sun goes down and the wind dies?
That is why, despite the push for ethanol and wind power, coal is still king when it comes to powering Iowa.
It currently provides 85 percent of the state's energy needs.
Phil Wyse, a state representative for 22 years, believes Iowa and America need nuclear power.
"We need sources of power that are constant and don't rely on things like whether the wind's blowing or the sun's shining," he says.
"Alternative to coal? Nuclear more in the mix."
Despite all the wind energy and ethanol Iowa strives to produce, carbon emissions are still growing here – and they are 1 percent higher than the average for the whole of the US.
Iowa may have much to show the rest of America about green energy – including how hard it will be to make America energy independent.
February 2009
NDC's economic development work continues despite hard times
by Jessica Lowe, Newton Daily News (Progress edition)
Schematics of the Maytag Bowl project and the multi-million dollar Synergy project lean against the walls and filing cabinets, articles from newspapers around the country fill bulletin boards, fliers talk of upcoming classes and seminars. When visiting the Newton Development Corporation, it's easy to see they've been busy.
Although the NDC has experienced a few changes with the departure of long-time executive director Kim Didier in January (Didier left to take a position with the Iowa
Association of Business and Industry to help spur regional economic development), one thing hasn't changed – the NDC's mission to help promote existing businesses and encourage economic development in the community.
"Our role in the community can change as needed ... but our biggest job is to try and bring quality jobs to the community and improve the quality of life in Newton," said Frank Liebl, interim NDC executive director.
To kick off 2009 and help create jobs, Liebl said the NDC recently completed the Synchronist Business Retention survey of all advanced manufacturers in Jasper County to identify everything from the business' strengths and weaknesses, needs and desires and overall views of the community.
Liebl said the survey included a four-page questionnaire that was completed by the CEO or president of the company. Once the questionnaire was completed, NDC officials visited each business for a 45 to 60 minute tour and interview.
The local survey results will be compiled on a secure site at the end of February along with surveys conducted in Poweshiek, Tama, Marshall, Mahaska, Marion and Story counties. Once the information is compiled, Liebl said it can be used to help identify "red flags" that the NDC and other agencies can help assist a company with.
"If they need more skilled machinists, we can go to a community college and say, 'Hey, we need more machinists,'" said Liebl of an example how the survey can help.
The survey results will be available at the end of the month and Liebl said it will be an asset when working with existing companies.
"It's a really valuable tool," he said. "Eighty percent of our growth will come from existing companies."
With or without the survey results, the NDC has been successful in its endeavors to create more jobs in Newton. In 2008, NDC, along with local, state and federal entities nabbed two major wind energy companies – TPI Composites and Trinity Structural Towers.
"To land two companies who will employ that many people and be part of the wind energy move, that's a big coup for us and our region," he said.
Along with the wind energy companies, two new companies, Caleris and Springboard Engineering, and Newton-based Iowa Telecom brought in new jobs when they moved into their new corporate headquarters in the former Maytag headquarters building.
"Show me another community that added 1,000 new jobs in 2008," said Liebl. "It's unreal."
Although more jobs have been created, Liebl isn't resting on the NDC's laurels. He said the NDC continues to work with would-be business owners and existing owners through the entrepreneurial assistance programs available to Newton and Jasper County residents.
Among the programs offered are the Fast Trac and Fast Trac-Growth courses, SCORE business counseling sessions, small business workshops and Entre Bash!
"We continue our work with entrepreneurs and small businesses," he said. "It seemed like when people left Maytag they wanted to start a new career but didn't know where to turn to. We offered that place with SCORE and all the workshops and classes like Fast Trac that we offered."
Liebl said he hopes existing business owners realize that NDC is here for them, too.
"We're a good resource for anyone, even the people who've been in business three, four or five years," he said. "We are here to help."
January 2009
Renewable surge: Washers to windmills (excerpt)
by John W. McCurry, Site Selection magazine
The burgeoning renewable energy sector is poised for major expansion in the U.S., with numerous leading manufacturers of components for wind turbines and solar cells at various stages of development. Manufacturing clusters are taking shape in several states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa and Oregon.
Wind turbine manufacturing investment was especially robust in 2008. The American Wind Energy Association released a report in October that tallied the opening of eight new wind turbine component manufacturing facilities, expansion of nine others and the announcement of another 19. AWEA estimates the share of domestically made components in wind turbines has risen from about 30 percent in 2005 to 50 percent today. The new facilities will create an estimated 9,000 jobs.
Manufacturers of wind towers, wind turbine blades and nacelles (the turbine housing units that sit atop the tower and contain key components like the gearbox, generator and transformer) are investing heavily in the windy regions of the U.S. Most of the leading companies are based in Europe, but are quickly increasing their presence in North America, which is viewed as the world's most promising market.
Newton, Iowa, a town of 16,000 about 35 miles (56 km.) northeast of Des Moines, rapidly emerged as a center of wind equipment manufacturing during 2008. It's a big change for Newton, the former headquarters of the Maytag Corp., once the area's largest employer. When Whirlpool acquired Maytag in 2006, 1,800 people were put out of work. It also made about 1.9 million sq. ft. (176,510 sq. m.) of manufacturing space available.
Trinity Structural Towers took 300,000 sq. ft. (27,870 sq. m.) for a wind turbine tower plant that will create 140 jobs.
Newton's gust of momentum continued in September when TPI Composites opened its 316,000-sq.-ft. (29,356-sq.-m) wind blade factory not far from the old Maytag site. TPI plans to eventually employ 500.
Wind equipment manufacturing is a natural for Iowa, which ranks fourth among states in wind energy generation. More manufacturers could come to Newton, possibly in more former Maytag space.
"The fact that the Maytag facility is so large [means] it's a natural fit," says Kim Didier executive director of the Newton Development Corp. "It provided a turnkey solution."
Didier says her organization is recruiting suppliers of Trinity and TPI. She says the two companies, which will replace 1,000 to 1,100 of the lost Maytag jobs within three years, have hired many of the former Maytag employees. Many of the skills used in the production of washers and dryers at Maytag are transferable to wind equipment manufacturing, she says.
Newton, Iowa 50208
(P) 641-787-8209
(F) 641-787-8211
frankliebl.ndc@gmail.com
