2008 news archive

Nov. 1, 2008
A splash of green for the rust belt
By Peter S. Goodman, The New York Times

Like his uncle, his grandfather and many of their neighbors, Arie Versendaal spent decades working at the Maytag factory here, turning coils of steel into washing machines.

When the plant closed last year, taking 1,800 jobs out of this town of 16,000 people, it seemed a familiar story of American industrial decline: another company town brought to its knees by the vagaries of global trade.

Except that Mr. Versendaal has a new factory job, at a plant here that makes blades for turbines that turn wind into electricity. Across the road, in the old Maytag factory, another company is building concrete towers to support the massive turbines. Together, the two plants are expected to employ nearly 700 people by early next year.

“Life’s not over,” Mr. Versendaal says. “For 35 years, I pounded my body to the ground. Now, I feel like I’m doing something beneficial for mankind and the United States. We’ve got to get used to depending on ourselves instead of something else, and wind is free. The wind is blowing out there for anybody to use.”

From the faded steel enclaves of Pennsylvania to the reeling auto towns of Michigan and Ohio, state and local governments are aggressively courting manufacturing companies that supply wind energy farms, solar electricity plants and factories that turn crops into diesel fuel.

This courtship has less to do with the loftiest aims of renewable energy proponents – curbing greenhouse gas emissions and lessening American dependence on foreign oil – and more to do with paychecks. In the face of rising unemployment, renewable energy has become a crucial source of good jobs, particularly for laid-off Rust Belt workers.

Amid a presidential election campaign now dominated by economic concerns, wind turbines and solar panels seem as ubiquitous in campaign advertisements as the American flag.

No one believes that renewable energy can fully replace what has been lost on the American factory floor, where people with no college education have traditionally been able to finance middle-class lives. Many at Maytag earned $20 an hour in addition to health benefits. Mr. Versendaal now earns about $13 an hour.

Still, it’s a beginning in a sector of the economy that has been marked by wrenching endings, potentially a second chance for factory workers accustomed to layoffs and diminished aspirations.

In West Branch, Iowa, a town of 2,000 people east of Iowa City, workers now assemble wind turbines in a former pump factory. In northwestern Ohio, glass factories suffering because of the downturn in the auto industry are retooling to make solar energy panels.

“The green we’re interested in is cash,” says Norman W. Johnston, who started a solar cell factory called Solar Fields in Toledo in 2003.

The market is potentially enormous. In a report last year, the Energy Department concluded that the United States could make wind energy the source of one-fifth of its electricity by 2030, up from about 2 percent today. That would require nearly $500 billion in new construction and add more than three million jobs, the report said. Much of the growth would be around the Great Lakes, the hardest-hit region in a country that has lost four million manufacturing jobs over the last decade.

Throw in solar energy along with generating power from crops, and the continued embrace of renewable energy would create as many as five million jobs by 2030, asserts Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adviser to the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama.

The unfolding financial crisis seems likely to slow the pace of development, making investment harder to secure. But renewable energy has already gathered what analysts say is unstoppable momentum. In Texas, the oil baron T. Boone Pickens is developing what would be the largest wind farm in the world. Most states now require that a significant percentage of electricity be generated from wind, solar and biofuels, effectively giving the market a government mandate.

And many analysts expect the United States to eventually embrace some form of new regulatory system aimed at curbing global warming that would force coal-fired electricity plants to pay for the pollution they emit. That could make wind, solar and other alternative fuels competitive in terms of the cost of producing electricity.

Both presidential candidates have made expanding renewable energy a policy priority. Senator Obama, the Democratic nominee, has outlined plans to spend $150 billion over the next decade to spur private companies to invest. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, has spoken more generally of the need for investment.

In June, more than 12,000 people and 770 exhibitors jammed a convention center in Houston for the annual American Wind Energy Association trade show. “Five years ago, we were all walking around in Birkenstocks,” says John M. Brown, managing director of a turbine manufacturer, Entegrity Wind Systems of Boulder, Colo., which had a booth on the show floor. “Now it’s all suits. You go to a seminar, and it’s getting taught by lawyers and bankers.”

So it goes in Iowa. Perched on the edge of the Great Plains – the so-called Saudi Arabia of wind – the state has rapidly become a leading manufacturing center for wind power equipment.

“We are blessed with certainly some of the best wind in the world,” says Chet Culver, Iowa’s governor.

Maytag was born in Newton more than a century ago. Even after the company swelled into a global enterprise, its headquarters remained here, in the center of the state, 35 miles east of Des Moines.

“Newton was an island,” says Ted Johnson, the president of local chapter of the United Automobile Workers, which represented the Maytaggers. “We saw autos go through hard times, other industries. But we still had meat on our barbecues.”

The end began in the summer of 2005. Whirlpool, the appliance conglomerate, swallowed up Maytag. As the word spread that local jobs were doomed – Whirlpool was consolidating three factories’ production into two – workers unloaded their memorabilia at Pappy’s Antique Mall downtown: coffee mugs, buttons, award plaques.

“If it said Maytag on it, we bought it,” says Susie Jones, the store manager. “At first, I thought the stuff had value. Then, it was out of the kindness of my heart. And now I don’t have any heart left. It don’t sell. People are mad at them. They ripped out our soul.”

When the town needed a library, a park or a community college, Maytag lent a hand. The company was Newton’s largest employer, its wages paying for tidy houses, new cars, weddings, retirement parties and funerals.

As Whirlpool made plans to shutter the factory, state and county economic development officials scrambled to attract new employers. In June 2007, the local government dispatched a team to the American Wind Energy Association show in Los Angeles. Weeks later, a company called TPI Composites arrived in Newton to have a look.

Based in Arizona, TPI makes wind turbine blades by layering strips of fiberglass into large molds, requiring a long work space. The Maytag plant was too short. So local officials showed TPI an undeveloped piece of land encircled by cornfields on the edge of town where a new plant could be built.

Although TPI was considering a site in Mexico with low labor costs, Newton had a better location. Rail lines and Interstate 80 connect it to the Great Plains, where the turbines are needed. Former Maytag employees were eager for work, and the community college was ready to teach them blade-making.

Newton won. In exchange for $6 million in tax sweeteners, TPI promised to hire 500 people by 2010. It has already hired about 225 and is on track to have a work force of 290 by mid-November.

“Getting 500 jobs in one swoop is like winning the lottery,” says Newton’s mayor, Chaz Allen. “We don’t have to just roll over and die.”

On a recent afternoon, workers inside the cavernous TPI plant gaze excitedly at a crane lifting a blade from its mold and carrying it toward a cleared area. Curved and smooth, the blade stretches as long as a wing of the largest jets. One worker hums the theme from “Jaws” as the blade slips past.

Larry Crady, a worker, takes particular pleasure in seeing the finished product overhead, a broad grin forming across his goateed face. He used to run a team that made coin-operated laundry machines at Maytag. Now he supervises a team that lays down fiberglass strips between turbine moldings. He runs his hand across the surface of the next blade for signs of unevenness.

“I like this job more than I did Maytag,” Mr. Crady says. “I feel I’m doing something to improve our country, rather than just building a washing machine.”

Ask him how long he spent at Maytag and Mr. Crady responds precisely: “23.6 years.” Which is to say, 6.4 years short of drawing a pension whose famously generous terms compelled so many to work at the Maytag plant. “That’s what everyone in Newton was waiting on,” he says. “You could get that 30 and out.”

But he is now optimistic about the decades ahead. “I feel solid,” he says. “This is going to be the future. This company is going to grow huge.”

The human resources office at TPI is overseen by Terri Rock, who used to have the same position at Maytag’s corporate headquarters, where she worked for two decades. In her last years there, her job was mostly spent ending other people’s jobs.

“There was a lot of heartache,” she says. “This is a small town, and you’d have to let people go and then see them at the grocery store with their families. It was a real tough job at the end.”

Now, Ms. Rock starts fresh careers, hiring as many as 20 people a week. She enjoys the creative spirit of a start-up. “We’re not stuck with the mentality of ‘this is how we’ve done it for the last 35 years,’” she says.

Maytag is gone in large part because of the calculus driving globalization: household appliances and so many other goods are now produced mostly where physical labor is cheaper, in countries like China and Mexico. But wind turbines and blades are huge and heavy. The TPI plant is in Iowa largely because of the costs of shipping such huge items from far away.

“These are American jobs that are hard to export,” says Crugar Tuttle, general manager of the TPI plant.

And these jobs are part of a build-out that is gathering force. More than $5 billion in venture capital poured into so-called clean energy technology industries last year in North America and Europe, according to Cleantech, a trade group. In North America, that represented nearly a fifth of all venture capital, up from less than 2 percent in 2000.

“Everybody involved in the wind industry is in a massive hurry to build out capacity,” Mr. Tuttle says. “It will feed into a whole local industry of people making stuff, driving trucks. Manufacturing has been in decline for decades. This is our greatest chance to turn it around. It’s the biggest ray of hope that we’ve got.”

Those rays aren’t touching everyone, though. Hundreds of former Maytag workers remain without jobs, or stuck in positions paying less than half their previous wages. Outside an old union hall, some former Maytaggers share cigarettes and commiserate about the strains of starting over.

Mr. Johnson, the former local president, is jobless. At 45, he has slipped back into a world of financial hardship that he thought he had escaped. His father was a self-employed welder. His mother worked at an overalls factory.

“I grew up in southern Iowa with nothing,” he says. “If somebody got a new car, everybody heard about it.”

When Maytag shut down, his $1,100-a-week paycheck became a $360 unemployment check. He and his wife divorced, turning what once was a two-income household into a no-income household. He sold off his truck, his dining room furniture, his Maytag refrigerator – all in an effort to pay his mortgage. Last winter, he surrendered his house to foreclosure.

Mr. Johnson has applied for more than 220 jobs, he says, from sales positions at Lowe’s to TPI. He has yet to secure an interview. His unemployment benefits ran out in May. He no longer has health insurance. He recently broke a tooth where a filling had been, but he can’t afford to have it fixed.

When his teenage daughter, who lives with him, complained of headaches, he paid $1,500 out of pocket for an MRI. The doctor found a cyst in her brain. And how is she doing now? Mr. Johnson freezes at the question. He is a grown man with silver hair, a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt across a barrel chest, and calloused hands that could once bring a comfortable living. He tries to compose himself, but tears burst. “I’m sorry,” he says.

He signed up for a state insurance program for low-income families so his daughter could go to a neurologist.

Although the United States is well behind Europe in manufacturing wind-power gear and solar panels, other American communities are joining Newton’s push, laying the groundwork for large-scale production.

“You have to reinvest in industrial capacity,” says Randy Udall, an energy consultant in Carbondale, Colo. “You use wind to revitalize the Rust Belt. You make steel again. You bring it home. We ought to be planting wind turbines as if they were trees.”

In West Branch, Acciona, a Spanish company, has converted the empty hydraulic pump factory into a plant that makes wind turbines. When the previous plant closed, it wiped out 130 jobs; Acciona has hired 120 people, many of them workers from the old factory.

Steve Jennings, 50, once made $14 an hour at the hydraulic pump factory. When he heard that a wind turbine plant was coming in a mere five miles from his house, he was among the first to apply for a job. Now he’s a team leader, earning nearly $20 an hour – more than he’s ever made. Ordinary line workers make $16 an hour and up.

“It seemed like manufacturing was going away,” he says. “But I think this is here to stay.”

Acciona built its first turbine in Iowa last December and is on track to make 200 this year. Next year, it plans to double production.

For now, Acciona is importing most of its metal parts from Europe. But the company is seeking American suppliers, which could help catalyze increased metalwork in the United States.

“Michigan, Ohio – that’s the Rust Belt,” says Adrian LaTrace, the plant’s general manager. “We could be purchasing these components from those states. We’ve got the attention of the folks in the auto industry. This thing has critical mass.”

In Toledo, the declining auto industry has prompted a retooling. For more than a century, the city has been dominated by glass-making, but the problems of Detroit automakers have softened demand for car windows from its plants. Toledo has lost nearly a third of its manufacturing jobs since 2000.

Now, Toledo is harnessing its glass-making skills to carve out a niche in solar power. At the center of the trend is a huge glass maker, Pilkington, which bought a Toledo company that was born in the 19th century.

Half of Pilkington’s business is in the automotive industry. In the last two years, that business is down 30 percent in North America. But the solar division, started two years ago, is growing at a 40 percent clip annually.

Nearby, the University of Toledo aims to play the same enabling role in solar power that Stanford played at the dawn of the Internet. It has 15 faculty members researching solar power. By licensing the technologies spawned in its labs, the university encourages its academics to start businesses.

One company started by a professor, Xunlight, is developing thin and flexible solar cells. It has 65 employees and expects to have as many as 150 by the middle of next year.

“It’s a second opportunity,” says an assembly supervisor, Matt McGilvery, one of Xunlight’s early hires. Mr. McGilvery, 50, spent a decade making steel coils for $23 an hour before he was laid off. Xunlight hired him this year. His paycheck has shrunk, he says, declining to get into particulars, but his old-fashioned skills drawing plans by hand are again in demand as Xunlight designs its manufacturing equipment from scratch, and the future seems promising.

“The hope is that two years from now everything is smoking and that envelope will slide across the table,” he says. “The money that people are dumping into this tells me it’s a huge market.”

In Newton, the tidy downtown clustered around a domed courthouse is already showing signs of new life, after the pain of Maytag’s demise.

The owner of Courtyard Floral, Diane Farver, says she saw a steep drop in sales after Maytag left, particularly around holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, when she used to run several vanloads a week to the washing machine plant. Times have changed since that decline.

When TPI recently dispatched workers to a factory in China for training, the company ordered bouquets for the spouses left at home.

Across the street at NetWork Realty, the broker Dennis Combs says the housing market is starting to stabilize as Maytag jobs are replaced.

“We’ve gone from Maytag, which wasn’t upgrading their antiquated plant, to something that’s cutting-edge technology, something that every politician is screaming this country has to have,” he says.

At Uncle Nancy’s Coffee House, talk of unemployment checks and foreclosures now mixes with job leads and looming investment.

“We’re seeing hope,” says Mr. Allen, the mayor.

The town is hardly done. Kimberly M. Didier, head of the Newton Development Corporation, which helped recruit TPI, is trying to attract turbine manufacturers and providers of raw materials and parts for the wind industry.

“This is in its infancy,” she says. “Automobiles, washer-dryers and other appliances have become commodities in their retirement phase. "We’re in the beginning of this. How our economy functions is changing. We built this whole thing around oil, and now we’ve got to replace that.”

Oct. 10, 2008
Local businesses honored at NDC lunch

Three local businesses were honored during the Newton Development Corporation Salute to Business and Industry Luncheon Thursday afternoon. Pictured are (from left) Chris Barton, the founder of Realm; Crugar Tuttle, general manager of TPI Composities; NDC Executive Director Kim Didier; TPI President/CEO Steve Lockard and Thombert Inc. President Dick Davidson.

Members of the Newton Development Corporation and area businesses gathered at DMACC/Sodexho for the 2008 Salute to Business and Industry Luncheon on Thursday afternoon.

Three Newton businesses were honored during the luncheon, including TPI Composites, Thombert Inc. and Realm.

Steve Lockard, president and CEO of TPI, was the keynote speaker and shared with those attending the luncheon how the company went from manufacturing sailboats to wind blades. Lockard also discussed how TPI – a Rhode Island-based company – chose to locate in Newton.

“We would not have chosen to build here without the local support. It’s a fact,” he said. “The support and cooperation from the community has been tremendous.”

With the completion of TPI’s new Newton facility, the company has already created new jobs in the community, noting 1,700 people applied for 500 jobs.

“We will hire 500 people. As of today (Thursday) we’re at 202,” he said. “We’re tracking to 500, and there’s no hesitation on our part.”

Lockard said he was honored that the company was recognized with the New Business Award.

“We have felt very well received in Newton,” said Lockard. “This (award) is just another example of the cooperation and warm reception we’ve had in Newton.”

Long-time Newton manufacturer, Thombert, Inc. also was honored during the luncheon. The NDC’s Existing Business Award was presented to Dick Davidson, president of Thombert, who accepted the award on behalf of the company.

Chris Barton, founder of Realm, received the Jim Tyler Entrepreneurial Award. The Jim Tyler Entrepreneurial Award was named after Newton resident, Jim Tyler who passed away in 2007.

“It’s always nice to be recognized,” Barton said of winning the award. “I knew Jim so for it to be in Jim Tyler’s name means a great deal to me.”

Jessica Lowe can be contacted at 792-3121, Ext. 426 or via e-mail at jlowe@newtondailynews.com.

Sept. 25, 2008
Newton’s success is not an accident

Last Tuesday was a glorious fall day in Iowa and an especially exciting day in Newton as the community celebrated with TPI Composites the opening of their new wind blade manufacturing facility. A similar celebration is anticipated later this fall when Trinity Towers sees its first tower section roll out of the facility that just a year ago still produced Maytag washers and dryers.

TPI and Trinity combined will add a minimum of 640 manufacturing jobs to the over 400 new jobs already added to the Newton community in the past two years. Newton’s remarkable recovery and success is being noted by several sources across the country and globally; however, it is important to understand that this success is not an accident but rather the result of an engaged community with a vision for its future.

Two years ago this week, over 300 from the community gathered at DMACC to create that Community Vision. At this gathering, the Newton community took control of its destiny well before the full extent of Maytag’s departure had been experienced. We recognized that even though we could not control the circumstances that led to that loss, we could and we would control how we responded. We would be proactive, take calculated risks, and work collaboratively to build a clear vision of Newton’s future in a regional and global economy.

Credit for Newton’s success goes to the whole community and its partners for its diligent work in building this clear vision. Many organizations and individuals have been working in many different ways to support the Community Vision. Some of those ways have been very visible, but equally important is the work that may not be quite as visible and yet is perceived especially by those new to the area.

I believe it is this tangible, strong and positive spirit that the community has been exuding over the past two years that Steve Lockard, TPI CEO, referenced when he said they sensed something special going on in Newton even on their first visit to the community.

Newton’s story over the past two years clearly demonstrates that economic development does not happen by accident. Successful and sustainable economic development happens in vibrant and healthy communities where all members of the community work together for the common good and actively participate in creating their future together. Healthy communities are open to discussions about new ideas and recognize that resources can be plentiful if mobilized collaboratively. Healthy communities also recognize that the future is always yet to come and that the discussions and work should never end.

Earlier this summer, the discussion of Newton’s vision and future did continue in a Scenario Planning Workshop. On May 2, representatives from 15 different community boards and organizations came together to continue to build on our Community Vision by defining key local, regional, and global factors that are critical to shaping Newton’s future.

In addition, the participants developed a series of plausible future scenarios for Newton and the consequences of each of these scenarios. Most importantly, the participants identified critical steps and actions to guide Newton toward a preferred scenario of its future.

During the remaining months of this year, several participants in the workshop will be sharing the results of the scenario planning process in presentations to service clubs, governing boards, employees groups, and in community-wide town hall meetings.

The community is asked to engage in this process and continue working together on our vision and our preferred future. There remain so many more economic development opportunities for Newton and the broader region to grow; however, that will not happen by accident.

Success will continue as long as we remain an engaged community with a vision of our preferred future.

Sept. 18, 2008
NDC, other local groups sponsor leadership classes

The second offering of the comprehensive Jasper County Community Leader Development program starts on Oct. 21 and will be at the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) Newton Campus. A collaborative effort among several community partners, the program is 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 program is meant to compliment other longstanding leadership programs, such as Leadership Newton and the Citizen’s Academies, which educate community members on the community leadership opportunities that exist in Jasper County.

"The Jasper County Community Leader Development Program helped me to become a more effective leader,” said Craig Trotter, who took the class last spring. “It helped me to understand the who, what and why in myself and how others might see me. I highly recommend this program to anyone who wants to grow in either their professional or personal life.”

The program was developed in partnership with the Newton Development Corporation, DMACC, Iowa State University-University Extension, Skiff Medical Center, Newton Convention and Visitors Bureau, Greater Newton Area Chamber of Commerce, United Way of Jasper County, and the City of Newton with support from the Jasper Community Foundation.

“We are excited to again partner in this leadership training opportunity by providing a 50 percent tuition reimbursement to the first 20 Jasper County residents who enroll and successfully complete the program,” said Dan Skokan, chair of the Jasper Community Foundation. “Our board is committed to building leadership capacity in Jasper County.”

To learn more about the tuition assistance opportunity, individuals should call the Newton Development Corporation at (641) 787-8210.

To register for the program, individuals should call DMACC at 791-3622 or (800) 362-2127. Refer to Course Number 15738. Full payment of $219 is due at time of registration. After successfully completing the course, half of the tuition will be refunded to the participant by DMACC.

Curriculum

Don Broshar with Iowa State University Extension and Buzz Hoffman with DMACC will conduct the training. All classes will be held on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Oct. 21 through Nov. 13 at the DMACC Newton Campus, 600 N. Second Ave. W. in Room 251. The four-week course costs $219.

• Influential Leadership – Tuesday, Oct. 21

Leadership means getting things done through others. In this class participants will explore how motivation affects personal commitment, identify leadership styles that tap into person motivation, and understand how to empower others for commitment.

• Effective Communication – Thursday, Oct. 23

What you say and how you say it can have a tremendous and sometimes, unintended, impact. Participants will identify communication barriers, learn how to improve their communications and be more direct in their communications message.

• Conflict Management – Tuesday, Oct. 28

A group of people working together will inevitably face conflict. Learn the importance of language in a conflict situation, identify the sources of conflict, understand the assumptions of conflict management and conflict resolution, and observe a model of conflict resolution.

• Negotiation Skills – Thursday, Oct. 30

Reaching agreement on community issues usually involves some negotiation. In this class, participants will learn when to negotiate and how to prepare for the negotiation process, understand the nuts and bolts of negotiation, and apply negotiation strategies.

• Real Colors® Personality Instrument 1 and 2 – Tuesday, Nov. 4 and 11

This session will focus on understanding how interaction styles impact the effectiveness of groups, so participants can work effectively with a wide variety of people. Learn whether you’re a Green, Orange, Blue or Gold personality. This class will run 6:30-9 p.m. both nights.

• Board Member Development – Thursday, Nov. 6

Being asked to serve on a board is both on honor and a responsibility. These classes will help participants gain an overview of what you need to know and what will be expected of you as a board member.

• Navigating Change – Thursday, Nov. 13

Change is an ongoing and never-ending process. This class will focus on the change process, the role of transition within the change process, the dynamics of change, and the roles of community change. Participants will utilize some of the tools of change.

August 26, 2008
Newton Development Corporation unveils new Web site

The Newton Development Corporation is pleased to announce the availability of community and business assistance information at its new Web site, www.newtondevelopmentcorporation.com.

“We are very excited about our new Web site and all of the information that can be found on it,” said Kim Didier, Executive Director, Newton Development Corporation. “This Web site is another tool that we will use to recruit new business prospects as well as to promote the growth of existing businesses and entrepreneurs in our community.”

The new Web site is user-friendly and information is readily available for those wanting to learn more about Newton as a vibrant place to live, work and play. The new site includes a link under the Business Assistance directory to the Location One Information System, which lists all of the buildings and sites that are available for potential business growth in Newton. In addition, small business owners and entrepreneurs may also take advantage of the Business Assistance directory as various business programs are listed along with a current calendar of classes, most of which are free of charge – definitely a great opportunity to take advantage of!

“The Newton Development Corporation continues to work hard supporting the growth of our quality community. Many of our efforts for the community including the Web site would not be possible without the commitment of our investors,” Didier said. “The Web site also provides a means of saying thank you to the investors in the Newton Development Corporation for their generous support of our economic development efforts and the community’s growth.”

The community is welcome and encouraged to explore the new Web site at www.newtondevelopmentcorporation.com.

July 29, 2008
Grant helps region plan economic development strategy

Following the departure of Maytag, Newton and Jasper County officials had to take a hard look at the local economy and come up with a strategy to move forward, attract new businesses and secure jobs for residents.

Now, after seven months of planning and hard work, officials in the city and county have a strategic 160-plus page plan to do just that.

The strategic plan focuses on four areas including regionalization and acting from a regional perspective, developing a worker pipeline to provide companies with skilled laborers, developing infrastructure to support new and expanding business and foster a culture of entrepreneurism.

Local officials didn’t develop the strategic plan on their own, they collaborated with 80 regional leaders as part of a seven-county region working to improve the quality of lives for everyone in Jasper, Poweshiek, Tama, Marshall, Story, Marion and Mahaska counties.

The collaborative effort will enable the seven counties to work together rather than against one another, and compete in a global economy.

“In the context of the global economy, it’s a very good thing,” said Kim Didier, executive director of Newton Development Corporation, who worked on the strategic plan. “When economies were even small we could compete, but today in the context of a global economy our competition is not Marshalltown. Our competition is Reynosa, Mexico, which was literally our competition for TPI.”

Didier said working together in the region will allow for smaller communities like Newton, Marshalltown or Grinnell to land large employers and be able to supply the skilled laborers necessary to run the company.

“In Iowa, we don’t have enough skilled laborers so we have to pull in those skilled workers,” Didier said, explaining that had always been the case even with Maytag. “For a long time our workforce has been regional because of Maytag. There were workers from Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and even stories of people from the Missouri line. We’ve long been regional and we’ll continue to be regional.”

Along with supplying workers, Didier said working together as a collaborative group will help manufacturers and other companies find suppliers they need to make their products.

“Fortune 500 companies have to have suppliers and those suppliers often come from surrounding communities,” she said.

Didier also said pooling resources from seven counties and surrounding communities allows the region to better compete for new employers to locate or relocate to the area.

“This allows us to take our resources we each have and better utilize them in a more effective way,” she said.

Funding for the development of the strategy was paid for through a $250,000 Regional Innovation Grant awarded by the Employment and Training Administration of the Department of Labor. The grant is the first of its kind in the nation developed in response to requests planning for support with the loss of Maytag.

With that distinction of first in the nation, Didier and other members of the leadership team celebrated the completion of the strategic plan with a special ceremony in Marshalltown in June. In attendance was U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who congratulated the team on their collaborative efforts.

“The work thus far will have laid the groundwork for the ongoing efforts to help prepare workers and businesses in this region to compete and succeed in a global economy. I know the people of these communities have the innovation and drive to put this plan into action,” Grassley said in a released statement.

July 29, 2008
TPI eyes September opening

A worker stands on a lift to make some repairs to the exterior wall at TPI Composites this morning. The finishing touches are being put on the 316,000 square foot wind turbine blade manufacturing plant northeast of Newton. Orientation sessions are being conducted now for newly hired employees, and according to a TPI spokesperson, the company’s grand opening is scheduled for Sept. 16.

July 15, 2008
Jasper County Entrepreneurial & Business Support Plan announced

Several organizations including the Newton Development Corporation, the Jasper County Economic Development Corporation, SCORE (Counselor’s to America’s Small Business), the UNI Small Business Development Center, Iowa State University Extension and the Des Moines Area Community College are excited to announce the next series of business programs, workshops and classes for the months of July through December 2008 that continue to support the growth of small businesses and entrepreneurs throughout Jasper County.

“The collaboration efforts of these organizations to continue providing expert business counseling and workshops confirms their dedication and desire to assist with the growth of small businesses and entrepreneurs throughout Jasper County,” said Kim Didier, NDC’s Executive Director. “The series of programs available during the months of July through December offers a wide-range of business learnings and networking opportunities for all types of businesses.”

A detailed Entrepreneurial & Business Support Plan describing the specific business sessions, dates and times is available to the public at Jasper County Financial Institutions. The first program will be a lunch & learn featuring guest speaker Lars Peterson from the UNI/SBDC, “Learn How To Buy & Sell A Business” slated for Aug. 21 from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at DMACC.

More information about the Entrepreneurial & Business Support Plan for Jasper County is available by calling (641) 787-8210.

June 23, 2008
Senator Grassley praises seven-county region for collaborative effort

Leaders gather to celebrate the "First in Nation" Regional Innovation Grant and seven-county regional economic development strategic plan. Pictured are (from left to right) Kim Didier, Newton Development Corporation; Leslie Matthews, U.S. Department of Labor; Kirk Tyler, Association of Business & Industry; Paul Gregoire, Fisher Division of Emerson; Elisabeth Buck, Iowa Workforce Development; Rob Denson, Des Moines Area Community College.

Senator Chuck Grassley joined regional business, education, government, and economic development leaders today in Marshalltown, Iowa to celebrate the completion of a 7-County Regional

Economic Development Strategic Plan.  Grassley praised the group for their collaborative and innovative efforts to position the region for prosperity and growth. 

“I'm happy to be part of today's announcement.  The work thus far will have laid the groundwork for the ongoing efforts to help prepare workers and businesses in this region to compete and succeed in a global economy,” Grassley said.  “I know the people of these communities have the innovation and drive to put this plan into action.”

The 160-page Plan document is the culmination of a 7 month planning process in which approximately 80 regional leaders analyzed assets and deliberated on strategies to strengthen the competitiveness of the 7-county area in light of global competition and market forces.  The regional leaders focused on four overarching themes throughout the planning process:

  • Regionalization – Thinking and acting from a regional perspective
  • Developing a worker pipeline around required competencies within identified target industries and industry clusters, including the Sustainable Energy Sector.
  • Developing infrastructure to support new and expanded businesses in the targeted industry clusters and attract and retain a highly skilled workforce
  • Developing and fostering a culture of entrepreneurism by honoring entrepreneurs in the community and by encouraging young entrepreneurs with related curriculum in the schools

At Monday’s event, Paul Gregoire, VP of Human Resource, Fishers Division of Emerson Controls and Co-Chair of the planning process, highlighted the specific transformational goals outlined in the Plan: 

Goal 1:  Analyze worker pipeline supply and demand issues to help create a collaborative, regional talent development system.

Goal 2:  Create research-informed, data-driven partnerships among business, industry, education, and workforce development organizations to prepare a pipeline of skilled workers to meet current and future workforce needs, opportunities, and challenges.

Goal 3:  Foster Sustainable, livable communities by providing world-class communications, transportation, and other infrastructure systems, amenities, and diverse housing options.

Goal 4:  Create a culture of entrepreneurism in the 7-County Region.

State Director Elisabeth Buck, Iowa Workforce Development, praised the region for its status as the “First in the Nation” RIGS recipient and the example the region is providing for the rest of the State of Iowa on how to integrate regional workforce and economic development efforts to an extraordinary level.  “If Iowa is to overcome the pending workforce challenges that we know are quickly approaching, it is only through regional efforts like yours that we will be truly and fundamentally successful in providing the skilled employees that our Iowa businesses need to remain viable in the global marketplace,” Buck stated.

Rob Denson, President of DMACC and Co-Chair of the planning process, announced at Monday’s gathering that the Iowa Association of Business & Industry had agreed to partner with the regional group to support the implementation of the plan.  “From the beginning, all the leaders involved in this planning process understood that for our efforts to be successful we needed to be in full partnership with the business community and let the needs of the business community drive the plan” Denson said.  “Therefore, we are delighted that ABI has agreed to partner in our collaborative efforts and the implementation of our plan.”

Current ABI Chair, Kirk Tyler, CEO of Atlantic Bottling Company, was on hand to share the reasons ABI agreed to the partnership with the regional leaders.  “At ABI our mission is to foster a favorable business, economic, governmental and social climate within the State of Iowa so that our citizens have the opportunity to enjoy the highest possible quality of life.  You have just spent that last 7 months putting a regional plan together that when implemented will accomplish our mission for your region.  We are delighted to be a part of this innovate effort!” Tyler said.  ABI will be the employer of record for the Executive Director the regional group intends to hire.

Denson also introduced the newly appointed Executive Board that will provide overarching leadership guidance in the implementation of the plan.  Each county in the region is represented by 2 seats on the board with 1 of those seats held by a representative of a business in each county.  (See membership listing).  The Executive Board held its first meeting following Monday’s public event.

Background
The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the Department of Labor provided a $250,000 grant to fund the regional leaders’ work.  The Regional Innovation Grant (RIGS) program was created in response to requests for planning support as a result of the loss of Maytag in the region.  The ETA announced the awarding of the “First in the Nation” Regional Innovation Grant in March of 2007.  Since the awarding of this first grant, 20 RIGS grants have been awarded across the nation.  Three additional Iowa regions have been awarded RIGS grants and several other regions have applications submitted to DOL. (see attached map).  The Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) framework of the Department of Labor serves as the guiding principles for the RIGS planning process.

June 16, 2008
In country’s center, a gale of clean energy opportunity
By Keith Schneider, Apollo News Service

One of the most noticeable features on Newton, Iowa’s Web site is a map of the Newton Union Cemetery. For a time over the last two years, the map seemed a fitting metaphor for the town of 16,000, which lies 35 miles east of Des Moines.

Iowa grows a renewable energy sector

After all, the Whirlpool Corporation in 2006 purchased, and a year later closed the Maytag Corporation’s offices and plants in Newton, putting 1,800 people out of work and ending a century-old legacy of washing machine manufacturing. Newton stood at the edge of its own economic grave, one more Midwest town unable to move from the hard-muscle industrial 20th century to the energy-efficient, high-tech 21st.

Newton’s agony, fortunately, did not last long. First came TPI Composites, of Warren, Rhode Island, which is building a 316,000-square-foot, $56 million factory to make blades for General Electric Energy’s wind turbines, the most popular in the world. The company promises to develop 500 jobs by 2010.

Then in April, Trinity Structural Towers, a unit of Dallas-based Trinity Industries, announced it would invest $21 million to transform a portion of Maytag’s 1949 factory building to produce wind turbine towers for the Midwest’s surging wind industry. The company is recruiting 140 workers for the new plant at the city’s northern edge. Construction is underway; the first towers will be shipped early next year.

"These are exciting times in the wind industry, and we are very pleased to expand our operations in Newton,” said Mark W. Stiles, Trinity Industries senior vice president, on the day the announcement was made. “Our new location in Iowa puts our company in the perfect position to serve a market with outstanding growth potential.”

Wind wealth around the nation

Newton’s ability to recruit two new wind manufacturing plants reflects the rising gale of new economic development in the Midwest, and in other regions learning how to plug into the wind. "Communities across Iowa that have experienced real economic challenges, like Keokuk, Fort Madison and Newton, have recently seen a new rebirth by tapping into our booming wind industry,” said Iowa’s Democratic Governor, Chet Culver, at the start of a two-day wind-energy conference in late April in Des Moines. “While each of these cities is in the process of adding hundreds of new wind-generation manufacturing jobs, this is only the beginning of what is possible.”

New wind generating facilities also were opened or announced in 2007 in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, North Carolina, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin. When manufacturing begins, the facilities are expected to create more than 6,000 permanent, well-paying jobs, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Policy and investment

Newton, Iowa’s ability to bypass the familiar tale of a Midwest city facing economic ruin owes a lot, said state authorities, to effective public policy and a nimble state government that anticipated trends in the clean-energy sector, capital markets, and manufacturing technology. Iowa is one of the 26 states that established a Renewable Portfolio Standard to provide wind generating companies a ready market for their products.

Rural towns across America are experiencing similar results as a result of laws that generate renewable energy markets. In upstate New York, for example, Noble Environmental Power, a four-year-old Connecticut company, is building a 600-turbine, $3 billion wind farm that will generate more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity, according to the company.

This spring, Noble began generating power from its first project – 188 windmills in three New York communities, capable of generating 282 megawatts of electricity, enough power for 100,000 homes The $564 million project, which will eliminate 590,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, was financed by GE Energy Financial Services, one of the biggest investors in wind power nationally and globally.

Edward Rendell, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, announced in March that the alternative and renewable energy sectors invested $1 billion and created 3,500 new, good-paying, skilled jobs in his state. He added that Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate has been below the national average in each of the last 13 months.

In April, Ohio passed legislation that calls for electric utilities to significantly increase their use of renewable energy such as wind and solar power over the next 17 years. The legislation is expected to prompt 5,000 MW to 7,000 MW of new wind energy installations, investments valued at $10 billion to $14 billion, according to wind energy economists.

T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil billionaire, recently announced his plan to spend $10 billion on 2,500 windmills powering a 150,000-acre wind farm in the Texas Panhandle.

The steady growth in wind manufacturing and generation, however, is bypassing windy states that are not approving new public policy. The most noteworthy example is Michigan, which has yet to approve a renewable energy law, and a result has been a weak market for electricity generated from wind.

That is not the case in Iowa. In 1983, Iowa enacted its alternative energy law to require utilities to generate a small portion of their power from clean energy sources. Twenty-five other states have since enacted renewable energy statutes.

Wind equipment companies settle in Iowa

It took almost a decade for Iowa’s pioneering RPS law to begin affecting the state’s energy mix and economy.

In 1992, Minnesota Power built Iowa’s first commercial wind turbine – a tiny, .25 megawatt machine in Spirit Lake, according to AWEA. In the 16 years since, Iowa has built the nation’s third-largest wind generating sector, capable of producing 1,300 megawatts, behind only Texas and California. Iowa also has one of the largest wind turbine and parts manufacturing industries. More than 1,800 new industrial jobs are already tied to the wind industry in Iowa, according to the state Department of Economic Development, and hundreds more jobs are on the way.

Acciona Windpower, a unit of the Spanish renewable energy company, built a $27 million, 200,000 square foot wind turbine plant in West Branch, Iowa last year that employs 110 people. The network of suppliers in the United States for the plant, which produces 250 turbines annually, will employ another 1,300 people, said Acciona executives.

Siemens Power Generation opened a wind turbine blade manufacturing plant in Fort Madison, Iowa in 2007 and earlier this year said it would spend $33 million more to enlarge the plant, which will soon employ 533 people earning an average of $17.14 an hour, according to company executives.

Other big names in the wind energy production industry that have settled in Iowa are Clipper Wind Power in Cedar Rapids, and Hendrick Industries in Koekuk. As of November 2007, 9.5 percent of Iowa’s electricity was produced from renewable sources.

Governor Culver, in an address to the Legislature earlier this year, encouraged lawmakers to adopt a new renewable portfolio standard in Iowa, setting a goal to generate 25 percent of Iowa’s electricity from renewable sources by the year 2025.

"As governor, my goal is to take full advantage of Iowa’s natural resources, along with our incredible manufacturing base and work force, to make Iowa the renewable energy capital of the nation,” said Governor Culver.

Whether Iowa can achieve that goal is far from clear, but the geography and opportunity of the clean energy sector is vast, according to market analysts.

The United States is now the largest market in the world for wind turbines. During the first quarter of 2008 alone, utilities and developers invested $3 billion in equipment to generate 1,400 more megawatts of wind power in the U.S., according to venture capital analysts. In the last 15 months, 17 new wind manufacturing plants were built in the U.S., representing an investment of $500 million and employing 4,000 people, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Roughly half of all the components in the new wind generating equipment installed in the U.S. now are made in America, up from 30 percent in 2006.

Big money moving into the sector

Wall Street has certainly begun to pay attention as big money moves into the renewable energy sector. Along with GE Financial Services, which announced in 2007 that it would invest $4 billion in renewable energy by 2010, in the United States and overseas, other players include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Clean Edge, a data research firm, New Energy Finance, and Nth Power jointly issued a study earlier this year that found the clean energy sector is one of the premier growth industries in the United States and globally. Among the other findings in that report and several others:

Venture capitalists invested $625 million in the first quarter of 2008 in “clean tech” – alternative energy, pollution control equipment, recycling, and conservation – according to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. That is fourth in total venture capital investment during the period, behind life sciences ($2.3 billion), biotech ($1.27 billion), and software ($1.26 billion).

Revenue worldwide for production of solar photovoltaics, wind, biofuel, and fuel cells in 2007 was $77.3 billion, up from $55 billion in 2006, or a 40 percent increase.

Revenues for biofuel sales worldwide are projected to reach $81.1 billion by 2017, $83.4 billion for wind by 2017, and $74 billion for solar photovoltaics by 2017. That adds up to $238 billion by 2017, or triple the value of the market in 2007.

As the first decade of the 21st century approaches its close, Newton is perched for more growth. With the arrival of TPI and Trinity Industries, the town is accumulating a critical mass of suppliers that is likely to encourage more wind companies to settle there.

"As the wind industry continues to grow, we face an ever-increasing demand for reliable and efficient wind turbines,” said Victor Abate, vice president-renewables for GE Energy, TPI’s main customer.

And though wages for production jobs at the TPI plant – $12.25 to $13.40 per hour, plus benefits – are lower than the former $19 an hour jobs at Whirlpool, residents and city officials said they were pleased to recruit TPI and Trinity to their town. Trinity says it will pay $17 and more an hour.

Trinity, in fact, is a Wall Street darling: Its stock price has climbed 40 percent this year, in part because of the expanding market for its wind turbine towers. Trinity has a $1.6 billion backlog of orders for the towers it will make in Newton, up from a $200 million backlog last year, according to its first quarter 2008 financial earnings report.

And that map of the cemetery on the Newton Web site? It’s again seen as helpful for burying people, and no longer a symbol for interring an entire town.

May 20, 2008
Newton named finalist for Excellence in Economic Development Awards 2008

Newton’s economic development efforts in the wake of Maytag’s departure from the community are gaining national recognition. The U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration (EDA) has announced the twenty-nine finalists for the EDA Excellence in Economic Development Awards 2008 Newton is a finalist in the Excellence in Economic Adjustment Strategies category.

Newton has taken a pro-active, multi-faceted approach to the loss of thousands of jobs from the community of 16,000 people. Its efforts include:

  • forming a transformation team of community stakeholders,
  • collaboratively setting a new Community Vision for the future,
  • successfully recruiting large new manufacturers in growing industries like wind energy,
  • diversifying the local economy with a major tourist attraction in the Iowa Speedway
  • assisting former Maytag employees in starting new businesses, retaining their skills and talents in the community
  • facilitating the redevelopment of the Maytag corporate campus into an educational career academy and the headquarters of a new corporate owner
  • maintaining an emphasis on small-town Iowa quality of life
  • working regionally to form a focused collaboration of the leadership of multiple counties to market and share resources, increasing the competitiveness of East Central Iowa

Taken as a whole, all of these efforts are being recognized by the Federal government as exceptional. Newton has been cited as a national model of dealing with large economic disruptions.

In addition to Newton, the other finalists in the Excellence in Economic Adjustment Strategies category are Duluth, MN; Belmont, NC; Ogden, UT; and Kalamazoo, MI. In this category, nominations are evaluated to determine how effectively they help communities plan and implement economic adjustment strategies in response to sudden and severe economic dislocations.

Sandy K. Baruah, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, will announce the winners of EDA’s Awards 2008 on May 30, 2008. The Excellence Awards 2008 recognize innovative economic development strategies of national significance. The Awards are designed to showcase best practices and highlight outstanding results. Awards 2008 will be presented in ceremonies held in the winners’ respective communities. Members of each winner’s congressional delegation will be invited to join senior Department of Commerce officials in the award presentations.


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