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Stewartville Superintendent Dr. David Thompson says the district has finalized the purchase of the former Lovejoy Home Furnishings building in Stewartville.
Cost? $157,000.
The district plans to use the building as a center for special education, early childhood and Tiger Tot students at the beginning of the school year.
Remember when Dover announced it would be selling Rochester-based manufacturer, Crenlo?
Well, it has now been taken off the market and Crenlo is being brought back into the Dover core.
Here's from an e-mail I got today from CEO Lance Fleming:
Dover has “reclassified Crenlo, which had been included in discontinued operations, into the Dover Industrial Products segment” These comments indicate that Crenlo is no longer for sale and that Dover has placed Crenlo in the Industrial Products segment, which is one of four Dover business segments. This segment includes companies such as Paladin, Warn Industries, Heil Trailer, Heil Environmental, Texas Hydraulics and Tulsa Winch.Being part of this business segment is a good fit for Crenlo and our association with these other companies in the Industrial Products segment will provide good synergy opportunities for Crenlo through benchmarking, sharing best practices, purchasing leverage and common customer focus.
While we were getting 100% operational support from Dover during the period of time Crenlo was for sale, we look forward to an expanded level of participation in Dover synergy initiatives in the future.
I missed the Roch. Chamber's Business After Hours bash last night, but my correspondent (minion) Ron Hanson took some notes and some pics for me.
Here's what he gave me:
Last night the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce held its Business After Hours hosted by West Circle Drive Professional Building, 2518 Superior Dr. N.W.
Sponsored by: Chiropractic First Wellness Center, Property Brokers of MN, Inc., Timothy J. Hansen - Attorney at Law and Wealth Enhancement Group.
The event was held outside under the tent with what looked like over 170+ in attendance. Sound/Tronics provided the sound. Many new faces along with the regulars as well.
Here's the info on trio in the second pic:
Mike Powell, Post Bulletin online; Rob Knutson, Secure Shredding & Kristin Proell, Interiors by Decorating Den that will open Aug 1 in Rochester.
Business Facilities magazine just release a slew of lists ranking states and cities strengths for business in a variety of categories, particularly in biotechnology.
Minnesota came in at #10 in the Overall Biotechnology Strength list. The top five are : Penn., Calif., Mass., Ohio and Texas tied for #4.
Minnesota was #2 on the Medical Device and equipment Leaders list.
The Twin Cities were ranked #1 as having the highest concentration of employment in the medical device industry.
Minnesota was ranked #3 in the Most Educated Workforce ranking list.
Here's some from a story I wrote about BuyOnlineNow:
Defying the current economic slowdown, dot-com survivor BuyOnlineNow.Com is growing at a record pace.
Founded in 2000, the Rochester-based online retailer sold $340 worth of office equipment during its first month.
Now it is now on track to hit about $3 million in sales for July, topping its previous monthly record of $2.5 million. Founder and CEO Bob Herman expects sales to be up 92 percent this month over July 2007.
What is causing this seller of shredders, staplers and office chairs to boom when other companies are struggling?
“It is simple as trying to do things the right way,” says Herman with a laugh while sitting in cubicle in front of three monitors, with the cast of TV’s “The Office” watching over him from a signed poster on the wall.
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The path from a one-man office to a building full of employees, cubicles and computers connected to a warehouse has not been an easy one.
“I didn’t know anything about selling office supplies (when he started during the dot-com heyday) It was brutal,” says co-owner Herman. “We didn’t make any money for four years.”
Now his Web site offers about 28,000 products. About 75 percent of the sales are made online and the rest are done by telephone.
“We try to stay out of the buying process as much as we can,” Herman said. “We should almost be invisible to the process.”
Here's a piece by Bob Freund on a local wind power deal.
I wrote about Nature Energies a while back when the Rochester branch moved into a new office.
The Rochester-based branch of a French energy company is buying stakes in 56 wind turbines at the two farms now run by the area’s pioneer wind farmer, Dodge Center businessman Garwin McNeilus.
Nature Energies has agreed to purchase portions of the 28 windpower projects in two wind farms at Dodge Center and Adams. All are managed by McNeilus and his son Grant McNeilus, but have individual owners from the McNeilus family and from related non-profit organizations, Nature Energies vice president Jeff Cook-Coyle said today.
The sale is underway, but will be completed in the future. The value of the deal is being kept private, Cook-Coyle said.
The Dodge Center farm contains 41 wind turbines and the Adams farm has 15. Together they can generate as much as 65 megawatts (million watts) electricity over a single hour.
Nature Energies will obtain ownership of available parts of the wind projects. The parties also expect to collaborate on future wind projects, a written announcement said Tuesday.
Nature Energies also currently is working on developing 450-megawatt wind farm in Dodge County.
The Rochester office is the U.S. operations branch for Nature Energies SAS of Paris. Nature Energies has 115 megawatts of wind farms in France and is developing solar energy plants in Europe as well.
Austin, Texas is known for its music and its IBM plant.
Another well-known attraction is the annual Spamarama festival spotlighting Austin, Minn.'s favorite Hormel-created meat product.
I've written about this in the past. Hormel Foods is not involved with the event, though the quasi-related Spam Mobile has made appearances.
Today I saw a column by John Kelso in the Austin Statesman foreshadowing that the festival may not gel this year.
It’s looking like Spamarama isn’t going to happen this fall as previously planned. The sticking point? Money.
Rob Lippincott, one of the owners of Guero’s Taco Bar on South Congress Avenue, has been trying to get Hormel, the Minnesota company that makes Spam, to put up $10,000 to help with the costs of putting on the traditional Austin festival that spoofs the potted pork product.
But apparently the Spam folks don’t want to pay that much to be made sport of.
“I think they offered $1,500 or something like that,” said Lippincott, who had hoped to put on Spamarama in September at the Triangle in North Austin. “We’re in the business of taking risks, but we don’t want to take too much. Especially on a deal like that. On this you make most of your money on entry fees. And if it rains that day, you get nothing.”
So, Lippincott added, “It doesn’t sound like it’s going to happen this year.”
Lippincott said part of the problem was that Hormel kept dragging its feet on deciding if it wanted to allow the cookoff to occur. And this close to the deadline, it’s just too risky, since he’s running out of time to find sponsors.
“We would have been happy with the $1,500 if they had given us an answer six months ago,” he said.
This will be only the second time in 30 years that Spamarama hasn’t happened in Austin.
In case you never made to a Spamarama, the competitive cookoff featured recipes that included Spam done just about every which way — such as Spamalama Ding Dongs, chicken-fried Spam, Spamguini, trouser trout (don’t even ask), Tequila Spamrise drinks, and the occasional really disgusting display — like the Spam facial, which featured a chick under a hair dryer with a Spam spread covering her face.
Here's some from from what I put in print about Home federal's 2Q report this morning:
A one-time, goodwill write-down of $3.8 million skewed a positive second quarter for Rochester’s HMN Financial Inc., the parent of Home Federal Savings Bank.
The charge resulted in a $2 million loss for the quarter. The diluted loss per common share was 56 cents, down $1.18 or 190.3 percent from earnings per share in the same quarter 2007. Without it, Home Federal would have shown net earnings of $1.8 million for the quarter. That would have been up from the first quarter earnings of $1.5 million.
“While we are disappointed in the second quarter results and the level of nonperforming assets, our capital position remains strong and we look forward to improved results,” said HMN President Mike McNeil in a news release this morning.
At the core of the $3.8 million charge is Home Federal’s 1997 acquisition of a Marshalltown, Iowa, bank. With Home Federal’s stock being down like many bank stocks, auditors required that the Marshall bank be re-valued, as it was bought at a premium price.
Does that mean the Marshalltown bank is being sold or is not doing well?
Not at all, said Jon Eberle, Home Federal’s chief financial officer. The Iowa bank is still strong and Home Federal has no plans to sell it.
What does this mean for the average person with a Home Federal account?
“It doesn’t impact them. We are still strongly capitalized,” said Eberle. “We have the same capital as before, with just less assets now.”
Another shadow on the earnings report was a $20.3 million increase from the first quarter in Home Federal’s non-performing assets or loans. Those non-performing loans tallied up to $48.5 million.
It was mainly three residential development loans — the largest for $9.1 million for a Twin Cities project — and a $5 million hotel property that caused this jump, according to Home Federal.
