Season’s greetings to all of you as I add my thanks for your coming here today and helping to celebrate not only the holiday season but our golden anniversary at CADC. As you have no doubt heard me recount, this was one of the first organizations of its kind in the nation, known originally as a private, non-profit industrial development group. Our emphasis, for many years, was on the recruitment of new investment to the Clinton area. And, in that regard, for the last half century, by most counts, our success has meant thousands of good paying jobs and many millions of dollars of investment and tax base.

As most of us heard last year through the words of our past chairs, a historical perspective of where we’ve been and what we’ve done and for which we’re truly proud and grateful. Just because we’ve done something in one mode for 50 years successfully, it does not necessarily follow that same method will work or should be continued for the next 50. Hence, there is a steering committee, headed by Bob Holesinger and Tom Determann, currently deliberating what the efforts towards economic development are and should be as we look ahead for the next several years. I’ll come back to comment a little further about that later.

Mike Blouin, it is good to have you here. We look forward to your thoughts and comments as our state’s leader for economic development and having spent much of your lifetime as an agent of change we know, as our former mayor Betty Snyder used to tell us, “Change is inevitable, progress is optional,” and we want to join you and our neighbors in economic development progress.

In the past months, we have tried hard to do more and more with what is literally less and less. Our local and state governments are stressed financially beyond what I think any of us may have expected at the turn of the millennium. Clinton Area Development has leveraged time and money. A year ago we presented research from Paragon Associates undertaken jointly with our utility partners at Alliant that lent credibility to the fact that the Clinton area and the eastern seaboard of Iowa remains highly competitive in terms of both advanced manufacturing and the service industry / information solutions as clusters.

Subsequently, Gary Williams, Rick Dickinson and I hit the road spending a week in Minneapolis and another in Chicagoland calling on prospects and consultants who are part of the site selection process, most of whom acknowledged our research conclusions as legitimate and that, when and if there is a project, we would receive due consideration that we might not otherwise have received had we not made these efforts and presented this research.

It was also a year in which we did more than ever before in terms of joining partners like Mike for Sell Iowa trips and our utilities for both sides of the river at a number of trade shows and expositions. One highlight was the western Canada Farm Progress Show in IPSCO’s hometown: Regina, Saskatchewan. So, in addition, we had home office visits to several of our existing industries such as IPSCO in both Regina and Chicago as well as Checkerboard Square in St. Louis.

One of the most successful efforts this past year began early in the new year as we were contacted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, representing an unidentified client looking to invest millions of dollars and trying to decide in which states and localities to do so in their existing operations. The spring and early summer were spent as host for a number of informational and confidential consultations with local government leaders and resulted in the first tangible benefits we can count where the elimination several years ago of the machinery and equipment tax came to be a blessing.

Our existing Archer Daniels Midland corn processing plant, some of which goes back to the origins of Clinton Corn Processing nearly a century ago, was an ideal corporate candidate for extensive upgrades related to the environment and safety of personnel and product, and certainly productivity! We were pleased to announce last summer that two separate pools of investment by the company and with the assistance of Mike Blouin’s New Jobs and Income Program at the state of Iowa, there will be an ongoing application of new technology, upgrading of process and significant environmental benefits to the company and the community that, over the course of the next several years, will exceed $100 million. And with that, 14 new, high paying jobs already have been integrated.

There has been a significant increase in industrial property square footage thanks, in part, not only to ADM’s needs, but those of Nestlé PURINA, which on their site or ours and in Manufacturing Meadows in conjunction with Clausen Properties’ new distribution facility totals over a quarter of a million square feet. Our former International Paper 800,000 square foot facility was purchased and is now in friendly, local, competent hands: River Cities Management, LLC, part of the Quad Cities based Peterson Properties. There are, I believe, representatives here today from the Clinton Business Center. Would they please stand and be recognized.

These facility partners, and in league with our own Charlie Armstrong as their broker, stand ready to make available competitive and customized industrial space for both manufacturing and the service industry. We had a prospect looking for 200,000 feet that was favorably impressed in a visit here as recently as two weeks ago, and we’re confident that now having this property in our inventory will be a significant complement to the area’s market ready, market priced industrial real estate. In fact, we just showed it again two hours ago, another manufacturing prospect from the east coast, thanks Mike! Keep up the good work.

ignificant advances are underway at the Lyons Business and Technology Park. This new center for the service industry is being laid out and marketed for both front and back office financial operations, credit and client services, and data and information technology and joins a raft of growing improvements up and along our new Mill Creek Parkway. Your board of directors and CADC leadership has long been a partner in the securing of funding and the encouragement to build new infrastructure and the reconnection of the Clinton area in a 21st Century fashion. Our style is usually somewhat more subtle, but we maintain confidence and credible connections with local support and leadership at state and federal offices.

The thousands of hours and dollars spent on research to take advantage of the world-class industrial infrastructure on Clinton’s west end is paying off with both the private and public sectors. The river, the railroads, the pipelines, the roadway, the airport and the utilities make this infrastructure and resources both desirable for new world class investment as well as the responsible reuse and reinvestment such as those under consideration by Mr. Mark Cross and the former Hawkeye / PCS Nitrogen property and his newly acquired and connected acreage downstream in Camanche on the river.

Mike Blouin and the Iowa Department of Economic Development have been one of the first to step up and join us in the research necessary to decide the highest and best industrial usage of this unique area. It’s more than likely, with the final passage of the energy bill before Congress, that Mark and his team of investors will find the ability to re-use and invest in new processes and technology that, just a few years down the road, will continue to make our neck of the woods a haven for value added ag production, advanced manufacturing and new technology applications to life science and bio related manufacturing.

I’m tempted to summarize the efforts of the Development Corporation, its leadership and partners that go far beyond our immediate area as having laid a 21st Century base that includes the right mix of property, programs, people and progress. But certainly, we can’t do this alone, and as Mike and our governor have frequently encouraged us, we must begin to think of ourselves more and more in a regional partnership when it comes to our marketing efforts and the promotion of our benefits and resources to industry.

We have, of course, been involved in regional marketing and development efforts for some time anyway. As you heard earlier, Rick Dickinson from Greater Dubuque Development, Gary Williams from Alliant Energy and I made several trips this year showing and telling prospects about the benefits of doing business here along the Mississippi. Similar out of town excursions and trade shows continue to occur with other utility and rail partners. This is an excellent time to recognize our on-going partnership with East Central Intergovernmental Association. ECIA is a critical link between most applications for funding programs that benefit expansions and attractions.,/p>

This is the appropriate time to recognize the Eastern Iowa Community College District and, in part, this year say “thanks” to Chancellor John Blong for many years of dedication for regional economic development and partnership that continues to include one of our officers, Karen Vickers, as well as Mark Kapfer and Mark Schroeder.

We say a special “thank you” again this year to Ilene Deckert who takes the time to arrange and conduct existing industry visitations. This year it has been our privilege to take our team, which consists of ranking executives from local government, health care, the chamber, utilities and the community college. We thank existing industry leaders on behalf of our community for the millions of dollars in paychecks and purchases they make throughout the year, collect data on strategic trends and seek ways to help their continued growth and expansion of the employment base. This year, we visited Lamson & Sessions, Air Control, Mycogen Seeds, The Franciscan University, The Egging Company, Stampede Products, Equistar Chemicals LP, Wendling Quarries, G. Baker Distributing, Bemis Clysar, Clausen Companies and National By-Products.

My outlook on the Clinton area’s future after 15 years is one hell of a lot better than it was when I first came here. And, that is based, in part, on the fact that this organization has invested a great deal of time and money in research related to the building blocks of regional economic development for the 21st century. We are currently working with a small group of dedicated area leaders from many walks of life to consider where we want to be in the next three to five years, or an economic development strategic plan, if you will. We welcome the input and critique, and I might add expanded partnership, in the how and who does economic development today, tomorrow and for the next half-century. Given the type of business clusters we target, we now have in place, under control and in friendly hands, the right kinds of industrial sites to attract major 21st century investment. These include, but are not limited to, certain areas in Thomson and Fulton as well as expanding inventories in Clinton and Camanche. We’ve always had and continue to have the right people to work. It just seems as though we never have enough resources to do the right job from a marketing perspective.

We have the “right stuff.” If we can market it effectively in the decade ahead, we can’t fail. If we can’t meet and exceed the competition, we can’t win. Believe it or not, it’s much more up to you and your support, as an area, than it ever was or is to me or this board. Time will tell. Happy holidays. Straight ahead.

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