PREAMBLE

Before I get too wound up here today, I want to be sure and update you on a couple of team efforts that are so important to all of us.

I’m sure most of you would agree that the expansion and retention of our existing industrial base is just as vital for economic development as attraction. And, to that end, as you know, we have, for many years, headed up a visitation program calling on a significant variety of large employers and key industries.

Representatives form a call team, and our leaders meet with the corporate team to express our appreciation for their being in business, employing our people and writing those millions of dollars of paychecks that turn over and over in our retail community.

Ilene Deckert, who coordinates industrial technology and a variety of other resources for Eastern Iowa Community College District, is our volunteer who keeps us organized and schedules the meetings. Our team comes from local governments, the Chamber, education, health care and utilities. We do a survey and compile demographic information for future reference. This year, our thanks go to the following businesses for taking time to visit with our team. In chronological order, this year these included Mercy Medical Center, Metal-Tech Manufacturing, Inc., DuPont Packaging and Industrial Polymers (now Bemis), Alliant Energy, Agri-King, Inc., Danisco Sweetners, Rock-Tenn, Clinton Community College, Nestlé PURINA and Custom Pak. I believe we are going to visit McEleney Motors in their new location later this month to round out the year.

The next team, which many of you are part of on an on-going basis, is that regional Mayors Economic Development Summit trip to Washington, DC. In fact, LaMetta Wynn, Dennis Lauver, Gil Janes, Tom Determann and Eric Johnson just got back yesterday from a special trip to DC, which we intend to do more frequently in addition to the annual summit trip. Many of you have gone on one or more of these trips or intend to go in the future. So far, we’ve brought back over $10 million worth of funding, and a variety of projects and issues are being addressed that might otherwise not move forward.

One other bit of great news from our educational community is an announcement made this morning that Mount St. Clare College is now the Franciscan University. We salute and applaud the changes that continue to occur there and wish every success to them in the 21st Century.

SPEECH

Forty-nine years ago the paperwork got signed establishing what today is the Clinton Area Development Corporation. Of course, as you heard a few minutes ago, people like Bud Rutenbeck’s dad and a number of other founders had been working on industrial development efforts for long before this effort was put together quite so formally or legally.

A couple of months ago as Bemis, one of our newest corporate citizens, was helping recognize DuPont, one of our oldest corporate citizens [by the way, Bemis is only 140 years old compared to DuPont’s 200th birthday this past year], they had newspapers up on the wall from the late ‘30’s, and Leo McEleney, Warren’s father and John’s grandfather, was leading a local industrial effort to help DuPont locate here and acquire property.

Clinton has always been on the leading edge of quality job recruitment and industrial development. Lyons was a leader a century and a half ago, and today a new cornerstone for regional economic development to be known as the Lyons Business and Technology Park is only a few breaths away from reality. As you know, CADC, in partnership with local government and the Chamber, is moving ahead on one of the recommendations from our Shive study, which in itself was only a concept, announced here a few short years ago.

Nearly three quarters of all new industrial jobs being created are occurring in the service industrial sector. These include: credit handling and credit services such as Data Dimensions, 7th Avenue and The Swiss Colony bring to us; back office insurance; financial; inventory control and management; information processing, something like we have at Data Dimensions; and fulfillment and client promotional services in which we have been long established, first starting with AC Nielsen and continuing these many years at places like PFC.

We are teamed up with some of the best design and marketing consultants available to us, and a new non-profit entity known as the Clinton Area Business Development Corporation has been established to develop and promote this business and technology park.

We have enjoyed hearing a recap of highlights covering much of the past 50 years as it relates to our regional economic health and leadership. For the past five years, we have been relatively quiet but very busy establishing cornerstones for the next 50 years. One of the most important of these involves the building of relationships with local government in regional support of our efforts. Both private and public support for our operations today comes from Thomson, Fulton and Albany; our partners at Alliant Utilities on both sides of the river; MidAmerican Energy; Iowa-American Water Company; Eastern Iowa Light and Power Cooperative and Iowa Area Development Group on our rural west end; economic development partnership with both Whiteside and Clinton Counties; as well as the majority of you centered in Clinton and Camanche.

One of the reasons for this growing regional support is common ground. A good chunk of that ground is what US Highway 30, the Lincoln Highway, the nation’s first coast-to-coast road, is built on. CADC, its leaders and many of you have had a long-standing hands-on effort to improve and reestablish our reliance on a rebuilt four-lane Lincoln Highway with a more strategic connection into the nation’s interstate highway infrastructure. DeWitt, Morrison and many communities beyond continue our united appeals in Des Moines, Ames, Springfield and Washington, DC, and these efforts continue to bear fruit.

These infrastructure and site projects rely on the competency and creative efforts through our consulting engineering and design partners. These include: the Howard R. Green Company, Shive-Hattery, Inc., Snyder and Associates, Environmental Design Group Limited, Landmark Engineering Group, Key Railroad Development, Inc. and McClure Engineering Company. [If you are represented here today, stand up and be recognized.] They are with us when we appear before the Department of Transportation, the legislature, Congress and other state and federal agencies. In most cases, they would not be retained or continue without the good judgment and support of our local elected officials. So, today more than ever, we salute those many of you who are “honorable” and recognize you for your leadership and on-going support of regional economic development working in partnership with Clinton Area Development Corporation and a duke’s mixture, or maybe I should say a Heinz variety, of other groups and organizations.

In fact, it’s this teamwork today, and I might add tomorrow, that is the most important mortar in these joints as we lay these cornerstones for the next 50 years.

We would, today, like to make an announcement. These are always important things to do at an annual meeting when you have the opportunity. Today’s announcement really began to take shape several years ago when we were able to take advantage of the NJIP, Iowa’s New Jobs and Income Program, in cooperation with our city of Clinton and what is today Nestlé PURINA PetCare Company.

In a unique joint application, for the first time I might add before or since, with the cities of Clinton and Davenport and with respect to the corporate facilities located in both communities, we announced the creation of several dozen new, quality jobs here as well as a 120,000 sq. ft. warehousing and distribution facility addition to be built on site at the Clinton site

NJIP’s are five-year programs, and we’re happy to report that the aforementioned distribution facility has recently opened. But, that’s not news, that’s history.

Corporate officials in St. Louis and beyond [remember Nestlé (based in Switzerland) is the new first name here] have been watching to see which communities were able to sustain or build on previous relationships. We are happy to recognize our local plant manager, Kurt Rouse, who would tell you that Mayor Wynn, the council and our new city administrator, Jeff Kooistra, deserve an “A+” for working with us to extend Windsor Drive to the south through Manufacturing Meadows III and on to the north side of the Nestlé PURINA facility.

By the way, this will eliminate nearly 100 trucks per day from an ever increasingly busy south end of Manufacturing Drive and reroute them across another new piece of infrastructure, Mill Creek Parkway, and on through Manufacturing Meadows III.

Now for that announcement I brought up a few minutes ago. An additional new warehousing and distribution facility is being laid out along south Windsor Drive in Manufacturing Meadows for the exclusive use of Nestlé PURINA by the Clausen Brothers Partnership. There will be more details to follow in the months ahead but new quality jobs both for the construction and operations of the facility will result in a permanent improvement and this, too, becomes a capstone as projected in the Shive study to increasing and expand Manufacturing Meadows which was begun 50 years ago.

Other significant building projects started recently include a 40,000 sq. ft. addition to Rock-Tenn. This NJIP project, which includes a new, state-of-the-art press inside, will see over 100 new jobs and a $10 million investment over the next 24 to 36 months. Besides this project, Economy Systems is building a new 150,000 sq. ft. distribution facility in Camanche.

New and varied housing starts throughout our region have been gaining momentum (even without the new Thomson Correctional Facility being opened yet). Besides Fulton, Thomson and Camanche house starts, and with a big push from the Clinton Area Housing Development Corporation, Dennis tells us, Clinton this past year has lead the list with more new houses being constructed any year since 1981 – a 20-year high!

Housing is a big part of attracting both quality workers and industry. So are our new retail and commercial shopping choices – east side, west side and all around our towns, great new choices for shopping are springing up. They really help and complement our industrial recruitment and expansion efforts!

But the basics of all new community grown and wealth is its industrial base. We could begin more than 50 years ago on the river and, as the railroad runs west, follow the progress of other CADC efforts through the last half of the 20th Century. But, unfortunately, it’s been a long dry spell since a world class project has committed itself to our area or found it necessary to avail itself of the resources related to the river, the railroad or the pipelines that uniquely transverse that undeveloped area moving west.

The most important new cornerstone to be laid as recommended in the Shive study is the one with the most bang for the buck, the one with the most punch over time, and involves the acquisition or protection related to this prime industrial area to the west. Today, on behalf of our current board of directors and in the spirit of the pioneers of this organization from half a century before, we are pleased to announce the acquisition of first, a strategically located “sweet spot” for access to the Union Pacific Railroad as well as several hundred acres of prime development property, all of which is currently zoned for heavy manufacturing. It is land south of the airport, north of the railroad and pipelines, west of Equistar and east of Low Moor.

I will, no doubt, sound today like the economist who presents one set of circumstances on the one hand and then relates a seemingly different scenario on the other hand. President Truman said he always wished he had a one-arm economist! But, believe me, before today’s announcement of a west end, world class industrial campus targeted towards value added agriculture processing, life science and large projects that absolutely, positively have to have world class rail service, access to pipelines and perhaps resources related to an even better connected transportation system related to four-lane highways and a cracker jack of a modern, efficient airport. Believe me, we can and will now compete in the 21st Century for these world class projects that my friends at the railroad tell me, once you leave Chicagoland, have very little competition between there and Omaha. Included in our marketing efforts are Mark Cross’ Transtar property (formerly PCS) and other listed sites on the main line.

There are indeed problems and concerns that have faced us in recent months. Next week in Chicago I deliver a paper to the Mid-American Economic Development Council regarding how communities who have lost hundreds of jobs and long established corporate operations, such as we have recently at International Paper, react and what we do about it. Well, the cornerstones we have talked about today are in large part what we do about it, and it’s not rocket science to know that, even though we’ve had a century plus receptivity for business and industry in the Clinton area and that Clinton is Iowa’s most industrialized community per capita, we can not and we must not rest on the laurels of what has gone on for the past 50 years.

On a personal note, we have a pretty interesting and effective “trio of Toms” who lead our board of directors: Tom Hesselmann as chair and Tom Fullerton and Tom Myers who are vice chairs. It is a great honor and privilege to work on an almost daily basis with them, our other officers and board of directors. We’ve planned and executed these plans over the past few years. We’ve committed industrial strength time and money to build a better business and industrial base – which is exactly what you, our members and stakeholders, expect of us.

It takes guts to make these decisions and lay these cornerstones, and I want to thank you each for your support and leadership. Let’s stand up and stand together and keep on rolling. Straight ahead!

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