Published: October 20, 2006 10:27 am      

Projects get big boost

CLINTON — On a day when the Iowa Department of Economic Development board signed off on 18 projects creating 852 jobs through the Iowa Values Fund, Clinton County was a clear winner.

IDED Director Mike Blouin called the Clinton Herald on Thursday to announce approval of state incentives for three Clinton County projects — a $46 million expansion of DeWitt’s Guardian Glass plant, around $7 million in tax benefits for Hawkeye Bio Energy in Camanche and development of Center Leaf Partners, which will support Ashford University and a variety of other businesses.

“It’s very, very good news for Clinton County,” Blouin said. “We worked very closely with local economic development people and with your legislators.”

The expansion at Guardian’s float glass production facility, the addition of a modern glass coating machine, is expected to cost about $46 million, he said. It includes a 70,000-square foot addition and is expected to create 40 additional jobs. The state’s portion involves tax benefits associated with the Enterprise Zone program, which Blouin said will amount to roughly $750,000.

Guardian described the project in a press release issued late Thursday: “The coater — the most technologically advanced in the world — will allow the plant to produce residential and commercial glass that meets or exceeds U.S. energy standards, thereby addressing the rising cost of energy for home and building owners. The plant will service window customers and commercial fabricators throughout the United States but targets those operating in the upper Midwest.”

Hawkeye Bio Energy is constructing a $75 million biodiesel production facility with $400,000 in value-added agriculture assistance from the state. Blouin said the firm also will get tax benefits that probably equal $7 million as those benefits typically work out to around 10 percent of the capital investment.

Blouin also said the alternative fuel plant will create 38 jobs — 37 paying an average of $19.75 per hour. The new manufacturing facility would refine biodiesel fuel from soybean oil and other feedstock, possibly producing glycerin as a by-product.

Center Leaf Partners, which is registered to Ashford University CEO Andrew Clark, qualified for a $675,000 Economic Development Agency set-aside grant, which is federal money handled by IDED, Blouin said. It goes to projects in communities that do not get allocations under an EDA community development block grant program.

About $175,000 will be a straight loan, Blouin said, with the rest coming as forgivable loans. The payable portion of the loan will go to the city’s revolving loan fund, he explained, so it can keep funneling through the community.

Blouin said the Center Leaf project will create about 225 jobs — paying an average of $13.78 an hour — to service “a customer base well beyond Ashford and well beyond universities.”

Ashford earlier this month signed a letter of intent to move support for its online academic programs to the Lyons Business and Technology park where a 10 a.m. press conference was scheduled for today.

“We’re happy to be a part of this,” Blouin said, noting that the Iowa Values Fund has been involved in creating or retaining more than 30,000 jobs in its 40 months of existence, as will as $7 billion in capital investment in the state. Those totals reflect projects of 376 companies in 83 counties. The jobs reportedly come with an average starting salary of $39,700, which Blouin said is about 30 percent more than the state’s per capita income.

“We have seen this month in and month out, and it’s working,” Blouin said. “We just need to stay the course, keep pushing on it.”

He predicted that in 10 years, Iowans will be living and working in a “different and far, far healthier state” economically.

Blouin said the next step in the process is to start assembling contracts for each business. Those contracts will stipulate what the business has to produce in order to qualify for the benefits.

“We track every one of these projects annually to see how a company is doing,” Blouin said, effectively working as a regular creditor. He said firms have to make a profit and owe taxes before they can take advantage of tax credits.

He also said Iowa is the only state to use a return on investment model to weigh a wide array of factors, including resultant effect on a local economy, to make sure the projects it approves actually are worth the investment.

That system has limitations, he said, because it is difficult to calculate the benefit something like a biodiesel plant will provide for local soybean farmers who will have a prime market for their crops. Even so, he said, the alternative energy projects approved Thursday scored very well on the ROI scale.