Inside this issue 2006 Board Members Strategic Plan 2010 Join a Task Force 2006 Demographic Profile E-Zone/Wind Farm

Introducing the 2006 EDC board members... - top of page

At our Dec. 15, 2005 board meeting, the EDC board of directors approved the officer and new member appointments for 2006. 

Sonja Reece, the Normal Town Council’s representative, was re-elected board chair.  Dick Eikenberg, president of Flatlander and Business Builders, was elected as vice chair. Secretary/treasurer is Larry Maschhoff, president of Bank of Illinois.

The EDC’s bylaws were amended last year to increase the size of the board, adding six permanent members of the board and several members from the private sector. The six permanent members are appointed based on their positions: Dr. Jonathan Astroth, president of Heartland Community College; Jay Groves, representing President Al Bowman of Illinois State University; Mayor Chris Koos of the Town of Normal; Mayor Steve Stockton of the City of Bloomington; Michael Sweeney, chairman of the McLean County Board; and Dr. Richard Wilson, president of Illinois Wesleyan University.

The new private sector board members include: Bernie Anderson, regional community relations director of Nicor Gas; Jerry Berwanger, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Mitsubishi Motors North America Manufacturing; Ed Brady, president of Brady Homes; Julie Dobski, owner of Little Jewels Learning Center and McDonald’s; George Farnsworth, senior managing principal of the Farnsworth Group; Bob Lakin, president of Commerce Bank; Linda Lindus, president and publisher of The Pantagraph; and John Meek, president of Felmley-Dickerson Co.

Remaining on the board are: Sue Berglund of the McLean County Board, Kevin Huette of the Bloomington City Council, John Penn of Laborers’ Local 362 and Ron Stack of the McLean County Chamber of Commerce. Mayor Jeff Schwartz of Downs replaces Frank Feigl as the representative of the McLean County Mayors Association.

Strategic Plan 2010: Navigating a New Direction - top of page

The EDC’s five-year strategic plan, titled Strategic Plan 2010: Navigating a New Direction, is a result of a four-month process by a committee of EDC staff and board members and nearly 30 government, community and business leaders from throughout McLean County. During the process, committee members attended several meetings to discuss economic development issues in McLean County. The group also visited the Rockford and Belvidere, Ill. areas and met with leaders of their economic development groups to discuss what they had done and what was planned for the future.

In August 2005, the committee held a day-long retreat to create a draft strategic plan. Later that month and into September, other members of the community were brought together in several focus groups to look at and discuss the draft strategic plan. The conclusion to the strategic planning process was a meeting in which the results of the focus groups were presented to the committee and a final plan was approved. This plan was presented to the public at a luncheon on Oct. 4, 2005.

Become involved - join a task force - top of page

The strategic plan includes four priorities: Business Assistance Retention & Expansion, New Business Recruitment & Development, Community Improvement and Program Oversight & Investor Relations. Four task forces have been conceptualized to go along with these priorities: the Business Infrastructure Task Force, the McLean County Resource and Intelligence Network, the One Voice Task Force and the Capital Investment/Investor Relations Task Force.

For descriptions of the task forces, click here.

The 2006 Demographic Profile is almost here - top of page

The EDC is currently in the process of revising the design and updating the data of the Demographic Profile. We are making the document easier to read and to find information by grouping the data, deleting redundant data and adding new information.

We expect the 2006 Demographic Profile to be completed, printed and ready for distribution by the beginning of April. In the meantime, you can download the 2005 Demographic Profile from our Web site at www.bnbiz.org/Demographics/documents/DemoProfile2005.pdf.

Enterprise Zone is expanded for wind farm - top of page

Many of you have heard about the wind energy farm that is going to be built in McLean County. Horizon Wind Energy (www.horizonwind.com), formerly known as Zilkha Renewable Energy, was owned by the father and son team of Selim and Michael Zilkha until March of 2005. At that time, it was announced that Goldman Sachs would be purchasing one of the nation’s leading independent wind energy development companies, with a portfolio of nearly 4,000 megawatts in various stages of development in a dozen states. Goldman Sachs will acquire all of its ongoing projects and current assets. Goldman Sachs is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high net worth individuals. A description of Goldman’s environmental policy can be found here: Goldman Sachs Environmental Policy [PDF, 60KB].

In order to make the project work in McLean County, Horizon needed several important events to occur. First, Congress and the President had to pass a new version of the energy bill. An important part of the bill was a “Production Tax Credit,” or PTC. The PTC was scheduled to expire on December 31, 2005 and provides a 1.0 cent-per-kilowatt-hour (kWh) tax credit for electricity generated with wind turbines over the first 10 years of a project’s operations. The PTC helps make the project feasible and will provide the company and other wind energy projects the opportunity to be successful. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) says that up to 2,500 megawatts of wind energy capacity are scheduled to come on line in the U.S. this year, bringing new power to the equivalent of 700,000 homes and injecting over $3 billion of investment into the power generation sector. With the timely extension of the PTC, the AWEA anticipates that strong growth momentum will continue in 2006 and 2007.

Another part of the process included the extension of the Bloomington-Normal/McLean County Enterprise Zone (the “EZ”) to the east side of McLean County. The extension of the enterprise zone was crucial to the construction of the project. Having the project in the EZ would allow Horizon to take an exemption on sales tax for the purchase of building materials used in the construction of the project. Based on material costs for the project, Horizon estimates this to be around $25 million. The total project costs are in the range of $400 to $600 million dollars, making this construction project one of the largest in Illinois when construction begins.

Extension of the EZ required close collaboration between local governments, the Economic Development Council and Horizon Wind Energy. The expansion of boundaries of the EZ is allowed under state law under one of two methods: the expansion has to impact low-to-moderate income neighborhoods and populations, or the expansion must be for a single use project. The most recent expansion of the EZ was done under the auspices of the second method, a single use project.  Many will recall the EZ was created to accommodate the arrival of Mitsubishi Motors North America’s Manufacturing Division into the area.

Expansion of the boundaries required a summer-long project by surveyors laying out the boundaries of the newly expanded zone. Limiting the boundaries is a state requirement, as the EZ can be no more than 13 square miles in size. With an enterprise zone of approximately 4.8 square miles, expanding the zone to the eastern portion of the county required creative thinking on the parts of all involved. Ultimately, the zone was expanded by mapping out a three-foot strip following the boundaries of township centerlines, road right-of-ways and property lines to reach areas of the wind farm. From there, the boundaries reached out in a spider web-like fashion to accommodate each of the towers that will be erected for the wind farm.

Once the final location of each of the towers are set, the EZ will go through a process termed a “technical correction,” which will reduce the overall size of the EZ expansion and provide additional acreage if the community wishes to expand the zone for other projects. After the technical correction is completed, we expect the EZ to be just under nine square miles in size.

The Economic Development Council acts as the administrator of the Bloomington-Normal/McLean County EZ. The EDC works with companies and others to help determine what benefits they may receive in the enterprise zone. In addition, the EDC—as zone administrator—must certify whether a project is within the boundaries of the enterprise zone, thereby giving the project tax incentives.

Along with the exemption on sales tax in the enterprise zone, companies can receive a few other incentives; however, any benefit is countered by a major investment on the part of the company. A list of the incentives offered by the enterprise zone are listed in the State of Illinois’ Web site regarding the enterprise zone program: http://www.commerce.state.il.us/dceo/Bureaus/Business_Development/Tax+Assistance/Enterprise-Zone.htm. There are, however, no local property tax incentives provided in our enterprise zone. Other communities have chosen to provide these types of incentives.

The wind farm project is going to be built in two phases starting this spring. Phase one of the project will be completed and running by the end of 2006. The remainder of the project will be completed by the end of 2007. The project is projected to have 267 wind turbine generators, with a rated capacity of 1.5-1.65 megawatts each for a total project size of 400 megawatts. The project’s annual power generation is expected to equal 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours. The wind farm is expected to remove only about 150 to 200 acres of land from crop production. The project will generate approximately 200 construction jobs and approximately 30-40 full-time positions once the work is completed and the project is fully operational.