Across Iowa, more companies are realizing the benefits that come with doing business in this Midwestern state and particularly in Marion County. The county was named after Brigadier General Francis Marion, who served in the American Revolutionary War. This scenic area has been a popular location for businesses for well over a century and is today the home of many respected companies including window and door manufacturer Pella Corporation, Precision Pulley & Idler, Vermeer Corporation and others such as the 3M Company, Weiler Corporation, Cascade Lumber Company, Van Gorp Corporation, Lely and LDJ Manufacturing.
Month: October 2017
Midwest Partnership
Community-Based Economic Development
Midwest Partnership Economic Development Corporation is a non-profit economic development organization in West Central Iowa that was first formed as I-80 Development in 1992. Adair and Guthrie Counties came together to form the organization in order to handle leads and prospects in business development along the Interstate.
City of Albert Lea, MN
The Thriving ‘Land Between the Lakes’
Municipal boosters in Albert Lea, a small city based in Southeastern, Minnesota, were asked a simple question: what is the main thing you want the public to know about your hometown?
“We are a beautiful community that’s open for business,” replies Albert Lea Economic Development Agency (ALEDA) Executive Director Ryan Nolander. City officials are eager to attract new business while enhancing the existing economic base.
Pine County, MN
The Best of Both Worlds
Pine County has been around as long as the state of Minnesota. For many years it was a rural, agricultural community made up of smaller towns of about fifteen hundred residents. That began to change with the pan-urban growth out of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis – Saint Paul) in the 1980s and 1990s, and there has been a fair amount of population growth since then, particularly in the southern part of the county…
Otter Tail County
Laidback Lakes Living
Otter Tail is a rural county in beautiful west central Minnesota. It is geographically blessed – from a natural resource perspective – with 1,048 lakes, more than any other county in the entire United States. This has resulted in the county having more shoreline than California and Florida put together. It is quite large, spanning roughly 2,500 square miles. “If you were to take all of the highways within the county, stretch them out and lay them end-to-end, they would stretch to Houston, Texas,” says Economic Development Director Nick Leonard.
Wright County, MN
The Right Place to Be
Pardon the pun, but Wright County really is the right place to be if you have a choice of small business-friendly communities in which to live and work. Depending on where you are in the county, you are only thirty to forty-five minutes from all the amenities of the urban centers of St. Paul-Minneapolis and St. Cloud, and yet you are surrounded by rolling farm country and over two hundred lakes. Visit Monticello, on the banks of the Mississippi, and you will see flocks of trumpeter swans, once an endangered species. Moreover, the county’s economic development partnership is ready to talk business. Its mission statement: “Partnering for Opportunities” says it all. Intrigued? Read on.
Kandiyohi County and City of Willmar, MN
Open for Business
Located just two hours west of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, is the City of Willmar, in Kandiyohi County. Business in Focus spoke with Aaron Backman, the executive director of the Kandiyohi County and City of Willmar Economic Development Commission (EDC); Joanna Schrupp, business development officer for the MinnWest Technology Campus; and Betsy Bonnema from co-working space WORKUP, to learn more about this dynamic county and what it has to offer for existing and prospective businesses.
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