2007: Another year of continual change in the Quad-City region

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By Doug Schorpp and Jennifer DeWitt | Sunday, December 30, 2007 |

John Gross, on-site project engineer with the Illinois Department of Transportation, talks about construction of the Veterans Memorial Bridge at Carr’s Crossing, which opened June 18 between Milan, Ill., and Moline/Rock Island. The project took about 40 years from conception to completion. (Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

Restaurants opened. Restaurants closed.

Economic development chiefs and hospital CEOs moved on.

Triumph delayed opening of the Triumph hog plant in East Moline, but owners say it will be a larger operation that originally announced.

The first new major bridge built in decades in the area was completed and opened.

It was another year of continual change in the business world for the Quad-Cities and its region.

The new West Rock River bridge linking Milan and Moline/Rock Island, officially known as the Veterans Memorial Bridge at Carr’s Crossing, opened June 18.

Restaurants like Crave, Fuddruckers and Old Country Buffet closed while the market welcomed the first two Sonics and a Noodles & Co.

DavenportOne, Quad-City Development Group, the Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce and the City of Davenport economic development department saw changes in top leadership positions.

The AT&T call center in Davenport is gearing up to soon after the calendar turns. A 20-story mixed-use tower will be built at Bass Street Landing in Moline, and the Quad-City International Airport near Moline expects 2007 to go down in history as having the most passengers boarding airplanes.

Here, in no particular order, is a look at some of the top Quad-City area business stories of 2007.

New bridge connects Milan and RI/Moline

After decades of planning, the Illinois Quad-Cities cut the ribbon last summer on the new West Rock River bridge between Milan and Moline/Rock Island. Officially known as the Veterans Memorial Bridge at Carr’s Crossing, it opened June 18 providing a connection from Milan to Blackhawk Road in Rock Island and John Deere Road in Moline.

The $73 million project is expected to spark new growth in the village of Milan as well as in south Moline. In anticipation of the new bridge, housing starts skyrocketed in those areas with several new developments this year.

New commercial developments also are beginning to take shape in Milan. Construction is moving forward on a new Blackhawk State Bank branch and another new project was announced in November for the city’s industrial park on 11th Street West. Allied Investment Group is planning seven buildings on 10 acres with suites from 5,000 to 10,000-square-feet.

The park expects to draw high-tech, service-oriented businesses and not heavy manufacturing.

Milan village officials said they expect steady, but slow growth as a result of the new access provided by the bridge.

The span had been on the drawing board for nearly 40 years. It was completed nearly three years after construction began. It marked the Quad-Cities’ first new bridge in more than 30 years. The last was the Interstate 280 bridge, which opened in 1973.

Hospital systems await new leaders

Two Quad-City hospital systems will be under new leadership in 2008.

Bill Leaver announced in early November that he will leave Trinity Regional Health System as its president and CEO. Leaver, 55, will be the new president and CEO of Iowa Health System, the largest integrated health system in the state, with headquarters in Des Moines.

The system is the corporate parent of 11 hospitals in large Iowa cities, including three in the Quad-Cities owned by Trinity Regional Health System. His successor has not been named yet. Leaver will begin his new duties Wednesday.

Genesis Health System also will have a new president and CEO. Douglas Cropper, 48, will move from his current position in Falls Church, Va., to take the reins of the Davenport-based hospital system this spring. He now is executive vice president of Inova Health System as well as administrator of Inova Fairfax Hospital, chosen one of the nation’s best by U.S. News & World Report magazine.

Cropper takes over for Leo Bressanelli, 63, who has been the CEO of Genesis since its inception in 1994 with the consolidation of Mercy and St. Luke’s hospitals in Davenport. He is to officially retire in January.

New hands on economic development reins

The past year saw several changes in the leadership of Quad-City economic development ranks.

DavenportOne: In March, DavenportOne named one of its own — Tara Barney — as the group’s new president and chief executive officer. Barney, who had been senior vice president of the Downtown Partnership for 4½ years, succeeded Dan Huber. He left the group in January to become a partner and investor in the Davenport-based hotel management company, Frontier Management Group.

Quad-City Development Group: By summer, the Quad-City Development Group was reopening its national search for a new president and CEO and bringing back its former leader, John Gardner, in an interim capacity. He replaced his successor, Thom Hart, who became the agency’s senior vice president.

Hart left in October for a post with the Iowa Department of Economic Development. The former Davenport mayor was named infrastructure and transportation coordinator.

Nancy Mulcahey, of East Moline, was named as the new head of the development group’s marketing staff, assuming many of the public policy initiatives that had been handled by Hart. She and Gardner also are splitting duties in the area of working to retain and add jobs at the Rock Island Arsenal.

Gardner recently said the search for a permanent leader continues to move forward.

City of Davenport: The city looked north to replace its longtime community and economic director Clayton Lloyd, who retired this fall. Pam Miner, a senior planner with Olsson Associates of Edina, Minn., was named as his replacement in September.

As a former urban planner, she has experience working in a major metropolitan area and suburban towns. Before working for Olsson, she was a planning supervisor for the City of Minneapolis.

Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce: The Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce also looked inside its ranks for a new president and CEO, naming Robert Lundin to the position. Lundin was serving as interim president and CEO after longtime leader Scott Tunnicliff resigned in June in what he had called an “amicable parting.”

Lundin, who was selected for the post in November, was chosen from a pool of 50 applicants. With his new role, Lundin decided to close his healthcare marketing company, Lundin & Associates LLC. Prior to operating the company, he was president of Trinity at Terrace Park Medical Center in Bettendorf — overseeing the construction of that facility.

Deere retirees try to restore original benefits

A decision by Deere & Co. to change some of its retirees’ health benefits united the former employees to fight for their original benefits to be restored.

In September, the Moline-based Deere announced it was changing its health benefits for about 5,000 of its 28,000 U.S. retirees and their dependents. Deere said the new programs were in response to federal legislation that created tax-advantaged Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, as well as the adoption of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

The changes affected only salaried employees, most of who retired or will retire on or after July 1, 1993.

Within a month of the announcement, a group of affected retirees had begun to organize in hopes of convincing Deere to restore the benefits they say they were promised. The group, called Flex Retirees Organization, or FRO, tried to pressure Deere to rescind the program, or at the very least, delay implementation so retirees could make better educated decisions.

FRO members have argued that the new benefits plan is not comparable to the benefits they had and that the changes are causing widespread confusion among retirees. Deere has refused to delay implementation but did extend the deadline once and has made other adjustments in the menu of options.

Earlier this month, FRO announced it has formed as a corporation under Iowa law. The group also said it is interviewing law firms and will take legal action if necessary. Meanwhile, retirees have had to get signed up for the new benefits.

Autoplex investigation continues

The investigation continues into the now-closed Blackhawk Autoplex in Milan, Ill.

Blackhawk State Bank, which is Blackhawk Autoplex’s lender, confiscated 66 vehicles Sept. 26 from the dealership lot at 1920 E. 1st Ave. because the bank was not receiving full payment when they were sold.

James Huiskamp, vice president of Blackhawk State Bank, issued a statement at the time:

“Blackhawk State Bank has a loan to Blackhawk Autoplex to finance their inventory of cars which they, in turn, sell. These cars are held as collateral for the loan. It seems very clear that many of these cars were sold without full payment to the bank. The bank believed that we were in an under-secured position so we took possession of the remaining cars, in inventory, which were pledged as collateral for the loans.”

“Through the Better Business Bureau and our office directly, we have received 60 consumer complaints,” said Natalie Bauer, a representative of the Illinois Attorney General’s office. “Our office is reviewing the complaints to determine if law enforcement action would be appropriate.”

Officials have said the complaints come from people who say they purchased used vehicles there and still have unresolved issues, including allegations of refund checks that have bounced and warranty work and promised repair work not fulfilled.

Foreclosures up all over

Home foreclosures are on the increase nationally and in the Quad-City region. Officials said in late September that the number of foreclosures in Scott and Rock Island counties continue to climb as compared to rates from the previous three years.

Foreclosures are soaring throughout the country because of subprime lending, or mortgage loans granted to people with poor credit histories or loans approved without down payments.

Home foreclosure numbers remained steady on both sides of the river in the Quad-Cities for several years until the past 18 months. In Rock Island County last year, foreclosures jumped from 435 in 2005 to 537 in 2006. Through June 30, 245 were filed.

In Scott County, 318 foreclosures were filed through the first six months of 2007, compared to 266 that were filed the first half of 2006, about a 20 percent increase.

Call Center set to open soon

AT&T is in the process of hiring people for its new call center which is scheduled to be opened Jan. 7 in Davenport.

The interior of the 74,250-square-foot, $19.3 million call center, which will serve AT&Ts West Coast wireless phone customers is nearing completion at 5348 Elmore Circle, said Dave Fine, AT&T’s vice president and general manager for the upper Midwest region.

The center will have an annual payroll of nearly $11 million, with jobs that include customer service, information technology, human resources and management. AT&T is the largest wireless carrier in the U.S. with more than 63.7 million subscribers and annual revenues exceeding $32 billion.

Corporate Communication spokesperson Chris Comes that some of the employees have been hired. But the hiring of the nearly 600 employees expected to be hired will occur over a period of several years.

Airport to set passenger record

Although the final numbers are not yet in, the Quad-City International Airport expects 2007 to go down in the record books.

In November, the airport announced it had landed its 11th new monthly record of the year and was well on its way to a new annual record. Through November, the airport had boarded 445,516 passengers, which was up 7 percent year to date from 2006.

All year long, airport officials had their sights on hitting the 500,000-mark for boardings, or enplanements. But delays and cancellations due to December storms may have jeopardized that. However, to set a new record the airport only needs to surpass 456,802 enplanements – set last year.

The 2006 record also had the distinction of being the first time the airport hit the 900,000-mark for total passengers, which is enplanements and deplanements combined. That record replaced the previous record set in 2004 by more than 34,000.

Final numbers will be released in January.

Triumph delays hog plant opening

Triumph Foods announced it will delay construction of its new hog processing plant in East Moline, but it is now planning a larger operation with more employees than originally announced.

In late November, Triumph officials said construction on the plant on Barstow Road will begin next summer — about a year later than first expected. The plant should be operational in the summer of 2010.

It marked the second time this year that Triumph announced a delay in its plans. In August, the company announced it was delaying construction until spring 2008.

In November, company leaders said they were focusing their efforts on expanding their plant in St. Joseph, Mo. The plant, which opened two years ago, already is processing more hogs and employs more workers than Triumph had anticipated.

The East Moline plant will be a mirror image of the St. Joseph plant, but now it is expected to cost more than the original $135 million price tag. The plant now will include a cold storage unit that was not in its original plans.

When up and running at full capacity, the East Moline plant will employ up to 2,400 workers — more than double the 1,000 workers that Triumph first announced. It also has increased the number of hogs it will process daily from 15,000 to 18,000.

Bass Street Landing’s new tower

A proposal to build a 20-story mixed-use tower at Bass Street Landing in Moline is moving forward.

The Moline City Council agreed earlier this month to sell $7.5 million in bonds to fund a loan to developer Rodney Blackwell, managing principal of Financial District Properties K.P., so he can purchase downtown buildings owned by Kone, the elevator company involved in the deal.

Officials said the agreement Blackwell reached with Kone calls for the company to lease space in Blackwell’s new office tower and for Blackwell to buy all of Kone’s downtown properties. Kone will lease back its property from Blackwell while the new tower is being built.

Moline is Kone’s North American headquarters. Its corporate headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland.

The new high-rise is expected to include three floors of retail, eight floors of luxury condominiums at the top, and in the middle, nine floors of office space. Blackwell said Kone is expected to take four to five floors for an undetermined number of employees. South of the building will be a five-story parking ramp between the high-rise and the existing plaza area. Under Blackwell’s plan, portions of the plaza will be turned into a winter ice skating rink.

Kone manufactures, sells, installs and services elevators and escalators. It also services automatic building doors.

The new high-rise would be built at 17th Street and River Drive, just west of the Stoney Creek Inn and north of the public plaza and the RiverStation building, which were part of the first two phases of the Bass Street Landing project.