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GREATER FORT WAYNE Business Weekly n
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Huntertown boutique features new, vintage items The Porch Swing is a new
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casual living NOTEBOOK boutique in Huntertown owned by Julie Collier. The grand opening of the shop at 14609 Lima Road is scheduled for 5-10 p.m. Nov. 16. The shop carries a blend of vintage and new items, including midcentury furniture, repurLinda Lipp posed items, cutting-edge home accessories, candles, original artwork and Vosage exotic chocolates. “I try to choose items that are different and interesting, yet functional,” Collier said. A coffee bar is in the works that will sell custom roasted beans as well as fresh coffee. Regular store hours will be 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. For information, call (260) 338-2315.
REAL ESTATE & RETAIL
CHOCOLATE WITH A TWIST The Olive Twist is partnering with DeBrand Fine Chocolates to produce
chocolate bars that combine DeBrand’s chocolate with the extra-virgin olive oils and aged balsamic vinegars of the Olive Twist. The new gourmet tasting bars are being introduced exclusively at the Olive Twist’s retail stores in Fort Wayne and Auburn, as well as through the firm’s website. The special DeBrand-Olive Twist chocolate bars will be available in three flavors: raspberry basil, made with DeBrand dark chocolate combined with the Olive Twist raspberry balsamic vinegar and basil olive oil; strawberry almond, made with white GREATER FORT WAYNE
Business Weekly (USPS 024-494) Periodicals postage paid at Fort Wayne, IN 46802
chocolate, strawberry balsamic vinegar and roasted-almond oil; and orange chocolate, made with milk chocolate, cara-cara orange and vanilla balsamic vinegar and blood-orange olive oil. Olive Twist co-owner Lori Berndt said she came up with the idea to partner with DeBrand after being approached by an outside firm offering a lesser-quality chocolate. She contacted Cathy Brand-Beere, DeBrand founder, and DeBrand’s staff developed the three flavor combinations. “We were already in the process of experimenting with balsamic vinegars in various pieces, so the timing was perfect,” Brand-Beere said. The gourmet chocolate bars will be sold for $7 each or in a package of three containing one of each flavor.
SPERRY VAN NESS PARKE GROUP Diana Parent represented the lessor, PD Properties LLC, and Whitney Peterson represented the lessee, Macanix LLC, in the renewal of a lease of office
space at 409 E. Cook Road, Suite 150. Neal Bowman represented the tenant, Studio 13 Creative Skin Design, in the lease of 2,420 square feet of retail space at 416 W. Coliseum Blvd. Troy Reimschisel represented both the lessor, Airport Industrial Plaza LLC, and the lessee, Craftline Graphics Inc., in the renewal of a lease of 312,725 square feet of industrial space at 3320 W. Ferguson Road. Bill Beard represented the lessor, MMJ Investments LLC, in the lease of office space at 11617 Coldwater Road, Suite 103. Beard represented both the seller, Mary Jo Knight, and the buyers, Jonathon and Amber Recker, in the purchase of retail space at 4007-4009 S. Wayne St.
KORTE ENDS FOOD DRIVE Korte Does It All Inc. collected 2,040 pounds of nonperishable food items during its October food drive for Commun
See REAL ESTATE on PAGE 7
3306 Independence Drive Fort Wayne, IN 46808 (260) 426-2640 Fax: (260) 426-2503 www.fwbusiness.com
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November 15-21, 2013
IVY TECH: Degree could help retain workers
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Corporate College. The program is being created “to meet industry needs; industry has said through the Indiana Automotive Council it needed to have more industrial maintenance-type people and needed to have a curriculum to develop them,” he said. Ivy Tech “is nimble and flexible and we meet community needs.” Industrial-maintenance technicians are important partly because they help plants get longer life and top performance out of manufacturing equipment through proper care and maintenance, enabling facilities to operate production lines with minimal downtime. There is a nationwide shortage of factory workers with this higher level of skill even though those jobs pay better than production work. Sue Smith, corporate executive for advanced manufacturing in the office of the president at Ivy Tech, said Ivy Tech has studied how community colleges across the country have been responding to the nationwide problem and based the super-degree program on the best models that have been emerging. Students who enter the super-degree program straight out of high school will pay for the part of their training that takes place at Ivy Tech, and their employers will pay them for the work they do as part of their internships. There also will be employers covering the program’s entire cost for employees they plan to promote to industrial maintenance technician positions once it is completed, Smith said. “The cost is so inexpensive they could probably create a technician as cheaply as a staffing agency could get a technician. It makes sense to grow your own,” she said. “Local technicians are more likely to stay in the area.” Nine manufacturers in Wells County did just that this summer with a program developed through their collaboration with the Corporate College, WorkOne Northeast, Norwell High School and Wells County Economic Development. Production workers selected for the training went through a 200-hour class that covered topics such as electricity, fluid power, machining, motors, welding and programmable logic controllers. Based on its success in Wells County it was replicated in Adams County. Smith said the associate degree in industrial maintenance with a focus on automation and robotics will become available at Ivy Tech locations as they develop it to meet regional needs and find students for it. Any employers willing to host more interns for the program than they plan to hire will be providing a service for other industrial employers who are not able to
participate but need workers with the skills it will develop, Smith said. John Walter, dean of the school of technology at Ivy Tech Northeast, said it could be ready to offer the super-degree program as early as next spring. It has one of the best community-college facilities for advanced manufacturing in the nation at its north campus near Stellhorn and St. Joe roads, and the courses he said would be needed for the program “are already in our inventory; we just have to tweak them.” Ivy Tech Northeast received more than $2 million in grant funding from the Talent Initiative to buy some of the latest capital equipment, advanced-manufacturing machinery and software for the advanced-manufacturing labs in the Steel Dynamics Keith E. Busse Technology Center. Most of the Ivy Tech Northeast funding was spent on high-end computer numerical control equipment, but the center also was able to buy precision measuring machines and robotic and metallurgy testing equipment. Walter said Ivy Tech Northeast will work with area high schools, WorkOne Northeast, the Talent Initiative and industrial employers in northeast Indiana to find students for the super-degree program. Part of the recruitment effort will involve correcting misconceptions about modern manufacturing. Some people incorrectly believe industrial work environments have not improved much during the past half-century and production work is too unreliable to make manufacturing occupations worthwhile. “Manufacturing is not what it used to be; the dark, dirty days of manufacturing are over,” Walter said. “All these facilities are well-lit, environmentally controlled and clean.” He said the offshoring trend that moved less-skilled U.S. manufacturing to countries with lower labor costs appears to be largely over, and most of the production work remaining in the United States involves advanced manufacturing. Even in cases where occasional layoffs have interrupted the occupations of veteran production workers, “if they look at the income these people earned over their 20 to 25 years, they made far more than they would have made in a service industry,” he said. The national shortage of skilled production workers and industrial maintenance technicians is likely to intensify as the U.S. work force continues to age and more and more baby boomers retire, he said. “We’re not getting them replaced, so we have to turn the stigma of manufacturing around somehow,” Walter said. At Ivy Tech Northeast, “we have the facility, we have the curriculum, and we need people who are interested in manufacturing to get back into the classroom and learn these updated skills.”