Iowa Spotlight, Site Selection magazine, November 2003

Financial Services Skills Reassuring

Iowa has already earned the prime spot when it comes to skilled labor in the insurance and financial services sectors. That was reinforced in September when Dutch insurer ING chose to add 90 jobs and move a Minneapolis subsidiary to Des Moines to create a new company, ING Financial Partners. The company now employs 1,000 people in the metro.
In June, the $14-million expansion in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale by property and casualty insurer Continental Western was approved for tax benefits that will help it go forward, adding up to 60 jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that would equate to about 115 spinoff jobs providing goods and services to the industry. Construction began this fall on the 30,000-sq.-ft. (2,787-sq.-m.) expansion to the company's headquarters, expected to be complete by 2005.

Iowa's Little Italy

Nestled in the corner of southeastern Iowa on the Mississippi River, the city of Burlington, even as it diversifies into service industries, is known for its industrial heritage, with more than 6,100 people working for such leading employers as General Electric, Federal Mogul and Case New Holland (CNH). But who would have ever guessed it would be known for its appeal to Italian manufacturers?
Case would have. That's because all three of the Italian imports – rubber hose maker Alfagomma America, vehicular electric harness maker COBO International and hydraulic tubing maker Borghi USA – all count CNH among their most prominent clients.
Borghi USA was the first on the block.

Borghi was the first on the block, opening its first non-European plant here in 2001. COBO moved into a $1-million, 30,000-sq.-ft. (2,787-sq.-m.) building in Flint Ridge Business Park, employing 40. Coincidentally, that's where its Italian brethren are too.
After Borghi's arrival, "CNH introduced us to some potential worldwide suppliers of theirs that they had an interest in locating to the U.S.," says Dennis Hinkle, vice president of economic development for the Burlington West Burlington Chamber of Commerce. "We made a trip to Italy in December 2001, and in 2002 COBO and Alfagomma made their announcements."
COBO
Vehicular electric harness maker COBO International.

The Flint Ridge park still has about 140 acres (57 hectares) open for development, which will include the park's fourth spec project, a 68,000-sq.-ft. (6,317-sq.-m.) building now under way. Elsewhere in town, a 40-million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant should be complete by April 2004.
The $6.1-million Alfagomma project eventually went into an existing 78,600-sq. ft. (7,302-sq.-m.) building, which beat out competing sites in Illinois and Kansas. The facility, expected to be up and running this fall, will employ 60, with the goal of employing 120 in the near future. The company received a $480,000 state incentive package, in addition to around $800,000 from various local entities.
Alfagomma America
The $6.1-million Alfagomma project eventually went into an existing 78,600-sq. ft. (7,302-sq.-m.) building, which beat out competing sites in Illinois and Kansas.

Crucial to that package was a $360,000 forgivable loan, under the state's Community Economic Betterment Account program. If the company creates the new jobs it's promised, it will not have to repay the loan. As for the promise that Italy holds, Hinkle and his colleagues think there's more where that came from.
"We are making a return trip to Italy [in October], in the hopes of attracting more," he says.
Decked out in colors befitting its Italian roots, Alfagomma America has just occupied this 78,600-sq.-m. (7,302-sq.-m.) spec building in Burlington's Flint Ridge Business Park. Fellow Italian companies Borghi (below left) and COBO have also moved into the city within the past few years. All have ties to longtime Burlington company Case New Holland.