Twin Cities Business
by Jason Amundsen
About four years ago Byerly’s and Lunds inherited the Sola
brand of juice and juice bars from Susan Hibbs who started the
business in 1996. Sola was, and is, a well respected name in
the juice and smoothie business. Yet for years Sola
languished. Instead of throwing away the brand Tres Lund,
Chairman and CEO of Lund Food Holdings, turned to Greg
Heinemann to revive the Sola brand.
Heinemann is not unfamiliar with taking risks and succeeding.
He owns the Hopkins-based marketing and sales company,
Blackwatch LLC. Most notably Blackwatch provided the
strategic marketing services to Best Buy that resulted in the
integration of Geek Squad into its stores. It was this growth
strategy that took Geek Squad from a $3 million business in
2002 to a nearly $1 billion business this year.
Twin Cities Business
by Jason Amundsen
During his morning commute Greg Peterson, owner of Peters
Billiards in Minneapolis, received a rude shock courtesy of the
Minnesota Department of Transportation. He learned the
State, via eminent domain, was taking both his land and
business to make way for the expansion of Crosstown Highway
62.
Steadily and patiently, for over 25 years, Peterson had built his
company into the largest single-store game room supplier in
the five-state area. Unfortunately Peterson didn’t receive the
news directly from MNDOT. Instead his barber had read about
the proceedings in that morning’s newspaper and called. “The
news sent chills down my spine,” Peterson said.
Ecosystem Marketplace
by Jason Amundsen
The Ecosystem Marketplace finds out how one big mitigation
bank in the Southeastern United States plans to diversify its
portfolio as it navigates the challenges and opportunities in a
dynamic market.
When George Kelly, an environmental attorney, and Dixon
Harvey, an outdoor enthusiast, first launched the
Environmental Banc & Exchange (EBX) in 1990, they were
wary of environmental markets.
"We said we weren't sure about these markets," says Harvey.
"We just decided to start EBX with a little bit of startup capital.
The basic vision was that we can improve the environment and
generate a respectable return at the same time."
More specifically, Kelly and Harvey used their little bit of
startup capital to launch one the United States' first private
mitigation banks.
The U.S. Clean Water Act requires developers who build on or
near a wetland to offset any unavoidable damage to the
wetland by restoring an equivalent ecosystem somewhere
else. The Endangered Species Act makes a similar
requirement of developers when they damage endangered
species habitat. As a result of these legislative requirements,
the last several decades have witnessed a growing demand for
habitat restoration in the U.S. To supply this demand,
entrepreneurs like Kelly and Harvey have set up mitigation
banks that restore habitat, get credit from the government for
doing so, and then sell that credit on to developers who need it
to meet permitting requirements.
Conservation development is the new hot term when it comes
to land conservation in the United States. The Ecosystem
Marketplace finds out what it is and why people are interested
in it.
A new breed of residential developer is emerging from the dark
woods and flowing wetlands. Challenging our conventional
assumptions of how homes are built and sold, these business
people are making land use and open space a dominant
criteria when building new communities. And, they hope,
numbering the days of the standard five-acre subdivision.
Seemingly odd bedfellows, developers and land-use
advocates have created a new trend in homebuilding called
the conservation development. According to LandChoices, a
nationwide organization devoted to educating property owners
about land preservation, "Conservation subdivisions preserve
50% - 70% of the buildable land while still allowing the same
maximum number of home sites as conventional subdivisions."
