Current News

Vermont Business Magazine The inaugural Maker Places Conference in Burlington last week involved over 40 attendees, ranging from local makers to representatives of towns and cities across the state of Vermont. Even a couple from Sydney Australia attended, so they could learn how to build a maker space in their community. Others attended from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  There were tours of Burlington’s makerspaces, numerous workshops led by invited speakers, a showing of a Maker-centric film and three outstanding keynote speakers. 

Vermont Business Magazine SymQuest Group, Inc, based in South Burlington and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Konica Minolta Business Solutions USA, Inc, and regionally based IT and document sales and service provider, is proud to announce the addition of two nationwide data center environments to its cloud services offering. As part of the company’s commitment to innovate and provide world-class IT services and support, SymQuest is expanding its cloud services offerings with two highly secure Konica Minolta environments located in data centers based in Chandler, AZ, and Ashburn, VA. The Tier 3 data centers, powered by CyrusOne and Zayo, provide redundant internet, power, and multi-level security including biometric authentication, and 24/7 on-site monitoring. SymQuest customers included in the newly added environments will be supported.

Vermont Business Magazine The Newport City Renaissance Corporation (NCRC) Board of Directors has appointed Cynthia More as executive director and she started her new responsibilities on Friday, July 29, 2016. A graduate of UVM, More has experience with leadership, communications, publicity and outreach.  She is currently working as a book publicist and event planning manager.  Along with her husband Gene McCormick, More co-founded the Newport Vermont Jazz Festival (NewportVTMusic.com) in 2015. After working for a book publisher and living in Rochester, Vt for over two decades, More purchased a home in Newport in 2012 within walking distance to Main Street and Lake Memphremagog. 

Cynthia More

Vermont Business Magazine The Lamoille Economic Development Corporation has identified website development and a successful marketing strategy as key components in the success of our small and medium sized businesses. Any Lamoille County for-profit business, with at least one potential full-time employee, who does not already have a website of their own, is eligible to apply to LEDC for the Website Development Grant. Business recipients work with an LEDC marketing consultant to develop the materials they will need to create their site. The next step is the development of the website, followed by training on how to update and maintain the site. Once the website is ready, a marketing plan for promoting the site is created by the business owner and LEDC marketing consultant.

Vermont Business Magazine A CNBC study has scored all 50 states on 51 measures of competitiveness developed with input from business groups including the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council on Competitiveness. States received points based on their rankings in each metric. Then, CNBC separated those metrics into 10 broad categories, weighting the categories based on how frequently they are cited in state economic development marketing materials. That way, CNBC study ranks the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves. Vermont finished 36th in 2016, up from 42nd in 2015 and 2014. Vermont is best at Quality of Life (3) and Education (7) and worst at Workforce (47) and Access to Capital (49).

Vermont Business Magazine Last night, the City Councils of both South Burlington and Burlington have approved a settlement agreement that draws to a close a dispute over property taxes paid to the City of South Burlington by the City of Burlington for the Burlington International Airport (BTV) property. The Airport is located in South Burlington, but is owned and operated as part of the City of Burlington. The 10-year deal lowers the assessed value of the Airport ($52 million from $77 million) and related properties, but gives both sides clarity in what is owed and paid. For the current fiscal year, Burlington will pay de facto property taxes of $717,000, most of which will go to the statewide education fund. South Burlington will net $238,000. This ends an approximately five-year dispute between the two communities over the assessment of the BIA property that ultimately landed in Vermont Superior Court. The Councils took this action almost simultaneously at regular meetings held the evening of August 15^th.

Vermont Business Magazine SKI MAGIC LLC announced today it had concluded a signed purchase and sale agreement with current title holder Magic Mountain Management, LLC to purchase all the property and assets of the 709-acre Magic Mountain Ski Area in Londonderry, VT for an undisclosed amount. With the signing of the purchase agreement, SKI MAGIC will begin its “due diligence” period before formally closing on the transaction and taking operational control which is expected to take 6-8 weeks. However, the purchase agreement has a provision for 2016-17 season preparatory work to begin immediately during the due diligence phase, including repair work to re-open Magic’s second summit lift (the 5000’ long Black Triple Chair) which has not operated for the last two years due to insufficient financial resources to complete the work required by the Vermont Passenger Tramway Board.

Vermont Business Magazine New Hampshire’s preliminary seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for July 2016 was 2.9 percent, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the June rate which remained at 2.8 percent after revision. The July 2015 seasonally adjusted rate was 3.4 percent. Seasonally adjusted estimates for July 2016 placed the number of employed residents at 732,860, an increase of 1,730 from the previous month and an increase of 15,930 from July 2015. The number of unemployed residents increased by 960 over-the-month to 21,970. This was 3,150 fewer unemployed than in July 2015. From June 2016 to July 2016, the total labor force increased by 2,690 to 754,830. This was an increase of 12,780 from July 2015.

The unadjusted July 2016 unemployment rate for New Hampshire was 2.9 percent, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the June rate which increased to 2.8 percent after revision. The July 2015 unadjusted rate was 3.3 percent.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont business leaders were neither positive nor negative in their assessment of the economy. But their indifferent opinion is actually lower than the actual performance of the economy.  The forward-looking index, in fact, has been trending down for nearly four years. Today, Lisa Ventriss, President of Vermont Business Roundtable (VBR) and Jeffrey Carr, President, Economic & Policy Resources (EPR), announced the Q3 2016 results of their joint initiative, the VBR-EPR Business Conditions Survey.

Vermont Business Magazine The Master of Business Administration (MBA) – long considered the higher education stamp of readiness for corporate success – has been struggling to fill that call, as many business leaders find that MBA programs fail to impart the skillsets required by modern day enterprises. But what distinguishes a modernized MBA that is equipped to prepare today’s professional for tomorrow’s quagmires and opportunities?

Vermont Business Magazine Merchants Bank donated $8,000 to sponsor the Athletes Village at the Lake Champlain Dragon Boat Festival on Sunday, August 7^th. This is Dragonheart Vermont's eleventh year holding this event and Merchants Bank is overjoyed to have been involved each year. Funds raised during the Dragon Boat Festival stay in Vermont to benefit cancer programs. They have raised over $1.65 million since starting the annual festival in 2005.

Vermont Business Magazine The Norwich Bookstore has won the Book Publishers Representatives of New England Independent Spirit Award. The Independent Spirit Award is given annually at the NEIBA fall tradeshow to recognize the excellence in a bookstore member of the New England Independent Booksellers Association. Our rep members nominate bookstores for this award, and then we vote on the store we most believe stands for all that is great in New England bookselling. 

This year was extremely competitive, with an unprecedented five-way tie at one point! For that reason I want to call attention to the nominees – Bridgeside Books, Jabberwocky Bookshop, Oblong Books & Music and RJ Julia. They have an enormous amount of support amongst New England Sales Representatives! But there had to be a winner, and we have selected the Norwich Bookstore in Norwich, VT!