June 11, 2010

Fueled by newly acquired Nissan and a rebounding Ford, Joe Machens is in the driver’s seat of Columbia’s resurgent auto market. Car and truck sales at Columbia dealerships have increased by more than 16 percent for the first four months of 2010 compared with the same period the previous year, according to Missouri Department of Revenue data The local numbers mirror national sales, which also increased a little more than 16 percent, according to data from Autodata, a motor vehicle analysis firm based in New Jersey.

A few days ago, I drove past the future home of IBM on LeMone Industrial Boulevard to catch up on the changing landscape. Construction workers were getting the industrial building ready for IBM to open in November, while around the corner road workers were getting close to finishing the Maguire Boulevard extension to Stadium Boulevard

The Better Business Bureau of Eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois is opening a mid- Missouri branch at the Buttonwood Business Center in Columbia in mid-August and is interviewing applicants for the manager’s job on June 29 and 30. This will be the first branch office the BBB’s regional office, based in St. Louis, has opened

Linen King, an Oklahoma-based provider of laundry services to the health care industry, plans to start interviewing job applicants in July and hire 30 people by the end of the year. Regional Economic Development Inc. announced earlier this month that Linen King would open a 52,000-square-foot facility at 2600 Maguire Blvd. in the LeMone Office

Columbia, in Mike Brooks’ opinion, needs to focus on seeding new industry. At the City Council retreat in Lake Ozark, Brooks, president of Regional Economic Development Inc., spoke of “economic gardening,” a concept that started in Littleton, Colo. The idea, according to Brooks, is to provide conditions for new businesses to develop and then provide

Columbia Dealerships Total Sales