WEDNESDAY, AUG. 8, 2018  |  IN THIS ISSUE 


The federal government is threatening to use eminent domain if necessary to build a $140 million courthouse on a two-acre site many believe to be the top development location in the state. The Des Moines Business Record reports the U.S. General Services Administration has set its sights on a property on Locust Street near the Des Moines River for a new federal courthouse. Hubbell Realty Co. had planned to build 115 luxury condominiums selling for between $500,000-$1.5 million apiece on the site. Hubbell bought the land for $4.77 million in 2016, and while federal officials reached out with an offer, President and CEO Rick Tollakson declined, telling the Des Moines Register, "if I were to accept that offer I would be paying them to take this site."

With the opening of a new $35 million distillery in Templeton, Iowa, Templeton Rye has come all the way home. The company, with origins in Carroll County's Prohibition era, had been purchasing its whiskey from an Indiana distiller and bottling its product in Iowa, the Des Moines Register reports, but brought production back in-state after critics called the company out for its "made in Iowa" branding. "This completes us," co-founder Keith Kerkhoff told the Register.  The whiskey that is currently distilling in Iowa will be ready for market four years from today, company officials told Beverage Dynamics, bringing all parts of the whiskey-making process back to the small town of Templeton. Besides its signature four-year-old whiskey, the company also offers a six-year and a 10th anniversary product with limited-edition serial numbers labeled on the bottles. 
 
The fallout from the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese imports is being felt most acutely by small businesses and startups, the Wall Street Journal reports, as they eat into profit margins and throw pricing calculations into chaos. Large companies have largely been able to weather the storm thanks to the recent federal tax cut and strong consumer demand, but smaller businesses are struggling, with optimism for growth dropping to its lowest level since the 2016 election in the WSJ's July survey of more than 750 small firms.  
 
A report last week from the Institute for Supply Management suggested that even though manufacturing remained strong last month, many smaller companies are now paying higher prices for raw materials and enduring longer wait times for deliveries of goods now required to go through customs due to tariffs on imports.

Markets were jolted Tuesday after Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, took to Twitter to announce he was considering taking the company private. "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420," he tweeted. "Funding secured." His announcement followed a report that a Saudi investment fund had taken a stake in the company, the New York Times reports, sending trading into a wild frenzy until  2:08 p.m. when trading was halted - with shares up 7 percent - pending incoming news.  At 3:30 p.m., a formal statement was released to say that no final decision had been made about the company's status and that any proposal would have to be approved by current shareholders; Tesla's stock ended the day up about 11 percent. Mr. Musk later explained in a blog post that the market's "wild swings" had been a distraction for the company and lamented the financial pressure caused by the quarterly earnings cycle of a public company.
Story5Waterloo's 100-year-old auditorium gets back to its roots 
 
Waterloo's century-old  McElroy Auditorium is going back in time and reclaiming its original name: The Hippodrome. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports the National Cattle Congress (NCC), owner of the 7,000-seat auditorium, decided to rename the auditorium as a nod to its history. The Hippodrome was built in 1919 and underwent a major $105,000 expansion in 1936. It was renamed after philanthropic Waterloo broadcaster R.J. McElroy following his death in 1965 and sold to NCC in 1974.  The renaming - along with plans to revamp the property to its former glory - follow an April agreement with the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, which halted foreclosure action on the NCC property and resulted in developer Harold Youngblut buying and tearing down the NCC's former Waterloo Greyhound Park.
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