Archive: Business & Technology

The Wildfire Restaurant at 106 S. Cayuga Street in downtown Ithaca is now open, and joins the Wildfire Lounge in serving food and drink with a sophisticated twist at downscale prices. Wildfire, both the restaurant and lounge, will mark the occasion of the restaurant’s opening with a ribbon cutting ceremony that will be held on Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. The ceremony will take place at 106 South Cayuga Street. Ithaca Mayor Carolyn Peterson is scheduled to attend, and the press and public are invited.

The Wildfire Restaurant and Lounge are owned by Teresa and Scott Miller of Ithaca. The Millers also own Madeline’s Restaurant at 215 The Commons, making them part of a small group of local entrepreneurs who own and operate multiple businesses in downtown Ithaca.

Local First Ithaca announced the beginning of the 2009 Local First Ithaca Holiday Celebration.  This seven week campaign of fun and engaging events will encourage and challenge the community to “think local” when spending their holiday dollars.  Supporting local, independent businesses and invigorating our local economy is more important than ever in these economically challenging times.
 
The centerpiece event in the Holiday Celebration is the month-long “Local Lover Challenge” contest, in which 50 businesses and over four thousand community members participated in 2008, the inaugural year.  This year, Local First Ithaca expects to have 150 businesses participating, including a wider array of different kinds of businesses.

How often are you aware of opportunities that seem to arise out of the blue?  If you notice what seems to be an unusual opportunity, do you immediately act upon it…or do you hesitate, allowing your mind to weigh whether and how to seize what may seem like a fluke, a gamble, or perhaps something  too insignificant to actually be of any purpose?  Or perhaps too big to be able to take on?

I’ve had about two weeks of ongoing synchronicities surrounding the theme of opportunity.  Piggy-backed with that are events and people so integrally connected, that the opportunities are beginning to look like giant jigsaw pieces coming together, as if their sides were magnetically charged.  Sound familiar?  This kind of thing happens to people all the time – it’s more natural for opportunities to abound than to be lacking.

The Tompkins County Legislature voted Tuesday night to form the Tompkins Development Corporation. The move will facilitate the ability for not-for-profit corporations to access low cost bond financing for projects that enhance, create and preserve employment opportunities in Tompkins County.

State legislation previously authorized local industrial development agencies (IDAs) to help finance these civic facilitates projects. The County Legislature historically has supported the provision of this type of financing by the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency.

SewGreen will open a sewing reuse store in the DeWitt Mall in downtown Ithaca. The store will carry fabric, sewing materials, yarn, and classic sewing machines. All of the materials have been donated by community members, and the store will be staffed by volunteers and youth apprentices.

Proceeds from store will support SewGreen's after-school apprenticeship and job skills training for youth, and other inclusive community programs. SewGreen is a not-for-profit organization that diverts usable materials from the landfill and provides education for all ages in sewing, refashioning, and reuse.

Avalon Homes and Black Box Computer Consulting have been named the co-recipients of the 2009 New Business of the Year Award, given by the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce.  They will be recognized for their accomplishments at a Noontime luncheon on Friday November 13, 2009 at the LakeWatch Inn.

“We were absolutely delighted by the high quality and quantity of all of the nominees for this year’s award,” said Tompkins Chamber President, Jean McPheeters. In the end, these two businesses were tied at the top of the Awards Committee’s rankings.”

ICON-The Independent Consultants Network will host Tax Tips for Small Businesses and Consultants, a free presentation at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 10, 2009, as part of its monthly meeting.

The meeting and presentation are both free and open to the public, and will be held at Audrey Edelman RealtyUSA, 2333 N. Triphammer Road in Ithaca.

Scott Ashbaugh has joined Better Housing for Tompkins County after 17 years as an independent contractor, bringing a total of 30 years of construction and home repair experience to Better Housing for Tompkins County’s Home Repair Program.

The Tompkins County Home Repair Program (TCHR) - administered by Better Housing - provides small repairs for elderly and/or disabled clients. Under TCHR, clients over 60 years old receive labor free of charge, paying for materials only. Many also receive additional assistance through the Tompkins County Office for the Aging, and Better Housing facilitates loans and grants that make materials for needed work available when the client cannot afford them.

Williamsville, NY – Tops Friendly Markets, the leading full-service grocery retailer in Western New York, Central New York, including Rochester, and Northwestern Pennsylvania today announced that it is holding a Halloween Harvest Festival on Saturday, Oct. 24 to celebrate and recognize the growers who supply fresh, locally-grown produce to all Tops stores everyday.

Since transitioning back to a locally operated and managed grocer, Tops has increased by 40 percent the number of local growing partners it uses. Tops has more than 170 farms and grower co-operatives in Western and Central New York now providing fresh produce to its stores.

When the Kitchen Theater Company launched a campaign to raise funds to renovate its new 99-seat performing space at 417 West State/Martin Luther King St, it faced challenges presented by a down economy and the impact this could have on giving. Despite those obstacles, the KTC has seen steady and healthy support from its friends and donors. As a result, the KTC board has approved a decision to increase the campaign goal from $950,000 to $1.2M.

Artistic Director Rachel Lampert explains: "To date we have raised $890,000, 94% of our original goal. We are extraordinarily grateful to our many friends, businesses, foundations and funders whose generous gifts are making this project possible.   The positive response to the campaign encouraged us to look again at our design plans to see if some cutbacks and compromises we had made originally might be reconsidered. This is such a critical, once in a lifetime effort for the Kitchen Theatre Company, we want to be sure we get it right for us and for the community.”

Alta Spa is celebrating its ten-year anniversary, and the owner of Ithaca’s first full-service spa says using the traditional values she learned in her native land of Ghana, treating customers like family, and adapting to changing times and circumstances, are the keys to her business’s success.

Owner Awura-Abena was born and grew up in the African nation of Ghana.  As such, Alta Spa follows the African tradition of focusing on small talk and sharing pleasantries with clients, which Awura-Abena says, goes a long way toward building lasting customer relationships.

Reducing the solid waste stream, the cost of trash removal and the carbon footprint created by removing it, are the three goals of a demonstration project involving the installation and public use of a solar-powered trash compactor on the Ithaca Commons. The fully-functional trashcan-sized, solar-powered compactor will be located on the Commons near Center Ithaca at 171 The Commons for a period of one week. A public demonstration/media briefing was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, October 13, 2009, in front of Center Ithaca.