Persons who use current drug therapies to treat osteoporosis often suffer side effects that include nausea, constipation, muscle weakness, leg cramps and joint pain. Those side effects could disappear with the development of new drugs made possible by researchers at Van Andel Institute's Laboratory of Structural Sciences.

Using X-ray crystallography, VAI researchers observed individual atoms of parathyroid hormone (PTH) and cells containing a receptor that the PTH must bind to in order to stimulate bone growth.

The observations showed researchers precisely how PTH binds to its receptor in the cell. This discovery will help drug developers design therapies that are more potent in treating osteoporosis and lack the side effects associated with current drugs.

"[It's essential] to have a thorough understanding of how the hormone interacts with its receptor, the molecule that translates the signal from the hormone into ... bone growth," says Augie Pioszak, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at VAI and lead author of the article that presented the findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

The technique required crystallizing the hormone with its receptor, something researchers have not been able to do until now.

"Researchers have spent years trying to find the 'magic' conditions to grow high-quality crystals of PTH with its receptor," says Eric Xu, Ph.D., co-author of the paper. "We've finally found a method that works."

The method can be used with other receptor-hormone pairs, such as those that have therapeutic value for the treatment of Type II diabetes.

Source: Rapid Growth
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Grand Rapids-based Crutchall Resource Recycling, LLC, plans to expand its three locations to five and could create 67 statewide jobs in the next year.

The recycle yard hired 13 people since the company opened its doors just over a year ago, and plans to open two more offices in Flint and Southeast Michigan in addition to the locations already running in Grand Rapids, Lansing and Kalamazoo.

Crutchall recycles residential asphalt roof shingles, a petroleum-based product, by grinding them and selling the product to vendors who recycle it into paving. Thus far, the company has recycled 30,000 tons of shingles.

"We started this year with just me working in the office," says Ellie Kane, one of six partners in the business. "We've had to bring on three other office people, and with the growth of the other yards we'll need to add an additional lab person, as well."

Crutchall's lab tests each load of asphalt for asbestos.

"Our business will climb easily depending on the inflow of material," Kane notes. "We'll pick up anywhere from three to six more employees in Grand Rapids just to do the recycling work in the yard."

Kane expects those jobs to pay from $10 to $20 an hour.

Source: Rapid Growth
Full article

Priceline.com has finalized its plans to open a call center in Wyoming, announcing yesterday a long-term lease agreement on a 45,670-square-foot property at 4147 Eastern Ave. SE. The existing building will eventually house local high-tech jobs for customers booking travel reservations through Booking.com, priceline.com's international business unit.

Prior to the announcement, spokesperson Brian Ek told Rapid Growth that priceline "may" have contacted area colleges and universities to recruit students for some of the bi-lingual positions.  

An official-looking post on Aquinas College's The Moose community web site indicates 350 positions are open for bi- and multi-lingual students, and interviews are taking place as of August 1 with possible start dates in mid-August.

The posting lists Dona Mouw as a contact. Tim Mroz, senior communications director of The Right Place, Inc., confirmed that priceline.com hired Dona Mouw, a former staffing manager at Herman Miller, as human resources director. The Right Place, Inc., is a Grand Rapids-based economic development organization assisting in the priceline.com location.

"We're not going to speculate on the total number of jobs," Ek said, "but the office building we're discussing occupying is over 45,000 square feet, so that's a fair amount of office space.
 
"The types of employees we'll need are customer support, credit control operations, a group of writers, translators and editors responsible for generating content for web sites available in multiple languages around the world," Ek added. So that's a very broad brush stroke of our operations."

The Right Place, in collaboration with the city of Wyoming, The Michigan Economic Growth Authority, and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has worked with priceline.com since April.

Birgit Klohs, president and CEO of The Right Place Inc. said in a prepared statement, "Our efforts in attracting and retaining talent in West Michigan are rewarded by projects like these. Partnering with the state of Michigan and the city of Wyoming as a unified team was critical to the success of this project. Everyone involved played a critical role in making this a success."

Source: Rapid Growth
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Cumberland Furniture, a Grand Rapids-based furniture manufacturer owned by Gilmore Furniture, logged double-digit revenue growth over the past four years and has added five jobs since January. The company works with architects and interior designers to create earth-friendly furniture for a variety of environments, including art museums, hotel lobbies, offices, and health care facilities.

"We're known for our ability to combine a wide variety of materials," says Robert Clark, spokesperson. "It's unusual to find a bench that has upholstery plus wood and steel."

The company purchases steel that contains 69 percent recycled materials, including pre-consumer industrial scrap and post-consumer materials. The steel is 100 percent recyclable and comes from suppliers within 150 miles of Grand Rapids.

"Our goal is to look at the longevity of the product so it doesn't end up in a landfill," Clark says. "We partner with several fabric manufacturers who have eco-friendly missions in manufacturing and distribution, and all our foam is soy based."

Cumberland created furniture for the Library of Congress, the Denver Art Museum, and is currently working on a large project for the Cleveland Clinic's new heart and vascular institute.

"We anticipate continued growth," Clark notes, "which will spur demand for additional jobs, but we have no idea how many. We proceed cautiously because we want to be sustainable as a company."

Source: Rapid Growth
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Locavore (lok•a•vor): Eating, drinking, living better for you and your community.
Amy Ruis, our resident locavore, shows us how.

Source: Rapid Growth
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Traveling on US-31 between New Buffalo and Ludington over the past two weeks, photojournalist Vincent J. Musi shot 7,000 photographs as part of project that could result in a new historic designation for the scenic Lakeshore highway. 
 
Michigan's Beachtowns Association hired Musi, whose work appears in National Geographic Magazine, Time, Newsweek and other publications, to artistically and visually promote US-31/Blue Star Highway/The West Michigan Pike for certification as a Michigan Heritage Route.

Built between 1911 and 1922, the scenic roadway was the first modern continuous road between Chicago and Mackinac City, and is responsible for opening the Lakeshore to automobile tourism and changing the way of life along its path.

"I've done a lot of work on vanishing culture things, particularly on Route 66 and other places that swept through an area and left their mark," says Musi. "Route 31 swept across Western Michigan and left all this culture and kitsch. I'm only catching a slice of time to show what it's like to cruise from New Buffalo to Ludington in 2008."

Musi drove the route and photographed "whatever kind of felt right, like landscapes, monuments, kitsch, juxtapositions." Some of that includes The Douglas Dutchers Vintage Baseball Team and 103-year-old Saugatuck artist Sylvia Randolph.

Musi will narrow down the 7,000 photos to 40 exhibit-quality prints to exhibit in museums around the state. In November, he returns to the area with the prints and a number of additional slides to launch the exhibit with a public presentation on his experiences and travel.

The certification process is led by Michigan's Beachtowns Association in conjunction with the Michigan Historical Center and other organizations, and is funded by grant monies.

"Route 31 is the anti-homogenization of Middle America," Musi says. "It's still distinct and different, the right blend of quirky things left behind."

Source: Rapid Growth
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The Grand Rapids Downtown Alliance launched its revamped web site http://www.downtowngr.org/ last May, and while it still gives cyber visitors loads of information on shopping, dining, entertainment, and what's happening downtown every day, it's fast becoming a resource for entrepreneurs and others who want to start a business or live in the core city.

The original site launched 18 months ago. A comparison of April 2007 traffic statistics with April 2008 numbers showed a 45 percent increase in usage (some 20,000 visitors in 2008) before the changeover to the colorful new look and graphics that incorporate the let's go. downtown. campaign.

"We expect our new traffic numbers to be even higher," says Sharon Evoy, alliance executive director, "but it's too soon to tell."

The site represents businesses and events in the core city, east of the Grand River, and shares an online events calendar with the Grand Rapids/Kent County Convention & Visitors Bureau. Businesses can enter their events on either site and they'll appear on both, doubling the marketing opportunity at no extra cost.

There is a guide for locating downtown's fab array of outdoor sculpture, places to live, museums, galleries and theaters. There is also a business directory and even a comprehensive collection of business resources' including marketing analyses, building reuse incentives, and commercial and residential real estate listings.

"We want to make it easy for people to get around downtown," Evoy says. "The web site is the cornerstone of our downtown marketing and a great way to put out lots of information we can't get out any other way. Businesses can use the tools to market themselves.

"Downtown is where you go to live life more fully, especially with the depth and variety of experiences that you can have in downtown Grand Rapids."

Source: Rapid Growth
Full article

Affordable summer homes, more tourists, and a bright economic future are all part of the plan behind Grand Haven's most expansive mixed-use development ever, and adding a prestigious hotel name and conference center to the mix could mean more business for more retailers all year long.

Source: Rapid Growth
Full article

The re-development of downtown Muskegon from a deserted mall to a thriving urban center has attracted a variety of future-oriented companies to the city center.

Source: Rapid Growth
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West Michigan companies and entrepreneurs will soon be able to access innovations from across the country thanks to a new partnership between innovati ... Read More on guru Doug Hall, Founder and CEO of Cincinnati-based Eureka! Ranch and The Right Place Inc. The collaboration includes creating a standardized evaluation system for assessing the market value of ideas and building a national network of ideas for companies to electronically access via the internet.

Today at a special program open to the public, Hall and the InnovationWorks team presented the results of recent collaborative efforts and shared best practices for creating an innovation-driven company. Through the national network, West Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs can gain access to vetted ideas from around the country, and inventors whose ideas cannot effectively be commercialized locally can gain national exposure. InnovationWorks’ recently launched Idea Portal, accessed through its website at www.innovationworkswestmichigan.org, will serve as West Michigan’s conduit to the national network.

“The work we had already done with the Idea Portal and our commitment to accelerating innovation and commercialization in West Michigan positioned us perfectly to create this partnership with Doug,” said Jim Ross, Vice President, Innovation & Technical Services for The Right Place. “As the beta site for this new system, West Michigan companies will be among the first in the U.S. to access a wealth of proven, validated innovations they can use to increase market share, improve competitiveness and, ultimately, grow our regional economy.”

Although vetting and accessing new ideas is at the heart of the new network, Ross notes that InnovationWorks goes far beyond matchmaking.

“So much of what you see happening nationally is based on brokering inventions,” he said. “As part of an economic development organization, our goals are much more holistic. We are focused on collaborating regionally to increase West Michigan’s capacity to create and develop innovations at all stages of the commercialization process. West Michigan is already a center of excellence for advanced manufacturing; we want it to become a center of excellence for innovation as well.” View Less

Source: The Right Place

Three West Michigan cities have been awarded $800,000 in brownfield grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – the first time any such fun ... Read More ding has come to the region.

Part of a $74 million release of grant funds to communities in 43 states, the money will be used to fund brownfield site assessments in targeted redevelopment areas within Grand Rapids, Wyoming and Kentwood.

“Michigan has been a leader in brownfield redevelopment for more than a decade,” said Rick Chapla Right Place Vice President, Urban Redevelopment, noting the state’s passage of groundbreaking brownfield legislation in 1996, which subsequently served as a model for other states. “West Michigan has taken full advantage of that leadership, becoming one of the most active redevelopment regions in the state. It is a credit to that momentum that we were able to work with these cities to secure this funding.”

The brownfield redevelopment is a large part of a growing regional commitment to sustainable principles, and is at the heart of projects like Grand Walk – a sustainable business park in northern Grand Rapids – as area municipalities use public dollars to make at-risk urban properties financially competitive with suburban and rural greenfields.

“The strong urban center Grand Rapids enjoys is due in part to the dedication we have to making urban properties attractive for investment,” said Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, noting that Grand Rapids’ Brownfield Redevelopment Authority has approved over 65 brownfield redevelopment projects to date resulting in over $800 million in private investment and over 7,000 jobs. “The Right Place and our city Economic Development Department collaborate to make best use of tools such as state tax credits and these federal grants so that we can assist businesses and developers, thereby enhancing their investment in our community.”

“Kentwood has matured to the point that we have many of the same land use issues that are typically thought of in core cities like Grand Rapids,” added Kentwood Mayor Richard Root. “Working with partners like The Right Place to leverage resources like these grants is another way we are attracting investment and jobs for our community and showing that Kentwood is open for business.”

“Manufacturing has been a core industry in Wyoming’s economy and we are working to rebuild that investment,” said Wyoming Mayor Carol Sheets. “This funding will help us revitalize our available industrial properties making them more attractive for investment and expediting the re-growth of our manufacturing sector.”
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Source: The Right Place

West Michigan regional economic development leaders today got a first look at InnovationWorks’ (IW) new Idea Portal during a special demonstration ses ... Read More sion. A critical tool of IW, the session was designed to familiarize key partners with the Portal so they can actively engage area businesses and entrepreneurs in the new initiative, dedicated to advancing innovation throughout West Michigan by accelerating the commercialization of inventions and new technologies.

The Idea Portal serves as a central, web-based repository of innovations, entrepreneurs and commercialization resources, using sophisticated algorithms to identify and accelerate the linking of new ideas to commercialization resources in the region. Powered by Microsoft Sharepoint software and developed in collaboration with Metrics Reporting and People Design, the Idea Portal electronically matches new or orphaned intellectual property from inventors and companies with entrepreneurs looking for new ideas. Once a successful match is made, IW staff can assist the commercialization process with additional coaching and resources.

“What is really critical at this point, however, is stocking the Portal with IP and those looking for it,” explained Jim Ross, Right Place Vice President of Innovation & Technical Services and MMTC-West Regional Manager, who manages IW. “Helping our strategic partners understand the tools will support their efforts to grow West Michigan’s economy and increase our ability to extend IW’s services throughout the region.”

Serving a seven-county West Michigan region, IW provides an integrated system of resources designed to mine inventions and new technologies, connect companies to ideas and coach individuals on commercialization. The initiative will expand innovation capacity in West Michigan resulting in increased prosperity and new wealth for the region. IW is funded by WIRED West Michigan and developed by The Right Place in collaboration with its economic development partners throughout West Michigan.

In addition to managing the Portal, IW also hopes to harness needs and ideas through its newly formed collaborative networks, where the region’s top companies, academic institutions and professionals work together to share best practices on innovation and intellectual property and co-develop new technologies.

“Directly assisting individuals, companies and entrepreneurs is a large part of what we do, but we have seen first hand the power of collaboration in innovation,” said Ross. “As the West Michigan regional office of the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (MMTC), The Right Place has developed opportunities for companies to share best practices and work collaboratively on shared issues. We are taking that model and applying it to the acceleration of new technologies, materials and processes that will take West Michigan companies to the next level and secure our region’s position in the global marketplace.”
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Source: The Right Place