Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates The Blog Peoria Project, which promotes community-based citizen journalism in his hometown, Peoria IL. Call me at (309) 863-5748 and leave a message.
“In terms of company stability, Caterpillar owns 35 percent of Firefly, and Cat is a company that does its homework. This battery technology is unique and promising enough that Firefly had little trouble raising $20 million in private equity. Company officials figure 80 percent of that money is spent locally, so there’s economic spin-off.” –Journal [ […]
In May-June 2007, the City of Peoria and Peoria County pledged a combined total of $6.6 million as a guarantee for a loan from National City Bank to Firefly Energy, the darling Caterpillar spin-off and “poster child” of PeoriaNext. The source of the funds breaks down to $3.3 million in utility tax revenues from [...] […]
The Journal Star reports that The Fresh Market is going to open a store in Westlake Shopping Center in the former Circuit City space. Fresh Market is a “specialty grocery store chain” based in North Carolina, and is similar to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. Their prices are high, but so is the [...] […]
On 5/28/07, Jennifer Davis and Molly Parker wrote "Finding a FireFly Fix Over Breakfast" in their 'Word on the Street' Column in the JS. Quoting the column, " braving buckets of snow, former Mayor Dick Carver, current Mayor Jim Ardis, state Representative Dave Leitch and a Peoria businessman showed up for breakfast at Le Peep. Over t […]
It appears the City/County of Peoria had put in place, through an Inter-Governmental Relations Committee a long time ago, a City/County Loan Program with the aim of helping businesses in need of financial assistance to expand or begin operations.An early loan of $100,000 to United Scanning Technologies went bad in 1986. In time, this Loan Program was replace […]
Keystone money enters into the FireFly story in this manner: A number of years, Senator George Shadid secured a $10,000,000 loan from the State of Illinois to help bail-out Keystone who was in financial distress. Terms of the deal were that Keystone would pay the $10 million back to Peoria County to use as the county saw fit.Keystone did pay this money back […]