H-P trims Colorado workforce

FORT COLLINS – Seventy jobs will be cut from Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Colorado payroll by the end of April, part of the computer giant’s move to cut its worldwide workforce by 2 percent.

The affected employees, mostly in marketing positions, were told in early March that they would be given until April 30 to find new jobs within the company or leave.

The marketing jobs were targeted because H-P has reduced its number of product lines from 83 to 17 as part of a strategy to focus on Internet business. Overlap in marketing tasks meant a surplus of employees in those positions.

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A smaller number of support jobs, in human resources and facilities maintenance, were also eliminated. Workers will receive severance packages providing four to 16 months of salary, depending upon length of service, and a lump-sum cash payment to cover such costs as insurance during transition.

H-P will also pay for assistance to help departing employees find new jobs. H-P employs 4,600 people in Colorado, 4,000 of them at sites in Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley.Greeley DDA names director

GREELEY – A Craig woman with business-boosting experience in northwestern Colorado is the new executive director of Greeley Downtown Development Authority.

Pattie Snidow will begin serving in her new job April 1. She replaces Joan Joseph, who resigned from the post Dec. 31.

From her base at Northwest Colorado Community College, Snidow worked in business and industrial training programs and economic development.

One of Snidow’s first tasks will be to help steer the redesign work for the Eighth and Ninth street plazas. A proposal to remove the pedestrian plazas and increase downtown traffic circulation will go to voters in the fall.

DDA Chairman Bob Tointon said Snidow will also be asked to recruit 10 new businesses to the downtown sector in the next 18 months. The city and DDA will combine to provide $100,000 to pay Snidow’s salary and meet the costs of other downtown projects.$1M gift helped seal KUNC dealGREELEY – The successful drive to keep Greeley-based public radio station KUNC under local control included a $1 million gift from Boulder residents John and Gail Squires.

Friends of KUNC, the fund-raising arm created to thwart an effort by Denver-based Colorado Public Radio to acquire the station, raised almost $2.5 million in cash during the three-week campaign. The Squires gift, and a $250,000 donation from former Lebanon hostage Tom Sutherland of Fort Collins, accounted for half the total.

Squires in 1985 was a co-founder of Conner Peripherals Inc., a Longmont disk-drive manufacturer that he and others built and sold in 1995 to Seagate Technology.

As The Business Report was going to press, KUNC was nearing a decision on a new Northern Colorado location for its offices and studios.Woodward adds 100 jobs in regionFORT COLLINS – Woodward Governor Co.’s Industrial Controls division, with locations in Fort Collins and Loveland, will beef up employment by adding 100 workers by the end of May, company officials said.

West Coast power shortages and rising demand for the engine controls that go into power generation equipment are fueling the job growth, the company said.

Illinois-based Woodward had predicted in its annual report that 34,000 industrial turbines would be built over the next 10 years, most for electric power generation.

The company has also grown through a series of recent acquisitions, including the November buyout of an Illinois company that makes ignition systems for industrial gas engines. Woodward’s stock price has more than doubled during the past year.Greeley Mercado proposal advancesGREELEY – El Mercado del Norte, a proposal for a Southwestern-style market district to revitalize the 11th Avenue corridor on Greeley’s northern edge, has taken a step closer to reality.

Greeley’s Planning Department earlier this month issued a set of guidelines that would help set design standards for the area that would encourage Spanish or southwestern-style schemes for homes and businesses along 11th Avenue north of the Poudre River.

Following a presentation to the city council, members agreed the design standards, if made mandatory, would be the best step toward bringing the Mercado into being.

If a majority of landowners along 11th Avenue agree, a “character overlay” district would be established to control development of the area.

Jorge Amaya, executive director of the Latino Chamber of Commerce, said he believed most homeowners and businesses in the proposed Mercado district would agree to mandatory design standards.Starbucks stakes out GreeleyGREELEY – Seattle-based coffee mega-chain Starbucks Inc. will build a new location in Greeley, opening the WestLake Shopping Center location in July.

The new location will occupy about 1,500 square feet of the 14,000-square-foot former Fred Schmid Electronics retail store in the plaza. Officials at PBRoche, the Greeley commercial real estate management company that owns WestLake, have said they hope the Starbucks announcement will drive interest in space available for lease to other retailers.

Starbucks had planned to open the store earlier than July, but the Feb. 26 Seattle earthquake – which shook up the coffee retailer’s downtown headquarters – set back the company’s plans.

Since Starbucks opened its first Seattle store in 1971, the company has grown to include 3,300 outlets throughout the world.Reported by staff of The Northern Colorado Business Report.