Briefcase – Sept. 19, 2014

CONTRACTS

Boulder-based Eco Vessel LLC, a manufacturer of reusable water bottles and food-storage containers, hired the Innovation Center of the Rockies to assist managing its growth. Terms of the contract were not disclosed. ICR advisers helping Eco Vessel include Brian Baker, founder of The First User; Nancy Bartley, chief executive of The Boppy Co.; Mary Logan, financial analyst at Boulder Brands Inc.; and Blake Mitchell, partner at Interact on Shelf.

Civil engineering firm MWH Global was awarded two contracts worth $367 million for hydropower plants in Pakistan, building on more than 50 years of work in the region. Broomfield-based MWH will serve as owner’s engineer on a $350 million contract for the Gulpur Hydropower Project located on the Poonch River in the Kotli District of Azad Kashmir. The firm also was awarded a $17.9 million contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development to perform an environmental and social impact assessment at the Diamer-Bhasha Dam project site.

Fort Collins-based Heath Construction partnered with Centennial-based Saunders Construction, one of Colorado’s largest construction firms. The partnership allows Heath to maintain its strong local focus while tapping into resources to increase its capacity and secure larger jobs.

Boulder-based bandwidth infrastructure provider Zayo Group partnered with the National Basketball Association to transport live broadcast and video feeds for all NBA games beginning this season.

Fort Collins-based Workplace Partners LLC, which recently opened a commercial furniture business, has completed a partnership agreement with Exodus Moving and Storage. In addition to commercial moving services, Exodus will provide commercial furniture solutions, installation and warehouse services to its customers through Workplace Partners.

KUDOS

Conrad T. and Cheryl Swanson and OtterBox founders Curt and Nancy Richardson received the Hope Award from the Colorado-Wyoming chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society at its annual Northern Colorado Dinner of Champions, held Sept. 12 at Embassy Suites in Loveland. The award recognizes their exceptional commitment to philanthropy, volunteerism and advocacy. The chapter’s MS Champion Award went to Brooke Raymond of Fort Collins. Diagnosed at age 34 in 2009, the preschool teacher started a Walk MS team in 2010; it became the top such team in Fort Collins that year and has raised more than $100,000. Honored as the chapter’s Volunteer Rookie of the Year in 2010, today Raymond’s MS is stable and she works full time as an assistant teacher thanks to one of 11 Food and Drug Administration-approved therapies now available. She continues to volunteer and is a spokesperson to raise awareness about MS.

The Luma power recliner manufactured by Boulder-based Positive Posture won the 2014 Exc!te Award from Technology Integrator magazine. Luma won on the basis of several proprietary features, including its NASA-inspired True Zero Gravity position that allows users to elevate their legs above their heart, relieving pressure on the spine by evenly distributing the user’s body weight.

Boulder-based Vertiba, a team of certified Salesforce.com implementation consultants, has achieved Gold Cloud Alliance Partner status with Salesforce.com. Globally, only 7 percent of  of Salesforce.com’s 730 partners have achieved Gold level. Vertiba, currently ranked second in customer satisfaction among Salesforce.com partners, also is the only Gold Cloud

Alliance partner based in Colorado. Gold standing is awarded by achieving a high level of Salesforce product expertise and ensuring customer success with every project. The company must also achieve certain revenue targets and maintain product certifications for each of its team members.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Broomfield-based Vail Resorts Inc. (NYSE: MTN) acquired Park City Mountain Resort in Utah from Powdr Corp. for $182.5 million in cash, creating the nation’s largest ski resort, covering more than 7,000 acres. Vail will combine Park City with the nearby Canyons Resort, which it operates for Talisker Land Holdings LLC, based in Kamas, Utah. Talisker leases mountain land to the Park City resort.

Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust bought the Front Range Village retail center, at Harmony and Ziegler roads in Fort Collins, for $128.3 million from Bayer Properties. The sale closed Sept. 8.

The U.S. Justice Department cleared Broomfield-based Level 3 Communications Inc.’s (NYSE: LVLT) pending acquisition of Littleton-based tw telecom (NASDAQ: TWTC) under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976. Level 3 in June struck a deal to buy tw telecom for $5.7 billion in cash and stock. Including $1.6 billion in assumed debt, the companies valued the deal at $7.3 billion.

BRE Newton Hotels Property Owner L.P., an entity tied to New York-based Blackstone Group, paid $22.4 million for the Residence Inn at 3030 Center Green Drive in Boulder and $17.92 million for the Homewood Suites at 4950 Baseline Road in Boulder. The seller in both deals was Lion Es Hotels Holdings LLC, an affiliate of New York-based real estate investment firm Clarion Partners.

MOVES

Janitorial services company Porter Industries LLC plans to move its headquarters within Loveland this October. The company, owned by Ken and Michelle Sargent, will move to 11,128 square feet of space at 129 S. Madison Ave. from 5202 Granite St., which has about 9,000 square feet.

Bestop Inc., a manufacturer of interior and exterior accessories for Jeeps and other four-wheel drive vehicles, moved its headquarters from Broomfield to a larger space in Louisville. Bestop, a division of Aurora, Ontario-based Magna International Inc. (NYSE: MGA), leased 112,000 square feet of office and industrial space at 333 Centennial Parkway in Louisville to house its management team and distribution center. Bestop had moved its manufacturing operations in Broomfield to Mexico in early 2010, but maintained its corporate offices in Broomfield.

OPENINGS

Amana Yoga held a “soft opening” Sept. 6 at 2035 Broadway in Boulder, and plans a grand opening Sept. 27-28.

Loveland-based Dancing Pines Distillery opened its second tasting room on Sept. 6 at 207 Park Lane in the former Prospect Inn in downtown Estes Park.

Massachusetts-based GEI Consultants Inc., an engineering consulting firm specializing in geotechnical, environmental, water resources and ecological science, opened an office at 2625 Redwing Road, Suite 370, in Fort Collins. GEI has 33 offices nationwide, including one in Denver.

Broomfield-based Summit Bank & Trust opened its loan production office at 721 Oak St. in Steamboat Springs on Aug. 1, according to the Colorado Division of Banking. Summit Bank & Trust is a subsidiary of Dubuque, Iowa-based Heartland Financial USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: HTLF), a $5.9 billion financial services company. The division also reported that First Bank & Trust Co., headquartered in Cozad, Neb., received regulatory approval to build a loan production office in Longmont, Tom Beckett, northern Colorado market manager of the bank, said the loan production office will open in Longmont probably within the next year. The bank is doing business in Colorado as Mountain View Bank.

The Spice & Tea Exchange opened a store on Sept. 5 at 2924 Council Tree Ave. in the Front Range Village retail center in Fort Collins. The retailer specializes in fine spices, custom blends, exotic teas, salts, naturally flavored sugars, and more.

Mental Health Partners opened the 30,000-square-foot Innovative Wellness Center at 1000 Alpine Ave. in Boulder. Client services include support for educational goals, housing support and benefit management, medical and dental care, psychosocial rehabilitation, wellness classes and activities, and employment preparation and training, including through the newly named Chinook Office Services and Chinook Cooks kitchen and café.

PRODUCT UPDATE

Boulder-based Justin’s, maker of all-natural nut butters and organic peanut butter cups, launched White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups in dark and milk chocolate.

Longmont-based Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq:HILL), a supplier of enterprise-class storage systems, announced a patented technology that improves storage performance in serial attached SCSI (SAS) environments. The invention described in Dot Hill’s 98th US patent, numbered 8,812,913, provides a method to restore communications to a SAS link if a storage device malfunctions and causes configuration changes.

Boulder-based Midrange Performance Group announces the general availability of Navigator MAX, a license for both Performance Navigator for IBM and Power Navigator, a VIOS/AIX/Linux product.

Oblique Design announced the launch of its company rebranding efforts and new website. The Boulder-based advertising and marketing agency partnered with web developer Chad Phillips of New Vibe Web Design and Volume 9, an Internet marketing and SEO firm, to develop the website.

Boulder-based Body Bar Inc., specializing in products and educational tools for fitness enthusiasts of all ages and abilities, unveiled a Body Bar Flex Trek Walking Program, an audio program that guides participants through walking exercises set to music, utilizing a pair of light BBFlex-355 hand weights. Each bar is 14 inches long and weighs 0.8 pounds.  The weight comes from round copper pellets inside which move back and forth in response to arm movements, transmitting stronger variable forces to the muscles than simple weights.

SERVICES

Peak Form Physical Therapy in Boulder added dry needling to its services. Dry needlng utilizes a monofilament needle to deactivate painful trigger points in muscles. The superfine needle is inserted and produces a “twitch response” that its advocates say elicits deep muscle relaxation and leads to pain relief even for long-standing conditions.

Flip Task LLC launched its online service in the Colorado Springs and Dallas areas. The Boulder-based startup matches people who need errands or various jobs such as dog-walking or yard work done for them (task posters) with people willing to help out (task runners). Businesses with short-term needs can also use the service as a way to find temporary help.

Engage Colorado LLC, a startup launched in January to try to build bridges between Colorado’s various entrepreneurial communities, will produce its first event, NewCo Boulder, on Oct. 8. The event is a non-ballroom conference designed to introduce entrepreneurs to other local companies and the ways in which they’re innovating. Thirty-five companies – mostly in Boulder but including one in Longmont – will host attendees for hour-long sessions at their places of business. In November, the company will host Hackfit Boulder, a hackathon-style weekend focused on finding technological solutions to health, wellness and fitness issues in addition to providing hackers with various fitness activities while they’re in Boulder.

Estes Park Medical Center is the first independent critical-access hospital in Colorado to connect its electronic health-record system to the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization’s health information exchange network. Critical access hospitals serve rural or remote mountain communities, are smaller in size and generally do not have some of the specialized capabilities that large, urban hospitals have. Therefore, patients with complex and urgent needs, such as traumatic injuries or serious neurological conditions, will be stabilized and transferred to a larger hospitals for care. Without HIE technology in place, managing the transfer of patient information during the transition from one hospital to another can be cumbersome. With HIE technology in place, a hospital preparing to receive a transferring patient can electronically access complete and up-to-date clinical information, including test results and doctors’ notes from the referring care facility.

Boulder-based JumpCloud announced the availability of the industry’s first Directory-as-a-Service solution. Through a SaaS-based offering, organizations can move the last vestiges of their legacy, on-premise IT systems to a fully managed cloud service, providing an alternative to solutions such as Microsoft Active Directory or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.

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