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Companies continue to expand operations in region
Several companies from a variety of industry sectors announced expansion plans in the region this past month.
- Bridgepoint Education Inc., a San Diego-based provider of postsecondary education services, announced in January 2011 that it will open a new location in Denver, anticipating adding 500 new jobs at the site. In March 2011, the company signed a lease for 151,331 square feet in the Park Central building in downtown Denver.
- OnCore Manufacturing Services is expanding in Longmont, constructing a new 58,800-square-foot building in the Clover Basin Business Park. The company, which builds precision components for the telecom, consumer electronics, medical, and defense industries, expects to hire 180 employees within two years.
- SolidFire, a firm specializing in cloud computing platforms, received $11 million in Series A funding to prepare for a product launch later in 2011. The company opened an office in Boulder where it will hire for engineering, marketing, and sales roles.
- HOK opened a new office in Denver. The architecture firm, headquartered in St. Louis, is working on several projects in Metro Denver including the ConocoPhillips campus in Louisville and buildings at the Anschutz Medical Campus. The company plans to hire 70 new staff members in Denver.
- Rivet Software, a premier provider of standards-based business reporting and analytics software, announced it is expanding its workforce at its Denver headquarters, adding 40 new staff.
- VanDyne SuperTurbo Inc., a spinoff of Woodward Co., has expanded its operations in Fort Collins, leasing a new 5,000-square-foot headquarters facility with a new 3,000-square-foot multibay engine research facility. The company designs, develops, and produces SuperTurbochargers for the global automotive market and heavy-duty manufacturers.
Learn more:
» News and Deals on metrodenver.org
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Lockheed Martin reaches milestones on two projects
 Lockheed Martin Space Systems, located in Jefferson County, is performing a series of tests on the Orion crew module to confirm the vehicle's ability to fly astronauts through the harsh environments of deep space exploration missions. Orion is being integrated with a heat shield and thermal protection backshell before undergoing environmental testing.
Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor to NASA for the Orion crew exploration vehicle - the nation's next generation spacecraft succeeding the space shuttle.
"This is a significant milestone for the Orion project and puts us on the right path toward achieving the President's objective of Orion's first crew mission by 2016," said Cleon Lacefield, Lockheed Martin vice president and Orion program manager. "Orion's upcoming performance tests will demonstrate how the spacecraft meets the challenges of deep-space mission environments such as ascent, launch, on-orbit operations, high-speed return trajectory, parachute deployment, and water landings in a variety of sea states."
In addition, the Stardust-NExT spacecraft had a deep-space encounter with the Tempel 1 comet, an object it had been seeking for the past four-and-a-half-years, on February 14. Engineers at Lockheed's Mission Support Area (MSA) in southwest Denver have monitored and controlled the spacecraft for the past 12 years.
"The NExT mission is a shining example of an innovative and affordable solution that is bringing us outstanding science," said Jim Crocker, vice president of Sensing and Exploration Systems at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. "The team was able to fly Stardust through deep space and send back amazing images and science data, all at a small fraction of the cost of a new, ground-up mission."
Learn more:
» NASA Orion Program Video
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Stardust NExT Program and Photos
» Data on Colorado's aerospace industry
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NREL's economic impact in CO triples
NREL expands workforce, campus, and contracts
The presence of the U.S. Department of Energy's
National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado is a $714 million annual boost to the state's economy, according to an analysis by the University of Colorado.
That's more than three times what it was just three years ago, when the economic impact was $192 million.
NREL is the nation's primary research and development laboratory for the advancement of clean and renewable energy, and for maximizing energy efficiency.
NREL's full-time work force grew from 917 in 2007 to 2,300 today. That many people working at a lab induces many more jobs to ripple through the state economy. In total, NREL's presence means more than 5,500 jobs in Colorado.
"With NREL in our backyard, we are the envy of the nation when it comes to developing a dynamic clean-tech industry cluster," Tom Clark, executive vice president with the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, said. "NREL is a catalyst for creating technologies and spinning off new entrepreneurial endeavors."
Construction at NREL in fiscal year 2010 totaled $96 million, highlighted by the new 220,000-square-foot Research Support Facility, a building that is a showcase for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. Funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act continues to accelerate construction of the Laboratory's campus, dramatically expanding NREL's capacity for renewable energy and energy efficiency research, development and deployment.
Learn more:
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Colorado's cleantech industry
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