Excel Foundry announced plans to invest $15 million in plant expansions and create 100 new manufacturing and engineering jobs in the region. The company manufactures and supplies components and systems for a wide range of heavy equipment used in global mining. The expansion will also mean over $2 million in road improvements near the facility. The EDC played a major a role in the facilitating a number of the infrastructure grants that went into the project. Visit www.excelfoundry.com for more information.

In order for the Greater Peoria area to remain a leader in the Midwest, we need a baseline set of measurements so we can better understand how we perform year to year, both against ourself and against all of the regions we compete with. That’s why we’ve developed the scorecard project. We sat down with Heartland Foundation Managing Director, Ryan Spain, to find out what categories are we scoring, who are we scoring ourselves against, how can we use this information and when will it be available.  Click here for text from the interview.

Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis gives a sneak peak at what he'll be talking about when the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce hosts the annual State of the City event on January 25th at the Peoria Civic Center.  Find out what's in store for Peoria in 2012. Visit peoriachamber.org for details and tickets.

The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria marked a milestone in cancer research with a ribbon cutting ceremony celebrating the opening of a new 24,000 square foot cancer research center. This remarkable new building will further the research of internationally known scientist Dr. Jasti Rao and his team of cancer researchers.