THE BELLINGHAM BUSINESS JOURNAL
Fertility center celebrates 1,000th baby conceived
In 1995, Dr. Emmett Branigan opened the Bellingham IVF & Fertility Care center with his wife, Antoinette, with the hope of giving patients the highest level of fertility care on a smaller and more personal level.
Now, the clinic sees about 150 patients a year, and in late September, the clinic reached its 1,000th baby conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
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Kuntz & Company explores humanity through performing arts
When Pam Kuntz was pregnant with her second child she was nervous about being a mother for two children. She sought advice in the usual places such as books and magazines, but needed more. She wanted to learn from the challenges other mothers experienced personally, so she put out a call for just that.
“I heard from a mother who’s child had died from cancer, a mother who had survived cancer, a single mother who survived drug addiction,” Kuntz said. “These are huge topics and these women are living productive healthy lives. I thought, ‘Surely I could learn from them,’ and I did.”
It was through this experience that Kuntz began the “Mom Project,” a community-based dance performance in 2005.
The project paved the way for nine other community-based dance performances and eventually Kuntz & Company, a nonprofit that aims to explore issues of universal interest with professional artists and members of the community, said Kuntz, the artistic director of the organization. The organization invites community members and aspires to create a dialogue with them through dance performances.
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Reaching higher: New location for Northwest SilverStars allows room for athletes to grow
Northwest SilverStars, a Bellingham cheerleading club, moved to a new location on Division Street in July and is completing the final touches. At 10,000 square feet, the new location is twice as large as their former location on Jills Court.
The program now has more space to train the athletes after offering three additional classes and starting a hip-hop team for the elementary age last year, said Christina Archer, president of Northwest SilverStars.
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Humble beginnings: it all started in a garage
It is an unspoken test of courage for some of the most successful companies today such as Apple and Harley-Davidson to have modest beginnings in a garage. For Girodisc and Qualnetics, two Bellingham businesses focused on auto technologies, that was their beginning as well.
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INVESTIGATE WEST
Proposed coal-export terminal would boost sagging local government budgets
Officials in Ferndale are optimistic about how potential industrial development at the Gateway Pacific Terminal would help their struggling community.
“Everybody paid for Intalco,” Ferndale Mayor Gary Jensen said of the 2001 shuttering of a major aluminum smelter that is now running again. “The (Gateway) terminal would be important for the county because of those increased tax values. It will allow us to keep up with the growth of the county.”
If built, the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal would stand between two existing heavy industries at Cherry Point, west of Ferndale, the BP Refinery and Alcoa-Intalco Works.
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THE WESTERN FRONT
In July 2011, after 30 years and 135 missions, NASA’s Space Shuttle Program launched its final flight. Former astronaut George Pinky Nelson, now the director of Science, Math and Technology Education at Western, watched Atlantis shoot into an overcast sky from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
“I was surprised how moving it was for me to see the last launch. The whole crowd teared up,” he said. “[The shuttle] poked through the clouds and disappeared.”
Nelson said in the larger picture it was the end of an era, but on a personal level he was reliving something he felt privileged to be a part of.
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Bellingham City Council unanimously voted to approve an ordinance that would ban nearly all plastic grocery bags within city limits on Monday, July 11.
The ordinance would prohibit single-use plastic bags in retail stores and imposes a five-cent fee for each paper bag a customer uses. The fee would go back to the retailer for the cost of each paper bag.
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Ethics board may find Nord in violation
The Washington State Executive Ethics Board determined there was reasonable cause to believe Western employee Doug Nord violated the Ethics in Public Service Act, according to a report released on July 8.
The investigation found reasonable cause to believe Nord violated two sections of the act, including special privileges and use of persons, money, or property for private gain.
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KLIPSUN MAGAZINE
Dirt Cheap: The art of haggling and bartering finds life at the flea market
It’s a far cry from the average mall. It’s a place where a frugal shopper looking for a dirt-cheap deal can search for hidden treasures and negotiate the price of any item. A section for art made of plants, a library of books and movies, even a room devoted to arcade games occupuy the large space called O’Donnell’s Bellingham Flea Market.
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Celeste Erickson 