WATERLOO -- The Cedar Valley TechWorks project in downtown Waterloo has secured another $170,000 in federal funding.

U.S. Rep Bruce Braley, D-Waterloo, announced last week that the money is included in a bill for transportation appropriations for fiscal year 2008.

TechWorks is a plan to create a bio-based agri-industrial product development and exhibition complex on former portions of John Deere's Westfield Avenue site. Demolition at the site already has begun.

"These funds will be used in the rehabilitation and remodeling of the 'R'-building," a former Deere building on the TechWorks campus, which is currently being targeted as a technology center for laboratories and applied research, Waterloo Mayor Tim Hurley said. It's anticipated the University of Northern Iowa's National Ag-Based Industrial Lubricants program, or NABIL, will be located there.

In June, TechWorks received a $1.6 million grant of federal Economic Development Administration money. That money was secured as the result of a grant written by the Waterloo-based Iowa Northland Regional Council of Governments, INRCOG executive director Sharon Juon has said.

In February, Deere donated more than $17.4 million in buildings and land at the Westfield site, technical assistance and financial resources to a nonprofit group, Cedar Valley TechWorks Inc., chaired by Joe Vich, CEO of Community National Bank, for the development of the project. The project also includes an extension of Commercial Street through the one-time Westfield site to connect with the interchange of U.S. Highways 63, 218 and University Avenue

The TechWorks project first was announced in the spring of 2003 by then-University of Northern Iowa President Robert Koob and Barry Schaffter, then general manager of John Deere's Waterloo operations. Local economic development, local government, UNI, business and state officials have been working on it since.

Contact Pat Kinney at (319) 291-1484 or Pat.Kinney@wcfcourier.com