WATERLOO - It's a view rarely seen in Waterloo. But it's a vision of the future that soon will be shared by many in the Cedar Valley.

Look to the south and you can see down U.S. Highway 63 toward Hudson. Look to the west and you can see almost to Cedar Falls. Look north and east and you can see all of downtown Waterloo.

That's the view from the top of what was known as the "R" building of John Deere's Westfield Avenue site. Look at that building a few months down the road and see the future of the Cedar Valley.

It is about to become ground zero for the Cedar Valley TechWorks, an agriculture-derived, bio-based product research and development center. It is a project which typifies, and is symbolic of, the direction the Cedar Valley economy is heading - combining traditional manufacturing and harvesting the fruits of the land with a generous high-tech twist.

"The fact that we can turn essentially one of the real gems of the community from the 20th century into one of the gems of the 21st century, in the heart of the community, by using or re-using 70 to 80 percent of the things that are there, that just gives me pride," said Mark Kittrell, board president of the nonprofit Cedar Valley TechWorks Inc. "And I think our board and our community ought to be very proud that we're using that kind of setting and literally building our future off the remnants of the past."

TechWorks is designed to be a new product research, development and exhibition center for bio-based agricultural products. Located adjacent to Deere's redeveloped Westfield Avenue site and a planned extension and connection of Commercial Street with the interchange of U.S. Highways 63 and 218 and University Avenue, it figures to be a new "front door" to downtown Waterloo - and a project that puts the emerging "green" industrial economy at the community's doorstep - right next door to the world's No. 1 manufacturer of agricultural equipment, a manufacturer that is all about "green" technology.

"These kinds of things need to have a place. And TechWorks can be that place," Kittrell said. Drawing on the area's strong manufacturing base, he said, "we view the site as the place where those ideas can find their way" into commercial use, "and ultimately into the economy."

In February, Deere donated more than $17.4 million in buildings, land, technical assistance and financial resources to the nonprofit group for the development of TechWorks. The estimated $50 million bio-based agri-industrial product development and exposition marketplace will be developed over several years on about 40 acres at the company's Westfield Avenue site - a land area that Kittrell said is equal to roughly half the total area of downtown Waterloo.

Cedar Valley TechWorks Inc. is overseeing development of the project. The group is made up of business leaders and representatives of

the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance economic development group, Deere and the city of Waterloo.

Major portions of the old Deere buildings, more than 40 buildings totaling about 1.5 million square feet, were demolished last spring and summer, TechWorks general manager Cary Darrah said. More than 70 percent of the rubble, stockpiled on site and dubbed "Mount TechWorks," will be used as material for the Commercial Street extension project.

Construction bids on the Commercial Street extension project will be let in March, said Don Temeyer, the city of Waterloo's community planning and development director. One portion of that project, a long-awaited connection of Westfield Avenue to the Highways 63-218-University Avenue interchange, is very near completion.

Two multi-story Deere buildings totaling about 400,000 square feet - the "R" and "C2" buildings at the site - have been retained for renovation for TechWorks. They are known, respectively, as Tech 1 and Tech 2. Of those, Tech 1 has been made ready for occupancy. It is anticipated that building's first tenant, the University of Northern Iowa's National Ag-based Lubricants program, or NABL, now located in Waverly, will move in by late summer or early fall after interior work is completed.

The Iowa Board of Regents next month is scheduled to vote on approving a rental agreement allowing NABL to move into TechWorks.

"That's going to be good news, once the board approves it. Then we have agreement, and idea is for them (TechWorks) to prepare the building so we can move in," UNI professor and NABL founding director Lou Honary said. "We've been working with architects. They've done a lot of mechanical work. We're getting excited. We've spent a lot of time on the design, redesign."

Honary has said NABL is still committed to relocating to TechWorks when facilities are ready. He said NABL has received inquiries internationally regarding its product-development capabilities and anticipates interests from around the world will be at NABL's door once it moves to TechWorks.

"Once we know when we are moving, we have new projects, new products coming out that we can't talk about" right now, from major companies, Honary said. "And then of course, we have publicity going from other countries that want to come and join us. The public is ready for it. The nation is ready for it. We're ready for it. We are well known worldwide. And I hope to God that we use that to create some publicity and bring people in."

"It's going to be a real magnet for the bio-economy," said State Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, who has promoted TechWorks with state officials in Des Moines since it first was announced about three years ago.

"The TechWorks has made some remarkable progress. The demolition has clearly been obvious to the public," said Dave Rodger, general manager of the John Deere Waterloo Works. Deere has one more major demolition project left on its property - dismantling the old Deere powerhouse with its massive smokestack. That work is scheduled for spring.

Deere continues to play a major role in TechWorks, Darrah said, providing technical assistance and coordinating its own demolition, and the company has loaned an executive, Mary Swehla, to work with the organization in developing an exposition center to be constructed between the Tech 1 and Tech 2 buildings. It is anticipated to feature a display of historic Waterloo-made John Deere tractors, among other exhibits.

TechWorks also plans to develop seven construction lots, which can be sold for "business projects related to the bio-economy," Darrah said.

The development of TechWorks is coming from a combination of state and federal funds, in addition to the Deere gift. The organization also is in discussions with UNI and Hawkeye Community College about locating additional job-training and educational programs there such UNI's Metals Casting Center, as well as other higher education institutions which will help businesses develop bio products to put them on the market.

TechWorks continues to get inquiries from various prospects, Darrah said, ranging from product research and development to advanced manufacturing.

Those working on TechWorks understand they have yet to fully convey their vision to the public. They say that will come with time. The took a big step with Deere's donation in February.

"We've been working diligently throughout '07 to make the campus look like what we needed start redevelopment," Greater Cedar Valley Alliance executive director Steve Dust said. "So we haven't given people reason to understand what TechWorks is about yet. We've been trying to figure that out as well."

The original concept, announced four years ago, has been refined to include more of an advanced manufacturing component, based on market feedback and a flood of comparatively young retired or soon-to-retire workers from Deere and elsewhere who could be interested in being part of the new biotech industry as workers and entrepreneurs.

"We think TechWorks can be a center of innovation for those folks - people getting ready to retire and wanting to decide how they want to spend the next 20 years," Dust said. "We have a lot of people retiring in their mid-50s. We have surveys telling us that huge numbers of retirees are going to stay in the Cedar Valley. So we know they're going to have another 15 to 20 years to commit to another career. We want to be the place where they can grow the ideas for their second career. A lot of that can happen at TechWorks."

"The unfortunate part is it takes a while," Kittrell said. "You don't tear down 2 million square feet of buildings and start a redevelopment project of this scale without it taking a while. The challenge that we all work in is, we have to be ahead of that. We have to help people to find what's going to be. Bio-products, advanced manufacturing, those are the kinds of areas people are really going to get interested in. We need to 'green up' a lot of the things we do. TechWorks is going to be one of those things that is really going to aid that."

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