Paul Scharf / Capital Newspapers
Joseph Ballweg of Prime Mechanical of Wisconsin, located in Arlington, receives the Business of the Year award from Rog Severson.

COLUMBUS - Four area businesses went home with awards Thursday night at the 10th annual Columbia County Economic Development Corp. Business/Manufacturer/Entrepreneur/Inventor of the Year awards ceremony.

The meeting was held at Kestrel Ridge Golf Club, which is owned by Mike Eisenga - a member of the CCEDC board and the chairman of the committee that organized Thursday's event. Eisenga also served as the master of ceremonies for the evening, which included a meal for the record CCEDC crowd that filled much of Kestrel Ridge's dining room.

Twenty-one businesses were nominated for four awards. An Inventor of the Year award was not given out, but four businesses still were honored.

Those going home with the plaques were:

• Manufacturer of the Year: Everbrite Inc. in Pardeeville. In the last two years, the sign and scoreboard company has grown its sales by 26 percent. "This is an honor to us - a total surprise as well," said Greg Harruff, vice president and general manager of Everbrite.

• Business of the Year: Prime Mechanical of Wisconsin LLC in Arlington. Joseph Ballweg received the award for the company, which doubled its work force this year.

"Your work is nationally recognized as a symbol for green building," said CCEDC president Debra Byars.

• Entrepreneur of the Year co-winners: Padley Plus in Lodi and Krista's Kitchen in Portage. Padley Plus includes a strip mall and, as of Dec. 1, the Lodi Sports and Recreation Center.

According to owner Ron Padley, the vision for this new community facility began when he bought the property to house his own business and also thought he had a spot where his five kids could play basketball.

Krista's Kitchen opened in 1995 when Krista Bleich started baking bread in her house. She and her husband, Dale, now have 11 other people on the staff of their restaurant.

"I think that the community that we serve is why we do what we do," Bleich said.

State Secretary of Commerce Richard Leinenkugel, formerly the vice president of sales and marketing for Leinenkugel Brewing Co., was the guest speaker for the evening. He talked first about projects in the area that the state Department of Commerce has been involved in, saying that 137 new jobs have been created by state investment in Columbia County since 2003.

"Wisconsin is home to some of the best manufacturing companies in the world," Leinenkugel said.

He noted that this state is second only to Indiana in the United States in terms of the percentage of the population that is involved in manufacturing.

Leinenkugel has been in his new role as the secretary of commerce since September.

Byars, who gave the welcome for the evening, called the meeting an "antidote" to all the bad business news currently in the media.