There’s lots of good news this week.

First, on Tuesday, the AL-KO Kober Corp. cut the ribbon on its new facility at 602 W. Second St. (the old R.C. Bottling plant, most recently occupied by Taylor-Made).

According to its Web site, AL-KO Kober is an axle and brake manufacturer with headquarters in Koetz, Germany and manufacturing facilities in Elkhart, Ind., Shawnee, Okla., Seminole, Okla., Ontario, Calif., and Baldwyn, Miss. The company was founded in 1931 as a small welding shop and has grown to employ 4,000 people worldwide.

While the local facility will reportedly employ just three people, this is another example of a building owned by the local development authority which is no longer sitting empty — and three people who have jobs who may not have before.

Then on Friday afternoon, I heard from Downtown Economic Development Director Laqurica Gaskins that the Downtown Development Authority had received a $99,000 grant to fund a signage program for downtown Tifton.

The grant, which Gaskins wrote, will help pay for signs to guide visitors and residents to attractions and downtown businesses in a signage program which is a partnership between the DDA and the City of Tifton. The two agencies will work with a consulting firm to integrate the signs into a multi-faceted program which includes new developments in the downtown business district.

And finally, this morning a story from the Associated Press reports that the peanut industry so important to the local economy has rebounded unexpectedly well from last year’s salmonella scare. The downturn in the economy actually helped peanut farmers because Americans turned to peanut butter as an economical source of protein, according to the story.

Sanford Miller, senior fellow at the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told the AP that it typically takes much longer for an industry to rebound from a food scare and that “it shows you how important peanut butter is to the American diet.”

Is your business building, moving or opening? Call me at 382-4321, ext. 1903.