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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowInfosys Ltd.’s west-side Indianapolis property, a three-story, 160,000-square-foot building near Indianapolis International Airport, is definitely more eye-catching than the airport parking lot that previously occupied that spot.
But when it comes to the actual impact the company has had—or may yet have—on the west side of Indianapolis? That’s harder to say. And Infosys isn’t talking about what it is or isn’t doing at the site.
“It’s an impressive image when you look at the area,” Jerry Knoop, executive director of the West Side Chamber of Commerce, said about the Infosys building, which is included in the chamber’s territory.
But, he added, “It likely hasn’t had the economic impact that others have wanted—or had hoped for—to this point. It doesn’t mean it won’t.”
In November 2018, the India-based tech giant broke ground on what it said would eventually be a $245 million, 141-acre campus with 786,000 square feet of facilities, including a training center, conference and recreational facilities, and other amenities. The company, which as of earlier that year had only 150 Indianapolis employees working from OneAmerica’s downtown tower, also said it planned to have 3,000 Indianapolis-area employees by the end of 2023.
But to date, only one Infosys building has risen from the former parking lot at the northeast corner of Sam Jones Expressway and South High School Road. The company canceled a planned grand opening celebration for that building in May 2023. At the time, Infosys said it planned to reschedule the event, but there are no indications that the event ever happened or is scheduled to happen.
A renovated parking garage that served as airport parking for the former terminal is also part of the project, as is a pedestrian walkway over High School Road that leads from the garage to the office building—though these structures appear to be unused.
It’s unclear what comes next for the campus. The company itself has not been forthcoming, and those outside the company say answers are hard to come by.
“Hell, if you can get an update, I want an update,” City-County Councilor Jared Evans told IBJ. Evans, whose district includes the west-side Infosys site, said he’s been frustrated by the company’s lack of communication.
That lack of communication is especially galling to Evans because of the significant incentives the city of Indianapolis extended to Infosys.
In 2018, the Indianapolis Airport Authority agreed to sell 58 acres to the city for $4.4 million. The airport authority also renovated its former parking garage, then sold it to the city for $12 million under a seven-year contract. The city then sold these properties to Infosys for $1 each.
“Infosys has been such an isolated company,” Evans said. “They don’t appear to me to want to be willing partners.”
Evans said he heard secondhand that Infosys might be planning two additional buildings on the north side of its existing office building. But Evans acknowledged that he has never seen any renderings or site plans for the buildings and that the information is a few years old and might be outdated.
For its part, the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development says Infosys is in compliance with its incentives agreement.
“The city and Infosys are committed to a continued partnership to promote job growth and development on the west side of Indianapolis,” DMD spokesman Lucas Gonzalez told IBJ in an e-mailed statement. “The agreement includes a shared financial commitment from the city and the state, with the city’s obligations including training, public infrastructure, land acquisition and demolition.”
Gonzalez also said the agreement anticipated that the Infosys campus would be developed in phases. “Phase 1 has been completed and Infosys is in compliance with the terms of the agreement with the city of Indianapolis. Community stakeholders can anticipate additional engagement as conversations progress on future phases of development.”
Still hopeful
Jeff Butts, superintendent of the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, said he believes Infosys’ original vision for the west-side campus has changed. But he said this belief is based on his intuition, given the impact the pandemic has likely had on companies’ facility needs, rather than on concrete information.
When it comes to economic development in general, Butts observed, “the original vision or the original plan doesn’t always come to fruition.”
Butts also serves as president of the Indy Gateway Inc. community development corporation, whose territory includes the Infosys campus.
He said his school district hasn’t developed much of a relationship with Infosys. And he said Indy Gateway has had conversations with Infosys, but the company has made no commitments of financial support for the organization.
Still, Butts said he’s optimistic that both the school district and the CDC might yet form partnerships with Infosys. “We hope we’ll be able to find opportunities.”
Knoop, the West Side Chamber of Commerce executive, said he has had positive interactions with Infosys and has been to the west-side campus a few times for community events, including one in which a few dozen Wayne Township students talked with Infosys employees and received a facility tour.
Like the others, Knoop also said he believes Infosys’ original vision for the campus has shifted.
“I really believe that they want to do some good things,” Knoop said of Infosys. “I think that things have just changed.”
No comment
The company itself is being tight-lipped about its plans.
Infosys’ top local executive, Richard Cardwell, did not respond to a written message left for him at the company’s airport office last week.
And Harini Babu, the company’s New York City-based head of marketing, did not respond to email and phone messages.
In a September 2022 email to Evans and several other city officials, Cardwell wrote that “we remain committed to hiring 3,000 people and have hired over 1,000 to date.”
But there are signs the company has fallen short of its original job-creation vision. An IBJ reporter’s visit to the site last week revealed that people are working in the building, and the 100-space parking lot was nearly full. But traffic cones blocked the High School Road entrance and exit to the former airport parking garage that was renovated specifically for Infosys.
In 2019, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Infosys an incentives package totaling $86 million.
The largest piece of that package was $56.5 million in EDGE tax credits based on the company’s goal of hiring 3,000 people by the end of 2023. EDGE stands for Economic Development for a Growing Economy. These tax credits are performance-based, meaning a company can claim them only after hiring Hoosiers.
According to the IEDC’s online transparency portal, Infosys has claimed only $5.17 million in EDGE tax credits, less than 10% of the amount it is eligible to claim. The company has until the end of 2026 to claim the remainder of the credits by adding more jobs.
IEDC spokesman Nathan Brown declined to confirm that the amount reported as claimed by Infosys is up to date. He referred IBJ back to the transparency portal, though IEDC officials have said in the past the portal’s information is not always the latest available.
Brown also declined to say whether the IEDC has had conversations with Infosys about future development at the company’s site.•
Correction: The original version of this story misidentified where Jeff Butts works. He is the superintendent of the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township. See more corrections here.
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Yeah, I’d wager there’s a 95% chance that Infosys’ single building will be abandoned by 2030.
Regardless of whether I’m right, the City should use eminent domain to claw back the parking garage & all of the land that Infosys hasn’t built on (which stands to be more than 100 acres). The sooner, the better. This is ordeal is headed somewhere between that of Foxconn in Wisconsin and Ambrose at the stamping plant.
This is will hopefully serve as (another) warning to economic development officials that prematurely handing over real estate is a terrible idea. The ‘campus’ – inclusive of the garage – should’ve been held in some sort of escrow and released to Infosys in a piecemeal fashion and contingent upon land improvements made by Infosys.
Infosys has long been known to be a shady company. The city and state, led by 2 bozos (Hogsett and Holcomb) would do anything that would get them in a photo op for this site. I am not even sure if more than 20 people work in this building.
They had big dreams of undercutting all the local firms in price, but cant deliver at all…. so who cares if they are cheaper.
We should stop allowing out of country outsourcing firms to plant tax advantaged roots in our state so easily.
In defense of the IEDC, maybe they looked at the dismal results of the Indiana educational system and the poor prospects for improvement and decided throwing a bunch of money at a company that was just going to bring in a bunch of H1B visa holders was the only option they had for a technical workforce in the state.
Joe, I retract my previous statement. John Jacob actually sounds intelligent and rational compared to you. You are now at Micah level. Are these really your thoughts or is this just a bizarre and elaborate troll?
Chuck, you’re projecting about who is doing the trolling here.
Nice to see you’re a big fan of my stuff. Doing wonders for my humility that I’ve got someone clicking on every IBJ news story looking for my comments and, upon reading them, I’m leaving them in so much awe all they can do is poorly regurgitate a name I last mentioned a couple years ago … thinking they’re going to insult me in some way.
On second thought, when I put it like that, it’s kinda weird. But if you can’t hang with the people having the discussion and you like to see your name on the page, I guess it’s the best you can do, huh?
IEDC was knee deep in this . What a joke.
Indiana has to do a better job at selecting better companies.I would suggest the state invest heavily in homegrown companies like High Alpha and Eli Lilly to name a few.
I don’t think it’s up to Indiana to select companies. Indiana needs to be attractive enough for companies to select it.
More education funding would be a good start.
Jeff Butts is Superintendent of Wayne Twp. Schools, not Decatur.’
That threw me for a little loop. I, at first, wondered if he moved. I no longer have school age kids. So, I’m out of touch with the district like I had been.
Good catch, Thomas M.! We’ve corrected this error.
Can’t help but wonder if Ambrose knew something when they rejected the city’s request to make Infosys part of the Waterside Project.
Infosys was attempting to cash in on a central Indiana tech market that was desparately short of IT staffers. Recent grads were getting up to $100K in some specializations, with little actual experience in the work they were hired to perform. The overall market made it difficult for businesses, especially small businesses, to hire IT staff. Infosys thought they could cash in on that. When COVID hit, people learned the could work from home, even and perhaps especially, IT people. And if I can work from home from downtown, or Castleton, or Fishers or whichever Indy suburb, I could also work from Cincy or Columbus, or Chicago, or any other city. That made hiring IT staff in particular much easier. And if I’m an IT person in Chicago trying to raise a family, with a job in Indy, why I might just move to Indy, which is a less expensive town and probably easier to navigate and raise a family. All combined, Infosys’ business plan probably collapsed.
The Trump administration probably also hurt a bit, as they stopped processing visas for many of these workers in the spring of 2020. Suddenly, IT people couldn’t be employed here, and were facing deportation, even if spouses had become citizens. Those problems were largely resolved by late 2021.
COVID brought an end to office campus development – Infosys is no different. Infosys has stated they have been much more efficient and profitable since the COVID remote work movement.
Having competed against this company multiple times they will say whatever they think someone wants to hear to win. Then, once they do win they underperform. When I originally heard about this deal I was skeptical and now I”m not surprised at all at the outcome.