As the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway approaches,
the town of Speedway, at long last, is making an aggressive play to turn the world-famous oval into an economic engine that
runs year-round.
Budget cuts could eliminate programs that gather and analyze local and state economic data. This would hurt businesses and
economic development officials, since they would not have the data that helps them see how their market differs from the state
and the nation.
Don Welsh is quickly making a name for himself as a change agent. Though few knew what to think when Welsh announced he was
leaving Seattle to become Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association CEO, he’s shown he didn’t come here to simply
wind
down his career.
If certain people in Hancock County have their way, one of the fastest-growing new industries here could be adult education.
The development of shopping, restaurants, museums, public arts and hotels downtown in the past 25 years has made Indianapolis
a vibrant, more interesting place to live—and to visit.
Most economists spend some time teaching, but the vast majority of our time is spent doing research.
The city should organize a public-private partnership to create a multi-modal distribution community at the site of the former
Indianapolis Airport terminal.
Indiana’s blue vote for president-elect Barack Obama on Election Day was a sign that Hoosiers are ready for change. So was
the state’s red vote to keep incumbent Gov. Mitch Daniels in office. In this case, the status quo means more change. Daniels
has been making gutsy and sometimes unpopular moves since taking office four years ago. He ran on a promise to keep shaking
things up.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials are in talks to move their Hall of Fame Museum from the interior of the oval to a spot
just outside the south end of the track, an area that could also house a new Speedway hotel.
Sixty Indianapolis-area business and civic leaders visited Denver Oct. 19-21 as
part of the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce 2008 Leadership Exchange and paid close attention to public transportation, especially commuter trains.
In 2008, a Hoosier economist suggests consumers first pay off their debts, then invest in a liberal education and other causes
that enrich lives.
In this election, citizens must decide whether the assessing duties of the elected township assessor in the township should
be transferred to the county assessor.
A new rail route launched last month between Los Angeles and CSX’s Avon rail yard could give a further boost to Hendricks County’s booming warehousing-and-distribution industry. The county already hosts some 29 million square feet of warehouse space. However, it lacked a direct connection to the teeming Port of Long Beach in Los Angeles, a major gateway for U.S./ Asian trade. Anyone in the Hendricks County area wishing to send or receive goods from that port by rail had to…
I apologize for filling a column with numbers. But there is no other way of depicting the unemployment situation in Indiana. As we have learned in the current financial crisis, lack of knowledge is the root of calamity. In August, the latest date for which we have information, Indiana’s unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, compared with 4.5 percent a year earlier. Nationally, the unemployment rate had gone from 4.7 percent in August 2007 to 6.1 percent this year. This stronger…
Indiana has become the lone state in the upper Midwest not requiring that utilities supply a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable resources, such as wind turbines and landfill gas. Last month, Michigan’s legislature mandated that at least 10 percent of electricity supplied in that state be generated from renewable sources by 2015. Indiana’s conspicuous lack of a standard, along with growing environmental concerns over coal, could improve prospects for passing a standard during the 2009 session of the…
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson promises to buoy Indiana’s slumping rural counties with a three-tiered
incentive plan. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has a different vision for stoking the state economy. He wants to build on Indiana’s
strengths–such as world-class research at universities–to innovate and create jobs.
Amid all this joyless market watching, this much is clear: The financial markets and the economy are going to get worse before they get better. But market watching is never a healthy sport, especially since it tends to make us lose track of the real economy at times like these. Over the past couple of weeks, the real economy has shown a bit of resilience. And here in Indiana, really great news has been lost in the wake of the…
With a driver shortage as bad as the freight industry says, one might think operating a truck-driving school would be a license to print money. But proposed federal rules to toughen training standards and, lately, a fishtailing economy could bring a shakeout among schools. There are even rumblings that a few big carriers that contract with driving schools are poised to eliminate tuition reimbursement as they sweat out the economic downturn. “We’re going to start losing schools,” predicted John Priest,…
A new cooking technology under development at Purdue University could please both dieters looking for lowercalorie meals and food retailers seeking lower costs. It has the potential to produce “fried” foods using vastly less oil, and to cook them at speeds that make microwave ovens seem as slow as crock pots. A Purdue professor is working with Anderson Tool and Engineering Co. in Madison County to create advanced prototypes of the device, called a “radiant fryer.” The first off the…
Ground should be broken late this month or in early November, with completion expected by summer. Cost of the 40,000-square-foot facility-4,000 square feet smaller than the one here-is estimated in the $8 million to $10 million range. While it may be a bit smaller in size, the scope is broader. The new incubator will promote both life sciences companies and information technology firms. That goal differs from the mission of the existing IU Emerging Technologies Center on 10th Street, which…
