“If somebody wipes one of them out, the associated residence goes with it,” he says, only half jokingly. Now in his 14th season in t h e m o t o r – sports industry, Crawford, 38, decided to hoist his own flag for the first time this year in the Indy Pro Series, open-wheel racing’s highest minor league. For the record, he’s not a wealthy man. The second property is the only investment he and his wife, Myra, haven’t…
Many issues face national and local civil and criminal justice systems across our nation. Years and years of application of Band-Aid remedies to complicated and longterm problems have brought many government systems to the verge of collapse. Marion County is no exception to the rule. Courts are strained with overwhelming caseloads. Average lives of cases continue to increase, clogging jails and courts. Public defender and prosecutor caseloads continue to swell, effectively reducing the quality of representation available to both the…
After growing its enrollment 75 percent the last decade, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana is shifting its focus to student retention. A top administrator also wants to expand the number of training courses offered at businesses, as a way to supplement the system’s $253 million annual budget. Some who’ve studied the state’s educational system have recommended that Ivy Tech spend more to hire additional full-time faculty to strengthen its effectiveness. The school’s five-year student retention plan calls for doubling…
On April 14, as part of its Power Breakfast Series, the Indianapolis Business Journal gathered a panel of commercial real estate and construction experts to discuss industry conditions in the local market. In a discussion moderated by IBJ Editor Tom Harton, panelists took on a wide range of issues, including tax incentives and the status of downtown’s residential and retail markets. Power Breakfast guests were Mike Curless, executive vice president and principal with Lauth Property Group; Mike Wells, president of…
There’s finally visible progress on the city’s Central Library expansion project. But the litigation over who’s responsible for its construction problems still has no end in sight. City-County Councilor Isaac Randolph is frustrated. So he wrote a proposal to order all the players in the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library’s legal dispute to enter binding arbitration. “I’m trying to find a resolution to what’s clearly become an embarrassment to the citizens funding this,” Randolph said. “I’ve lost confidence in the leadership…
Every day, the financial press and market pundits provide us with the reason for the previous day’s stock market activity. Following a down day, we might read an article headlined, “Investors sell stocks on fears of rising inflation.” Perhaps the next day the market rises and we see, “Stocks climb as investors see end to Fed interest rate increases.” What exactly happened overnight that caused this apparent shift in sentiment? Did investors sleep on it and the next morning collectively…
Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau released 2004 data showing that Indiana had 264,936 persons of Hispanic origin among its 6,058,930 population. That would mean 4.37 percent of Hoosiers, themselves or their ancestors, came from Mexico, Cuba, Columbia, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile and other Spanish-speaking nations. Don’t you just love that precision? 264,936 and 6,058,930 are merely estimates, not census counts. Anyone who has worked with numbers should be embarrassed to be more specific than 265,000 and 6,060,000. The…
SMALL BUSINESS PROFILE WTH Firm mapping out its own success Owner shifts focus from old-school engineering to GIS Rex Jones wants to show off his company’s work, so the lights go down, a computer comes on and a map of Starke County appears on a screen. The map is a maze of green lines representing county and local roads, red for state/interstate highways, blue for water. Jones zooms in further, picking a random street in the rural county. Up pops…
The federally funded Central Indiana Commuter Services has finally won over a dozen workers to share a van to and from work-somewhat of a feat in a region where a vanpool might as well be a bathing option for a conversion van. Besides a vanpool program that runs between Cloverdale and Indianapolis, CICS recently signed on a handful of Fishers residents to share a seven-passenger van between the Hamilton County town and downtown Indianapolis. Lately, CICS has been trying to…
It’s the scenario entrepreneurs dream about. After just over five years in business, the founders of Carmel-based Performance Assessment Network Inc. have sold their company to a publicly traded St. Louis firm for $75 million in cash. Since PAN had only a handful of investors, its backers’ profits are enormous. What’s more, they can enjoy their payday with a clear conscience. Although PAN’s acquirer is headquartered outside state lines, TALX Corp. plans to keep growing the operation here. PAN’s executives…
As I left work April 10, I noticed a steady stream of cars pulling off Washington Street into the IBJ Corp. parking lot. The cars were full of Hispanics who had come downtown for the Big March. The sidewalks, too, held a steady flow of Hispanics heading east toward what turned out to be one of the largest public political rallies in city history. Most of the people I saw looked young-in their teens, 20s or 30s-and seemed to be…
The microwave oven has been a staple in most American kitchens for so long that there is now a generation of young adults who’ve never lived without them. And for that same generation, the doughy, limp texture of foods like pizza quick-cooked in a microwave, in contrast to the crisped, browned texture produced over a longer time by conventional heat, is associated with the food, not the technology. If you’ve grown up eating from a microwave, that’s the way food’s…
If you have yourself in a lather about rising inflation, maybe I can offer a little relief. You can work your rosary beads over a lot of things, but runaway inflation is not one of them. There’s a little twist here, though. And it’s one that will add a challenge to your long-term strategy. According to our federal government, inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, has not been much of a problem. Excluding food and energy, prices are…
The right car-not an early arrival or high rank-will soon get state workers the best parking spaces at the Indiana Government Center. As an incentive for its workers to drive less-polluting cars, the state plans to give drivers of hybrid cars the coveted spaces in the basement of the parking garage at West and Washington streets. Those would be the spaces right outside the tunnel entrance to the government center. The hybrid parking signs should go up within a month,…
Let’s sell Fort Wayne and its surrounding counties to Ohio or Michigan. Or in the spirit of the day, at least we could lease out part of northeast Indiana. If we got rid of Fort Wayne (Allen County) and two counties to the north (Steuben and DeKalb) plus one county to the south (Adams) and one to the west (Huntington), we could decrease our state’s population by 491,500. Why would we want to do that? There’s no good reason to…
New guidelines due out in June will call for newly constructed hospitals to come equipped with all private patient rooms, the first time such a minimum requirement has been issued. The guidelines, published every four years by the Facilities Guidelines Institute and the American Institute of Architects’ Academy of Health, are used by nearly 40 state governments-including Indiana-to set regulations, approve construction plans and license hospitals to operate. And hospitals nationwide-including those in Indiana-are expected to embrace the guidelines that…
Oakland County, Mich., located northwest of the city of Detroit, is home to some of the wealthiest communities in the nation. Its per capita income consistently ranks it nationally in the top-five counties, and a visual tour of its majestic homes, well-funded private schools and sumptuous amenities confirms the material wealth of its residents. So why aren’t economic developers trekking north to Michigan to discover the secrets of this county’s economic success? The answer is simple: Oakland County is also…
At least two large Indianapolis not-for-profits have been investigated-and cleared-as part of an Internal Revenue Service examination of compensation practices at tax-exempt organizations. Preliminary results of the nationwide inquiry aren’t expected until fall, but the scrutiny already has increased the volume in an ongoing debate over how not-for-profit executives should be paid. Some observers have called for setting limits on not-for-profit compensation, citing the charitable nature of the work. Others insist sixor seven-figure pay packages are not out of line…
The much-hyped Y2K computer bug came and went without so much as a whimper from a whirring hard drive. But unlike the threat of malfunctioning computers, health experts warn that the potential danger of an avian flu pandemic is far greater. In the event of a widespread outbreak in the United States, companies large and small need to be prepared in order to keep interruptions to a minimum, they say. “I am an evangelist for having a contingency plan,” said…
Billboards in southern Indiana used to tug spelunkers in four different directions. Come to Marengo Caves. Spend an afternoon at Bluespring Caverns. Visit Wyandotte Caves. Don a headlamp at Squire Boone Caverns. Two years ago, however, operators at the four attractions decided it might be a better use of cash to market the area as a single attraction. They pooled their advertising budgets and printed a brochure that listed all four destinations. They also created a passport that visitors could…
