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Movements in midtown may mean more housing, retail: Handful of developers take on North Meridian projects

“It’s just a matter of time.” At this point, the statement may reflect more hope than reality. The city’s main corridor is a concrete jungle through much of midtown, filled with parking lots, for-sale signs and buildings exhibiting nearly nonexistent design standards. However, a small-butgrowing number of developers is showing interest in revitalizing the main corridor through midtown. One of the newest plans would create a mixed-use development at 21st and Meridian streets called Meridian at 21. Local businessman Jeffrey…

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Omnicity making inroads among the dirt roads: Rural areas served by wireless broadband provider have grown nearly six-fold

An Indianapolis company that provides wireless broadband service from atop grain elevators, water towers or darned near anywhere the warbler roosts is expanding at a rapid clip and plans to launch Internet-based phone service in early 2006. Omnicity Inc. also plans another private offering to raise cash for its ambitious build-out in rural areas that are underserved by high-speed Internet providers. Improving broadband access has economic development implications in Indianapolis’ remote bedroom communities and throughout sparsely populated areas. Now, even…

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Critics want IPL answers: Utility cut $10M settlement after agency suggested accounting was misleading

Groups representing Indianapolis Power & Light Co. customers want to know if the utility has deliberately underreported income to regulators and overcharged customers. Their concerns were sparked by a cryptic settlement IPL reached with the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor on Oct. 28 that took IPL customer groups by surprise. IPL agreed to provide each residential customer with a $25 credit early next year, “a time when the costs for heating their homes will be at their highest,” IPL…

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VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: Putting construction, engineering into laymen’s terms

Sometimes those of us in the construction industry-like many other professions-forget we have our own technical vocabulary that many laymen simply don’t understand. Like some of my colleagues, I have occasionally started tossing around the lingo of our industry before business and civic leaders from other fields and have seen the confused look that comes over their faces. I have to stop and define my terms. With that situation in mind, I thought it might be helpful to put together…

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Will cook, need kitchen: Bakers, caterers struggle to find space to bake-legally

Both women know they have sweettoothed fans who want to buy their goodies, but because of new state regulations, they are finding it difficult to deliver their products to a hungry market. At the beginning of this year, a law took effect requiring that most food for sale to the public be prepared in commercial kitchens with certified food handlers. The regulation has effectively kicked Castillo, Johnson and dozens of other small caterers and bakers out of their production facilities-in…

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Court battles widen for ProLiance Energy: Gas marketer sues its insurer for millions in legal fees

ProLiance Energy LLC, already facing a $38.9 million judgment under a federal racketeering law, now is battling its insurer in court to collect more than $2 million in legal fees for its defense. New Jersey-based Executive Risk Specialty Insurance Co. not only refuses to pay the claim but also wants ProLiance to return $1.3 million in defense expenses paid before the February verdict on behalf of Huntsville Utilities in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The jury…

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Were IPL earnings too big?: Secret biz plan: Execs feared state would order refunds

In May 2003, the top brass at IPALCO Enterprises Inc. was running the numbers and saw potential regulatory trouble down the line. The latest projections showed the Indianapolis Power & Light Co. parent would earn a return on equity more than double the industry average for years to come, according to a confidential business plan drafted that spring. Not only might state regulators question whether IPALCO was earning too much money from customers, they also might apply existing case law…

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Retooling telecom: As rivals proliferate, SBC taps executive to overhaul offerings

Few industries have been as overrun by competitors as the Baby Bells-SBC Communications and other phone companies created through the breakup of Ma Bell AT&T in 1984. The San Antonio-based owner of what used to be Indiana Bell now competes along with local telephone exchange carriers that have carved out an estimated 20 percent of residential service in the state. Lately, cable TV companies such as Comcast have offered phone and broadband over the same, old coax cable that carries…

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New Citizens chief faces tough crowd: High gas prices, cranky industrial customers await Lykins

For seven days each July, Carey Lykins hikes a leg over his Trek touring bike in hopes of conquering Iowa. The [Des Moines] Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa is a grueling 471 miles between the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers. “It can be brutally hot, but it’s a real adventure,” said the 53-year-old Lykins. The same could be said for the tour Lykins began Oct. 1 as president and CEO of Citizens Gas & Coke Utility. The 32-year…

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Utility fund-raising effort takes heat for opt-out strategy: Critics say customers should be asked if they want to contribute to Operation Round Up-or any charity

The concept is a noble one: By rounding their bills up to the nearest dollar, utility customers can turn pennies into a philanthropic windfall for a worthy cause. Indeed, Operation Round Up programs at nearly 250 electric cooperatives nationwide-including 22 in Indiana-have collected more than $50 million for charity since the fund-raising effort began in 1989. But some observers question the method most participating utilities use to get their members involved. Rather than being asked to give, residential and commercial…

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How to make money in the bear-market minefield INVESTING Keenan Hauke: How to make money in the bear-market minefield

INVESTING How to make money in the bear-market minefield All year, you’ve been reading my description of what the end of a bull market looks like. Major indexes move higher but fewer and fewer stocks participate in the rally. A case in point: On Sept. 9, the S&P 500 came within two points of its early August high, but 60 percent fewer stocks hit new highs in September than in August. Hmm. Apple Computer is one of those stocks I…

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TAWN PARENT Commentary: Big hankering for the Big Easy

Once you’ve lived in New Orleans, you never really leave. A part of you stays on. You don’t feel quite whole again except when you return. Then it’s like regaining an appendage you had learned to live without, but suddenly realize how much you have missed. Transfixed by events there over the past month, I have been missing that part of me I left behind in 1996 when I drove a U-Haul north after three years as a reporter and…

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Proposed natural gas pipeline bogged down at IURC: Project would give customers access to lower-priced gas, blunting impact of Katrina and hike in delivery fee

A pipeline that would give residential and industrial customers access to cheaper wholesale natural gas from the West and Canada won’t be built this winter, when it could have blunted prices whipped skyward by Hurricane Katrina. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is still reviewing Citizens Gas & Coke Utility’s request to construct a nearly 20-mile pipeline that would connect its Greene County gas storage facility with the Midwest Gas Transmission System line in Sullivan County. That line ties into a…

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Incubator under new ownership: Aim is to return center to its entrepreneurial mission

Any small-business incubator can offer tenants Internet service, fax machines and conference rooms. But what about the convenience of on-site oil changes or the stress relief of a pinball machine? For Scott Meyers, new owner of the revamped Indianapolis Enterprise Center, the extra incentives are just a small part of his overall plan to make the neareast-side facility more attractive to fledgling entrepreneurs. Meyers, 36, bought the former A&P grocery warehouse in May. He declined to disclose the purchase price…

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Pension fund opens coffers: $506M could be boon for venture capitalists

The Public Employees’ Retirement Fund, Indiana’s largest pension system, is preparing to unleash half a billion dollars into venture capital, real estate and other privateequity investments. And the fund’s managers aim to put the bulk of it to work inside state lines. Hoosier venture capitalists are salivating at the prospect. T h a t ‘s t h e equivalent of nearly seven BioCrossroads Indiana Future Funds. “If there are excellent opportunities to invest in Indiana, we ought to be looking…

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Law could generate earnings for Cummins: States face deadline in completing standards for connecting generators to grid

Cummins Inc. and other makers of electric generators stand to gain under a provision an Indiana lawmaker plugged into the federal energy bill signed this month. The amendment by 4th District Republican congressman Steve Buyer forces state utility commissions to adopt standards within two years that will pave the way for businesses that generate their own electricity to sell excess power to the electric grid. That’s good news for firms that generate their own power and for Cummins, which makes…

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Group wants energy czar: Coalition believes utilities slow to climb on efficiency bandwagon

Chris Maher’s crews at Thermo-Scan Inc. have been plenty busy inspecting for drafts and puny insulation in many of the 14,000 new homes built each year in the metro area. Even so, the principal at the Carmel firm can’t help wonder about the vast potential to make the hundreds of thousands of existing homes and businesses more energy efficient-if only homeowners had a little more incentive. Utility companies, he says, have relatively few dollars budgeted to coax customers to install…

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Ex-IPL officer fights utility: Claims wrongful termination, financial trickery

Not even a lineman at Indianapolis Power & Light Co. has more nerve than Dwane Ingalls. Floored that IPL’s CEO, Ann Murtlow, didn’t share his concerns that IPL was sending excessive cash to parent AES Corp. at the expense of electric-service reliability, the IPL vice president scheduled a meeting in mid-2003 at the Maryland home of AES CEO Paul Hanrahan. Hanrahan apparently didn’t see things Ingalls’ way. Within a year of the meeting, Murtlow terminated the 14-year AES employee. Now,…

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BULLS & BEARS: With real estate the rage, it’s time to swing to stocks

Stocks or real estate. Which one will “show you the money”? In my last column, I pointed out that-over two or three decades-an investment in stocks, with an average 10-percent return, should double in value every seven or so years. The big problem investors have is that the average 10 percent return is created by erratic and sporadic bursts and busts in stock prices. It’s nerve-racking. The bursts and busts really tax people’s emotions and drive some people away from…

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Watchdogs wishing for tough IURC: Consumer, biz groups hope Daniels picks commissioner who’ll say ‘no’ to utilities

Industrial and consumer interests say Gov. Mitch Daniels needs to fill a pending vacancy at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with a regulator “able to say no” to utility companies. The IURC has too often allowed utilities to pass on increased costs for fuel or purchased power, for example, through so-called tracking mechanisms rather than through traditional rate cases that take into consideration offsetting reductions in other costs, they complain. “It’s important to be able to say no to the…

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