Arcadia Resources HQ lured to city by central location:

Arcadia Resources Inc. CEO Marvin Richardson, an Anderson native and Purdue University pharmacy graduate, said Indianapolis was chosen for the company’s new headquarters because the city’s central location will create an advantage when it launches a new drug-packaging system.

The system, called DailyMed, will help patients manage their prescription pills. The company plans to open a distribution center for DailyMed in the near future that eventually could employ 300 or more.

Arcadia will move from the Detroit suburb of Southfield. Counting the headquarters positions, the number of jobs being created in Indianapolis will exceed 400, according to Indiana Economic Development Corp.

“I’ve been gone seven years. I’m very impressed coming back to see what’s being done in the area of life science and the pro-business environment being created by the city and the state,” Richardson said in an interview. “As a longtime Hoosier, it feels good to see.”

Arcadia will invest more than $3 million in the relocation, and receive up to $6 million in state Economic Development for a Growing Economy, or EDGE, tax credits, plus up to $135,000 in training grants and a property tax abatement from the city.

Indiana Secretary of Commerce Nathan Feltman said in an interview that the attraction of Arcadia’s corporate headquarters is a “huge” life science opportunity for Indiana. Other states including Minnesota were in the running for the deal.

“They’re going through reorganization and consolidating to Indiana,” Feltman said of Arcadia. “It’s frankly just a fantastic opportunity. We don’t land publicly traded companies every day.”

Arcadia’s primary business is the placement of nurses and other medical professionals in homes to assist with seniors’ health care. It also sells durable medical products, such as wheelchairs, walkers and oxygen equipment.

Arcadia, whose medical staffing force boasts about 13,000 nurses and technicians, will bring about 40 jobs immediately along with its headquarters, which will be located at 96th Street and Keystone Avenue.

Arcadia already has operations in Evansville, Crown Point and Rossville.

Traded on the AMEX stock exchange under the symbol KAD, Arcadia has a $100 million market cap.

For its most recent fiscal year, ended March 31, the company reported revenue of $158.4 million, but took a loss of $43.8 million. In its next quarter, ended June 30 and the most recently reported, Arcadia lost $7.4 million on $42.4 million in revenue.

Richardson took over the company this spring after it merged with his former firm, Minneapolis-based PrairieStone Pharmacy LLC.

He said Arcadia’s recent large financial losses have been primarily due to the company’s problems with Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, which stemmed from improper billings of sales from its durable-medical-products business. He said those problems have been corrected.