A local tech company that fell far short of its job-creation goal after reaching incentive agreements with the state and city two years ago is ready to try it again.
Indianapolis-based Fusion Alliance Inc. announced Tuesday morning that it plans to create up to 107 jobs by 2014 by investing
more than $2.2 million to lease and equip additional space at its northwest-side headquarters in Park 100. The Indiana Economic
Development Corp. is offering the company up to $1.5 million in performance-based tax credits based on the job-creation plans.
The city of Indianapolis will consider property-tax abatement at the request of Develop Indy.
The Web site and software developer currently has 175 employees in Indianapolis and 50 in Cincinnati.
However, the company said it had 190 local employees and 30 in Cincinnati in January 2008 when it said it would spend $2
million and create 110 local jobs by 2010. Based on those plans, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. said it would
offer the firm $250,000 in training grants and the city said it would offer property-tax abatement.
Fusion CEO Douglas Brown said Tuesday morning that the company actually only had 157 employees when it applied for the earlier
incentives. He acknowledged the company fell far short of its job-creation target, but did create 18 jobs.
Gov. Mitch Daniels and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard praised the new agreement in separate news releases issued Tuesday
morning, but state and city officials listed as contacts on those releases did not return several phone calls to explain the
new incentives.
IEDC spokeswoman Blair West on Tuesday afternoon said Fusion did not receive a tax abatement for its 2008 incentive package.
She said the company had been eligible to receive up to $200,000 in training grants, but ultimately received $70,267.
Founded in 1994, Fusion Alliance is the largest Indianapolis-area Web site and software developer in terms of employment,
according to IBJ research. The company also ranks fourth among area computer consulting firms.
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It's hard for me to understand how Fusion can take any credit for "creating" jobs.
They fulfill job requests.
Did anyone check Ch 13's (I have no affiliation with them) coverage of businesses which tried to scam the state, cities, etc.?
They covered these types of business stories, showing companies which were barren (except for the dirt and empty refuse barrels).
This: http://tinyurl.com/2fhrpzc
Which produced the results on the first pass.
Granted, that's not many hits, but I can tinker around a bit and see how many related or semi-related.
When a company says, "... with jobs...". Sometimes, they say, "... jobs in years..." In today's (particularly tech) world, a long period of time is less than half the time you can hold your breath.
I've never been a fan of this type of information used to do what? Instill some degree of stability (in the company) and see a dynamic environment because all of those people are going to have to do everything.
There's a major project underway - something on the order of $1B, but they're waiting for infrastructure services (traffic signals, water/sewer). Why is the city paying for this? Before there's any champaign popped in one hand and a gold shovel with the other.
Several? Many? Years ago, the Star had a long, yet thorough discussion about how Castleton came about.
What was obvious is businesses were expected to fill in these (see above) infrastructures and the companies would promise to do so within months/years. Guess what never happened? The same things a commercial entity is expecting to be handed over (today).
I could go on & on, but it would appear someone needs to put certain feet to the fire, even if it's a hardcopy series of questions & answers.
Party affiliation, some feel they know what's good for us - more than we know about ourselves. And they put together a series of laws & regulations to employ this power.