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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIt hasn’t been easy to discern precisely what Gov. Mike Braun’s administration is doing related to economic development. The governor has talked mostly in broad strokes. He wants to encourage entrepreneurship and sees building and expanding existing Indiana businesses as the key to economic growth.
Braun said before taking office that he didn’t plan to spend much time on trade missions as governor—that he’d travel overseas “when it’s essential.” Upon taking office, he launched an audit of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and its affiliated organizations that has an unknown release date. And the administration is in some kind of dispute it won’t explain with Elevate Ventures, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit with which the state has partnered for years to invest in startups. That move has left us unclear about how the administration plans to proceed—if at all—in the area of venture funding.
For those reasons, it has been hard for IBJ to write much in this space about the state’s economic development efforts. We’re still waiting to learn more.
But we would like to applaud the administration’s decision—announced this week—to sell its part of the former GM stamping plant site for $27 million to Elanco Animal Health, which is close to opening a new headquarters building on another section of the site on the west side of downtown, just across the White River.
In a news release, the governor said the sale “enables Elanco and its partners, including Purdue University, to accelerate the creation of an innovation district in downtown Indianapolis.” And Braun said the state would remain a partner in the project, which has been dubbed the OneHealth Innovation District.
We think that’s smart.
Government doesn’t always move as quickly as the business community—and Elanco and Purdue have a vision for the kind of campus they want to develop. It’s not clear that, under Braun, the IEDC would be a landlord that could or would be willing to enact that vision.
So we’re pleased that the state is giving Elanco and Purdue more control over what happens next in a project that was initially announced last year with Gov. Eric Holcomb’s IEDC as a partner.
The vision is to develop a research and innovation hub for human, animal and plant health sciences with Elanco’s $200 million HQ campus—which encompasses 12 acres—as its anchor. Elanco CEO Jeff Simmons told IBJ last year that the district’s big-picture goal is to develop commercial ideas and products that improve the lives of pets, people and the environment. To achieve that, the OneHealth campus is expected to provide startups with funding, labs, university researchers and tech development space.
Simmons said in a statement this week that the “state’s willingness to work with us—not as a landowner but as a partner—makes” the vision possible.
“Securing this property now gives us the certainty we need to integrate it into our headquarters campus and move forward with speed,” he said. “That means jobs, investment, and an accelerated path to creating an innovation district dedicated One Health.”
We are excited about the vision and see the land sale as a step forward.•
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