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Decatur Township has 132 acres already zoned for such a thing. Bring some of that here.
Decatur Township already has the (expanding) Novartis nuclear medicine facility that produces Pluvicto (the radioligand prostate cancer treatment developed by Endocyte).
Our elected leadership continues to miss the mark on these types of investments telling a story that we just need more capital that goes to companies. The problem that we have run into over the last two decades is that we can’t start and grow companies without skilled labor, and our elected leaders have disinvested from education while choosing to repurpose those dollars for corporate handouts. Twenty years ago it was true that to find the capital to grow these types of companies people were forced to the coasts. Today this is no longer true, but the trade off between educating hoosiers and paying off companies has come home to roost as the skills required by Hoosiers to do cutting edge jobs are increasingly lacking.
+1
It also can’t be overstated how the poor quality of life and lack of freedoms that this state inflicts on us compared to other hubs of talent around the country utterly repels that talent and thus, major life sciences companies and startups will only add manufacturing jobs like we’ve seen recently. That may ultimately be the goal of the Republican supermajority though.
The Heartland BioWorks project, spearheaded by the Applied Research Institute (ARI) should address some of the training gaps…
Ryan and Michael +1
If jobs are created here it will attract talent. Creating talent though education is no guarantee that they will fill the jobs here while similar openings are available in places with mountains and oceans.
I am not anti education but creating more college graduates will not necessarily attract new employment.
Creating a better quality of life than is normal for Central Indiana will attract more well-paying jobs.
It’s a chicken and egg thing but Chris also highlights another critical issue. People do not want to relocate here. This state has been in a race to the bottom on pretty much every quality of life metric that you can be find besides being “business friendly.” If a new college grad has a choice to take a $150k job in Indy vs the same salary in the Research Triangle, Boston, San Diego, or any other life sciences hub, 9/10 times they’re going to choose the other option.
Eric H.
+ 1
Indy needs a better quality of life here
to attract talent and economic development.
Obviously with no mountains, hills, oceans, beaches, or even a major river, Indy needs to be creative!!
Two things come to mind immediately.
1) An entertainment district on the south end of downtown. The entertainment district could serve the ever growing IUPUI student population, the locals, and the out of town guests.
A great entertainment district could have a great impact on making Indy a fun vibrant place to live. Think Nashville and Austin.
2). Develop the White River State Park.
Also, develop a great arts district integrated into the entertainment district. Lights, street entertainers, public works of art etc…..
We should recruit the Simon group and other experts to help in the creative process.
Nashville and Austin are great examples of what is possible and the great economic impact.
Last, we gave the Irsays too much!!
The Capital Improvement Board does not get the revenue that it should.
Revenue that could be used to enhance a great and creative & vibrant downtown.
I talk to many graduate students on the IUPUI campus. To a person, they all want to leave Indianapolis. They want to live in creative vibrant neighborhoods with a great entertainment district that is close and walkable.
Even the out of towners here for special events and conventions want to leave.
Indy hosts many large events and conventions. But it’s not translating into anyone or corporations wanting to bring their operations here. None!
Keith, you hit at the heart of the problem … lack of visionary leadership. I first moved to Indy in 1983, just before the Colts moved here and the city, under the visionary leadership of Bill Hudnut and other civic movers and shakers, was being transformed in almost breathtaking ways (changes, to be fair, that started under Richard Lugar’s stewardship). They saw possibilities and acted boldly (building the Hoosier Dome without an NFL team is a prime example, stepping up to host the Pan Am Games is another, and don’t forget the bold decision to build Circle Center Mall).
But once Hudnut left, things began to change. Sure, Stephen Goldsmith saw Circle Center to fruition and convention business continued to expand, but vision has been less and less of a consideration under leaders from both parties. Maintaining what we have and modestly improving it has become the modus operandi of every mayor since then (hence my tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the state’s motto should be: Indiana: Good Enough).
Meanwhile, despite some inertia at the top, the city has maintained and improved its reputation for hosting truly ground-breaking sporting events (think Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, U.S. Olympic Swim Trials), evidence that the city is full of people thirsty for vision and ready to do the dirty work of making dreams come true in areas other than sports.
The material is present to make Indianapolis a truly world-class city, to take that next step. It’s time for Indy and its leaders to start thinking big … and for its citizens to demand more of their leaders. To not take no for an answer when the state reneges on plans to expand White River State Park, to demand that the General Assembly treat Indy fairly, to pressure the state and city to get off their butts and land an MLS team, to demand action on quality of life issues such as affordable child care, accountable and effective law enforcement, decent infrastructure, quality education for all, etc.
What worked in the past doesn’t necessarily work any more. And whereas Indy once was the model for other cities to follow, we now find ourselves looking up as success stories such as Austin and Nashville (Nashville!) pass us by in terms of amenities, quality of life and expanding/vertically growing skyline.
Is that all too pie-in-the-sky? Perhaps. But one can (and should) always dream. Even in Indiana.
Gosh, is everyone saying the US231 highway and dozens of data centers won’t attract jobs or highly skilled people?
—
It turns out that the most innovative segment of pharma is small biotech companies.
And it turns out that many of them are highly remote…which means that getting the skilled people comes first. Where the company office is located is a secondary concern.
I know a couple of people who successfully navigated the transition from Big Pharma Downtown to small (<100 people) drug development biotechs that later got bought out when their candidate drugs were successful in trials.
Your point about office location not mattering could be true except that the largest biotech hubs in the country are centered around where the talent is made, the Bay Area, the research triangle, and boston. What do those three regions have in common?
Bench researchers cannot be remote employees. Clinical development roles can more easily be made remote, but those are diminishing in number as return to office mandates get rolled out across the country, or are being outsourced to TPO’s or other countries
Mmm, I’d say the pharma and biotech hubs are places people want to live such as the Bay Area, San Diego, Boston, NYC region, Philly region, Research Triangle. There are also top-10 Ivy and Ivy-plus universities in those places (all but San Diego); people go there for college and stay because quality of life is good.
But there is the counterpoint: Lilly has attracted folks here and then turned out a large number of high-level alumni who can and do work remotely from the Indy metro for companies nominally headquartered in those other places and for CROs and CMOs supporting biotechs.
I agree that the lab/bench work of a biotech company is hands-on and has to be centralized, but all the other functions of a clinical-stage biotech (clinical development, trial management, regulatory compliance, medical affairs, finance, quality, scientific and manufacturing management, and executive leadership) constitute the majority of the staff and can and do work remotely for many biotechs.