The Indianapolis Airport Authority has tapped Mansur Real Estate Services Inc. to develop a $50 million-plus Westin hotel
at the new midfield terminal. But the hotel’s final design may be one submitted by a former competitor, White Lodging Corp.
of South Bend.
I have always been a big believer in education. It’s something I got from my parents. They told me that, since I wasn’t born into money and had no athletic ability, I better get a good education if I wanted to improve my chances of being successful in life. I’ve been very fortunate that the teachers I’ve had over the years, from my public grade and high schools in Chicago to graduate school to law school, have been awesome. In…
Sure, it’s a budget session, and one would expect fiscal talk to dominate the discussion. But the one thing that has surprised us so far this year-and we are literally at the midpoint-is just how much the dollar debate has consumed this Legislature. Through the first few weeks of the session, the big sport was picking the over/under on when the relationship between Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) and House Speaker Pat Bauer (DSouth Bend)-and thus between Republicans and Democrats as…
After our Valentine’s Day wedding, my bride and I took a few days off for a brief New York City honeymoon. We walked nearly everywhere, used public transportation when we wanted to go farther and bought our food and drink in jam-packed, smoke-free restaurants and bars (the only kind there are in New York, thanks to a several-years-old, levelthe-playing-field, smoke-free workplace law). I liked being able to dine anywhere and everywhere with clean indoor air. I liked the exercise from…
Metropolitan Indianapolis Public Broadcasting Inc. will invest $20.1 million to move its WFYI Teleplex up the street into the former Indiana Energy headquarters, a shift that will give the notfor-profit room to grow and breathe new life into an enormous building that’s been nearly vacant since 2000. The broadcaster will pay $8.5 million for the four-story, 94,000-square-foot building at 1630 N. Meridian St., and spend $11.6 million on renovations and equipment. Funding will come from a hodgepodge of sources, including…
Indianapolis not-for-profits are growing as more universities embrace service learning–an educational approach that encourages
students to incorporate academics into community service.
MICKEY MAURER Commentary A plug for non-partisan policy making In my final week as secretary of commerce, I appeared at a hearing before the State Budget Committee on behalf of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The hearing was the first step in the reauthorization process for operating budget and incentive program funding for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. It was to be my final presentation at the Statehouse. In an effort to demonstrate that the Legislature was reaping a handsome…
After 30 years in the forensic-engineering business, Wolf Technical Services Inc. has analyzed everything from deadly car crashes to patent infringement. Now, Indianapolis-based Wolf is hoping to diversify into a new area: federal defense contracting. It’s a field local corporate leaders hope Indiana will tap much more frequently in the years to come. “We don’t quite know at the moment where this could lead,” said Wolf Director of Client Relations Joseph Ward. “And that’s the fun part.” The 30-employee Wolf’s…
Brace yourself for lots of action in the next two weeks, as the deadlines approach for bills originating in the House to be passed to the Senate, and vice versa. While this is a long session of the General Assembly and one might assume this would lead to more deliberative contemplation, the extra days do not seem to make much difference as deadlines approach. Some of the larger issues that require more massaging and compromise tend not to be drafted…
A federal law that took effect Jan. 1 requires hospitals and others serving the Medicaid population to teach their employees how to detect fraud and report it to the government. Medicaid is the joint federal-state program that provides health insurance coverage to the needy and is prone to abuse. In an effort to reduce abuse, the legislation requires companies that do at least $5 million annually in Medicaid business to educate all employees and officers on how to spot fraud….
Leaders of the 20-year-old Arts Council of Indianapolis want to broaden the organization’s approach to arts advocacy. They
say they’d like to act as a cultural broker of sorts, making sure local artists are connected with possible patrons.
If you find yourself in need of advanced medical care, the Indianapolis area represents one of the best places to live. Superb resources at the nationally ranked Indiana University Hospital, St. Vincent, the Riley Hospital for Children and a whole host of other Indianapolis based medical facilities will effectively meet the challenge of providing worldclass health services. But if you live or work outside the capital city, securing life-saving services may be a different matter. The last national census disclosed…
Indiana recyclers concerned that waste-burning firms could gain status as recyclers–and vie for state grants and loans they’ve
relied on for years–now have a potential competitor on the radar.
After the Indianapolis Colts beat the New England Patriots to win a trip to Super Bowl XLI, my fiancée and I jumped up and down in the living room and pumped our fists in the air. The cat, who was scared out of his wits, escaped up the stairs. After a celebratory phone call from my son Zach in Fort Wayne, we threw on our coats and jogged the six blocks from our downtown home to the RCA Dome, where…
Last year was a record-shattering period for the Indianapolis-area merger and acquisition market, thanks in large part to the loss of one public corporation. Guidant Corp.’s acquisition by Boston Scientific Corp. for $28.4 billion last year and the related sale of its vascular business to Abbott Laboratories for $4.1 billion made the 2006 Big Deals list bigger than ever. That’s because the two deals made up about 85 percent of the $38.5 billion of M&A activity tracked down by the…
Folks I talked to, Democrats and Republicans, liked the governor’s State of the State speech. The fault they found was that the speech was scheduled opposite the Indiana University basketball game with Iowa. Isn’t that an impeachable offense in Indiana? The part of the speech that intrigued me most was the idea about leasing the rights to the lottery to get money to establish scholarships and endowed chairs at our universities. The idea is to slow or reverse the brain…
Five years ago, when the BioCrossroads initiative debuted, pundits compared its challenge to a foot race on a track crowded with competitors. And they noted a handful of traditional biotech hub cities like San Diego or Boston enjoyed a huge head start. Today, a better analogy might be a rising tide that lifts all boats. “The pie is getting bigger. It’s not a zero-sum game,” said Walt Plosila, vice president and leader of the technology partnership practice for Columbus, Ohio-based…
A quiet gentleman died last week. It did not make the headlines. Ken Miller never did make headlines, but he was part of your life and the lives of all Hoosiers for many years. If you thought of him at all, it was as taking your money, yet all that time Ken was carefully saving you money and modernizing state government. For 14 years, Ken was Indiana’s commissioner of revenue. It was to his office that you sent your income-tax…
After saluting the accomplishments of the past year, Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels reached across the aisle during his State of the State Address Jan. 16 and assured Democrats that he can’t make further progress without their cooperation. Once again, the governor found himself competing for the TV audience of Hoosiers at home. In what seems to be a given of sorts, the Indiana University men’s basketball team was playing during the speech, taking on Hoosier hero Steve Alford’s University of…
Hours before the underdog Florida Gators were crowned college football champions, Joseph Garlich wore a blue shirt to support the team as it prepared to upset the Ohio State University Buckeyes. Garlich, who spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Florida’s School of Pharmacy, is equally optimistic his biotech firm is on the verge of achieving a milestone of its own. The northwest-side Semafore Pharmaceuticals Inc. should launch within a few weeks human trials of its…
