UPDATE (Feb. 22): Owners of Champ Car and the Indy Racing League completed an agreement in principle today that will unify the sport for 2008, said a statement released at 4:40 p.m. by the Indy Racing League. Several Champ Car…
The Service Employees International Union, which has organized janitors in Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, and now Indianapolis, begins negotiations today on behalf of 1,500 local janitors after years of contentious organizing efforts. Companies participating in the Indianapolis negotiations are ABM Industries Inc. of San Francisco; Group Services France of Paris; Mitch Murch’s Maintenance Management Co. of […]
CBS Sports this morning is reporting that Indiana University men’s basketball players are threatening to boycott the remainder of the season if coach Kelvin Sampson is forced out. Quoting unidentified sources, CBS Sports reported that players and IU Athletic Director…
The Indianapolis Airport Authority board this month approved spending up to $8.8 million to help fund construction of a hotel connected to the midfield terminal set to debut Oct. 28. But delays in finalizing a deal with developer Mansur Real Estate Services means the $50-million-plus Westin will not be ready for guests until August 2009 at the earliest. The airport board picked Indianapolis-based Mansur to build the hotel nearly a year ago. “We’re still talking about what it’s going to…
So much news, so little space. Over the last two weeks, there was that evolving situation involving the IU basketball coach. The Hoosiers, Butler, Purdue and Notre Dame made Indiana the only state with four teams ranked in the nation’s top 25. Butler climbed to No. 8, its highest ranking ever, and Purdue took the Big Ten lead under Matt Painter, at this point the odds-on choice for national coach of the year. My buddy and former colleague, Robin Miller,…
Based on 50 conversations IU Foundation President Curt Simic had with donors the week after news broke of the potential firing
of men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson over alleged NCAA improprieties, the chief of Indiana University’s philanthropic
arm says he has little fear the latest athletic department controversy will affect financial support to the school.
Once reeling from the loss of its largest tenant, National City Center now has a rising occupancy rate amid a major renovation that is resuscitating the aging office building. Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group Inc. vacated 182,000 square feet in National City Center by moving to its new headquarters a block away in the fall of 2006. The departure left the 16-story tower at the southwest corner of Washington and Illinois streets 28-percent unoccupied after years of being nearly full. Owner…
The debt strategy Gov. Mitch Daniels’ top financial officials developed to save the state money on major projects like
Lucas Oil Stadium has turned sour.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to know more about how Eli Lilly and Co. and WellPoint Inc. decide how to pay their top executives. The two Indianapolis companies exchanged letters last fall with the SEC. The federal agency requested more information about executive compensation from 350 of the nation’s largest public companies. The correspondence led Lilly to include more detailed information in a preliminary version of its proxy statement that it filed Feb. 6. WellPoint officials have promised…
Last week, my wife Cherà and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a trip to Turks and Caicos. We walked for miles along the white sand beaches of Grace Bay, snuggled in a hammock at sunset, slathered on sunblock and, between us, polished off 10 books at poolside. By midweek, we’d finally chilled from the tension of the daily grind. Unfortunately, about that time, the anticipatory anxiety of returning home set in. “I don’t wanna go back,” was our…
If the introduction of modern streetcars to one West Coast city can be replicated here, Indianapolis would see new, higher-density
housing and related retail and restaurants shadowing the line. Fallow areas crossed by the tracks would become fertile for
new investment. At least that was the case in Portland, Ore., a city mesmerizing to Indianapolis civic leaders, who last month
formed Downtown Indianapolis Streetcar Corp. They risk being run out of town on a rail: a streetcar line will cost…
The local stop on the ATP Tour now will be known as The Indianapolis Tennis Championships Presented By Lilly. Eli Lilly-which will use the tournament to promote specific drugs such as Humalog…
Deadlines for a weekly publication are tricky. Sometimes when news breaks, you get lucky. Sometimes, you don’t. In this case, forgive me if I’m a little late to the parade and-following the elephants with broom and shovel-to the sorry mess involving the men’s basketball program at my alma mater, Indiana University. So, to sum up, this is what bothers me most: Everything. And who’s to blame? Everyone. It’s the culture. It’s the media. It’s gross mismanagement. It’s poor hiring. It’s…
Endowments at Indiana colleges and universities are soaring, due in part to impressive investment returns in recent years.
The swelling coffers here and across the nation are stoking the debate over whether universities should be using more of their
wealth to hold down tuition increases.
Several local entities, ranging from St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital to the state of Indiana to Indianapolis Public Schools, last year experienced wellpublicized electronic security breaches involving confidential data. While the victims of the lapses and those at fault emerged relatively unscathed, such incidents underscore the ease in which personal information can be lost or stolen in today’s computerized world. With roughly 165 million people tapping into to the Internet nationally, the opportunities for security breaches are plentiful. Throw in the…
How do you go from fighting world hunger to polishing the tarnished image of an NBA basketball team? That’s the task at hand for Jim Morris, who said to a recent breakfast gathering, “I reached a point in my life when I realized that nothing I would do going forward would be as important as what I just did.” I suppose a number of us reach a similar place in our careers when we realize we have “hit the peak”…
Indiana weather is notorious for the volatile swings it can produce from one day to the next. Just this month, high temperatures in Indianapolis fluctuated about 40 degrees within 48 hours. The disparity in major storm damage that befell the state the past two years is quite unusual, though, even by Hoosier standards. Statewide property losses totaled $1.5 billion in 2006, the most in the nation, due in large part to what’s become known as the Good Friday hailstorm. Last…
For me, the weekend meant visiting the new Children’s Theatre Institute on North Keystone, screening more films in advance of the Indianapolis International Film Festival (early predication: “Operation Filmmaker” will be a fest favorite), and trying my hand at paper…
Recently released data shows NASCAR’s Daytona 500 is still miles ahead of the Indianapolis 500 in terms of value the race delivers to sponsors. But, with the unification of the Indy Racing League…
A couple of topics to discuss:
More praise for Trail
In its March newsletter, New York-based Project for Public Spaces named Indianapolis one of five “Great Cities” thanks to the…
