The county has some of the most affluent, highly connected cities in Indiana. It also has rural areas that lack widespread access to reliable high-speed internet.
Portia Bailey-Bernard of the Indy Chamber says projects like the $60 million redevelopment of the Stutz business campus and the expansion of IU Health’s downtown campus will help reshape the northern portion of downtown.
The pickup in hiring lowered the unemployment rate from 6.3% to 6.2%, the Labor Department said Friday in its monthly jobs report. That is down dramatically from the 14.8% jobless rate of April of last year, just after the virus erupted in the United States.
Four decades ago, “it felt like tumbleweeds rolled down Washington Street.” But aggressive moves to build the city skyline, develop hotels and create more places to live led to a transformation of downtown.
Indiana’s property tax caps raise the stakes. Increasing property tax rates to make up revenue can simply push more properties to their caps. Because of this, Indiana’s urban counties are already prone to cycles of rate hikes, cap losses and growing financial distress.
The project, which includes plans for a $125 million expansion of the Indiana Convention Center, would also create 2,500 construction jobs before completion in 2025.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said the city is continuing to work with Indianapolis-based Kite Realty Group Trust—which is developing the project—to finalize a reworked timeline.
Project negotiations on the massive two-hotel and convention center expansion project were temporarily sidelined in March to allow the city time to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Several developments in recent days have been thrust into holding patterns, as banks and financial institutions have stopped approving new construction loans for hotels and other projects amid the economic plunge from COVID-19.
The hospital system’s 45-year-old campus will likely need hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades in coming years to keep it competitive long term.
If all of the plans move forward, downtown would see an unprecedented deluge of new rooms. But developers and lenders are fretting over whether the market can support them.
In the last decade, the wind industry in Indiana has boomed, driven largely by falling costs and rising demand by large customers and utilities for renewable energy.
A powerful group of hoteliers that opposes a proposal to build a pair of hotels on Pan Am Plaza scored a victory in the Legislature. But the plan to construct the project remains very much alive.
The vote came on the eve of a CIB board meeting, during which members will consider a 25-year deal with the Indiana Pacers that is meant to keep the team in Indianapolis well into the future.
State lawmakers on Monday significantly amended legislation designed to provide long-term funding mechanisms to the Capital Improvement Board, keep the Indiana Pacers in the city for at least another 25 years and support building a permanent soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven.
The Indiana Senate passed legislation Tuesday morning that would boost funding for Indianapolis’ Capital Improvement Board, keep the Indiana Pacers in town for at least another 25 years and provide support for a dedicated soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven.
