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Voracious demand for corn from ethanol plants springing up across Indiana and elsewhere in the Midwest is expected to swell this year the so-called Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico to a record 8,543 square miles-about the size of New Jersey. The zone at the end of the Mississippi River has little fish or […]
Not yet a believer in health savings accounts? Not to worry. The Indiana Department of Insurance is here to convert you. The insurance regulatory arm of Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration is staging a symposium Aug. 3 to educate employers on the benefits of health savings accounts. Employers are increasingly pairing the tax-favored accounts, stuffed with a couple thousand dollars for each employee, with high-deductible health insurance as a lower-cost alternative to health plans with co-pays. Most employers also pay for…
Five leaders of Indiana’s life sciences industry offered their perspectives at the Indiana Convention Center June 26 as part of the Indianapolis Business Journal’s Power Breakfast Series. The panelists: Mike Arpey, managing director of global investment bank Credit Suisse’s Asset Management Division and manager of the $73 million Indiana Future Fund for BioCrossroads, the state’s life sciences economicdevelopment initiative. Ron Ellis, co-founder, president and CEO of Lafayettebased Endocyte Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the treatment of cancer through receptor-targeted…
On July 16, I followed a caravan of about 200 motorcyclists from downtown to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As I climbed out of my car in the IMS parking lot, I heard AC-DC’s “Hell’s Bells” blasting through the loudspeakers. Just another reminder it’s not your father’s Speedway anymore. More to the point, it’s not Tony George’s grandfather’s Speedway anymore. Think about it. No sooner than George and his IMS team bid adieu to Formula One, they said hello to MotoGP,…
You people must drink coffee. And a lot of it. That’s the only reason I can find that Starbucks would open another store within a few hundred yards of two existing locations. And I am not talking about Manhattan, where 12 million people walk around on any given business day. This is happening in downtown Indianapolis, where midweek foot traffic might reach a few hundred thousand. Here is what I wrote about Starbucks in mid-February: “The near-term risk in Starbucks…
When a Butler University finance class starts investing in the stock market this fall, it won’t be Monopoly money that’s on
the line. In a three-year pilot program that is unique for a school of Butler’s size, a group of senior finance students will
use $1 million from the university’s endowment fund to invest.
One improvement BAA made in Indianapolis never got much attention: It tried to weed out patronage jobs. Former airport board member Gordon St. Angelo thought it was one of the most significant benefits of taking airport management out of municipal hands. “I think a major improvement was the streamlining of what had been a semi-patronage type of program,” St. Angelo said, referring to BAA’s eliminating some nonproductive employees and practices. Municipal agencies such as airports’ becoming dumping grounds for politicians’…
The influential U.S. News & World Report college rankings come out next month, a rite of summer that causes many college administrators to groan. Some administrators in Indiana and elsewhere, in fact, have grown so disenchanted with the survey-and see it as so flawed-that they have decided they’ll no longer participate in at least part of it after this year. Nearly 100 private schools nationwide-including DePauw University and Earlham College in Indiana-are pulling out of the peer-assessment portion of the…
Downtown’s anemic office market has shown signs of life over the last few months, but that doesn’t mean companies are taking more space and pushing occupancy rates higher. Credit goes to the government. State and local agencies absorbed roughly 175,000 square feet of office space during the second quarter of 2007, pushing the vacancy rate down to 15.9 percent, roughly a point lower than in the first quarter. The deals include 50,000 square feet for the Public Defender’s Office in…
Who asked for televisions to be installed in every restaurant in central Indiana? I’ve been to a lot of them, standing in lines, overhearing conversations with wait staff, chatting with the bartender, and never once, not a single time in my whole life, did any customer ever say anything like, “You know, what this joint really needs is a TV!” I can understand places where you’d expect to find TVs, and indeed where you go to watch TV on special…
After years of designing banks, churches and condo conversions, Prince/Alexander Architects Inc. is working
with unnamed partners on a plan to replace its headquarters with a $47 million, 24-story hotel and condo development called
West Merrill Tower.
This week, two contemporary art exhibitions and a lawn full of bluegrass. If you believe art is about teaching us new ways to see the objects in our lives, then Emily Kennerk succeeds in her first museum show, “SuburbanNation.” If you believe art is also about form and design and harmony, it’s still a winner. And if you like to catch artists on the brink of career breakthroughs, this show is a must-see. The title notwithstanding, Kennerk’s big, minimal and…
Good people, me included, have been making dumb statements about the property tax mess in Indiana. The problem is that we don’t know enough to talk or write intelligently on the topic. The result is that we can be led by our noses into an even worse mess. “Abolish the property tax!” some demand. Then what? Abolition of the property tax means raising some other taxes or fees, unless government spending on services decreases. The state has been urging counties…
In late April, the U.S. Supreme Court decided an important case-KSR International v. Teleflex Inc.-that addressed the test for determining whether a patent is obvious and therefore invalid. As is often the case, the court’s opinion set off considerable speculation about how broadly it should be interpreted: Does it establish a broad, general principle? Is it creating a trend that patents are more likely to be found obvious in the future? Or is its significance limited to the patent in…
Locally based Benicorp Insurance Co. stunned health benefits professionals this month by distributing a simple memo. The small provider of group health insurance and benefits administration services announced a moratorium on new business until the company resolved problems with a new claims-processing system. “It’s highly unusual,” said Sheri Alexander, manager of employee benefits at Gregory & Appel, an Indianapolis insurance brokerage. More than 180 complaints have been filed against Benicorp since Jan. 1, according to records at the Indiana Department…
The nightstand clock reads 5:17. Too early to wake up. But hey, I’ve been tossing and turning for hours, so why lie here any longer, pretending? The cause for this night’s insomnia is money. Money for two kids starting college. Money to replace the Money to paint the house. Money for employees’ salaries. Money for employees’ parking. Money for employees’ retirement. Money for employees’ health insurance. Money for their families’ health insurance. Money to get the yellow highway paint off…
A startup firm using Indiana University medical research to treat a fatal lung disease is raising money for clinical trials and has recruited a prominent life sciences veteran to lead the effort. Michael Klemsz, an associate professor at the IU School of Medicine, and Dr. David Wilkes, director of the school’s Center for Immunobiology, founded Immune Works LLC in January 2006 along with Ronald Meeusen. Meeusen, a former Dow-AgroSciences researcher and BioCrossroads executive, served as a part-time president and CEO…
At first thought, people might assume most attorneys have undergraduate degrees in political science or criminal justice. And while many do, those with backgrounds in engineering, chemistry, physics, and other sciences are being drawn more and more to law because of the growth of interest from businesses in intellectual property. Some IP attorneys decided to take the leap from working in the science world to the legal one, and those who did it say their time working in a lab…
Since mid-2005, Brugge Brasserie’s beer tanks have been operating at full capacity–pouring out 400 barrels of its signature
Belgian brew each year. Now the Broad Ripple gastro-pub is aiming higher. Brugge owner Ted Miller is set to start producing
a line of 10 bottled beers–plus seasonal specialties.
Indiana needs a trip to the doctor-and a stern lecture when we get there. We’re among the nation’s unhealthiest states. More than one of every four Hoosiers is obese, and we rank among the 10 worst states for smoking and high cholesterol. The outcomes should come put more stress on the system and drive up prices and premiums for everyone. Gov. Daniels has signed a progressive bill that provides affordable health insurance with a medical savings account plan to Hoosiers…
