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I received the best golf lesson of my life recently, and it didn’t cost a dime. My instructor didn’t work on my grip, my stance or my posture at address. He didn’t tell me to keep my head down, my left arm straight or to turn my hips toward the target. We didn’t talk about fluffy, plugged or tight lies. We didn’t talk about reading putts or reading divots. We didn’t work on driving, long irons, short irons, wedge play…
The Indiana University Athletic Department is intent on reaping financial rewards from its football program for the first time in more than a decade with a marketing campaign built around its affable new coach, Terry Hoeppner. IU officials said they will spend nearly as much on marketing the school’s football program this year as on Hoeppner’s $250,000 base salary. Bolstering football attendance is a critical step toward stopping financial hemorrhaging in the school’s Athletic Department, IU officials said. In 2004,…
Ambassadair Travel Club Inc. has lost about 20 percent of its members since parent ATA Holdings Corp. filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last October, a trend its president hopes to reverse after ATA sells the long-profitable club as early as next month. “After all the unfortunate attention surrounding ATA, we expected a modest decline in membership for a temporary time and look forward to obtaining new members once we make an a n n o u n c e m e…
Three veterans of state government have pooled their years of management experience to launch the women-owned business consultancy Engaging Solutions LLC. Led by Venita Moore and Debra Simmons Wilson, the company set up shop in the Indiana Black Expo building on North Meridian Street this spring to provide fiscal management, strategic planning, outreach, training and economic development services. They and part-time principal Tammy Butler Robinson say the firm’s focus on serving government agencies, not-forprofits and faith-based organizations fits their backgrounds….
A while back, I proudly completed David McCullough’s 736-page “John Adams,” one of the longest books I’ve read, but well worth the effort. Then I moved on to his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson’s much-lessdaunting “Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children,” a collection of missives by the likes of Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Woody Guthrie, W.E.B. Du Bois and John D. Rockefeller Jr. In the preface, Lawson writes of her decision to exclude from the book any correspondence…
Got an invitation in the mail. It was addressed to “Bruce Hetrick and Guest.” The invitation was from a client. It said my guest and I could join him at an upcoming Marsh Symphony on the Prairie performance. I could choose between a pops concert called “The Golden Age of Black and White,” a Mozart classical concert or “Big Band Night.” My guest likes to dance. So I chose “Big Band Night.” The concert was Friday night. Thousands of people…
If Ritter’s Frozen Custard goes on to prosper, the behindthe-scenes retooling the Carmel-based chain received over the past year will make a revealing case study for MBA students. IBJ in September 2004 reported the Ritter family had reacquired control of RFC Franchising LLC and installed Bob Ritter, son of retired founder John Ritter, to replace Saul Lemke as CEO. Franchisees in the chain, which has 62 stores in eight states, were glad to see Lemke go. Their view: During his…
Attorney Irwin Levin stood in a courtroom years ago for a pretrial conference when a colleague began to ridicule a rival firm’s slogan. Overhearing the diatribe, the judge asked Levin whether his law office had a mantra. Without hesitation, he quipped: “We’re going to kick your ass.” The room erupted in laughter. While Levin, 51, might have answered in jest, the managing partner of Cohen & Malad LLP indeed has built a national reputation for bloodying the noses of large…
Have you seen the latest opinion polls on the Bush administration? At a time when the U.S. economy is growing faster than that of any other industrialized nation, when unemployment rates are down and consumer spending is up, less than half of us think the president is doing a good job handling the economy. There’s plenty to find fault in our economic performance, of course. We still have a massive trade imbalance with the rest of the world. The federal…
Wanted: director of a major fine-art museum in the midst of a campaign to reposition itself in its market. Significant expansion recently completed, more to come. The ideal applicant will be part CEO, part art expert, part fund-raiser. That could be the ad placed by the Indianapolis Museum of Art for a new director. Unfortunately for IMA, it could also be an ad placed by at least 14 other art museums nationwide. With a $74 million expansion recently opened, IMA…
Adidas’ $3.8 billion purchase of Reebok International will help the companies open more stores and compete against Nike Inc. for leadership in China, the world’s fastestgrowing athletic gear market. “We are growing faster in China than Nike and together with Reebok we are bigger,” Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer said. “We can offer our full organization in China to help Reebok build stores.” Germany-based Adidas and Massachusetts-based Reebok announced their merger in early August. The companies haven’t disclosed what the pairing…
Investors in the financial stocks arena are probably nervous that the record string of Federal Reserve interest rate increases will hurt bank earnings. I fall in the d o n ‘t – fi g h t – t h e – trend camp, but there are some interesting situations surfacing. If you are strictly a value investor and I threw this on your plate, you’d be running to buy the stock. A company consistently growing earnings at 12 percent a…
A schoolyard brawl is beginning to brew over whether districts are cutting summers short and sending students back to class too soon. For most school districts, the era of starting school after Labor Day went the way of the typewriter in the 1980s. But some Indiana lawmakers and tourism advocates are beginning to clamor for a state academic calendar that would turn the clock back on early start dates. That’s because many school districts in Indiana resumed classes in mid-August….
Any small-business incubator can offer tenants Internet service, fax machines and conference rooms. But what about the convenience of on-site oil changes or the stress relief of a pinball machine? For Scott Meyers, new owner of the revamped Indianapolis Enterprise Center, the extra incentives are just a small part of his overall plan to make the neareast-side facility more attractive to fledgling entrepreneurs. Meyers, 36, bought the former A&P grocery warehouse in May. He declined to disclose the purchase price…
Business owners are beginning to show signs of completely emerging from a recessional slumber, although some holdouts remain unconvinced an economic recovery is in full swing. The confidence exuded by the state’s massive manufacturing sector could be sending the most optimistic signal. From 2000 to 2003, manufacturers in Indiana were stung especially hard by the soft economy, shedding 75,000 jobs. While many of those positions may never return, employment levels have at least stabilized. That seems to have provided enough…
There are dates on the calendar that make some of us tremble. The Ides of March was a bad one, as I recall, for a certain Roman emperor long ago. Stock market traders know and fear those triplewitching days when futures and options contracts expire. But for those of us who track the regional economies around the state, it’s really a whole month that makes us sweat. It’s the month of July, thanks to the screwy data we receive for…
The Public Employees’ Retirement Fund, Indiana’s largest pension system, is preparing to unleash half a billion dollars into venture capital, real estate and other privateequity investments. And the fund’s managers aim to put the bulk of it to work inside state lines. Hoosier venture capitalists are salivating at the prospect. T h a t ‘s t h e equivalent of nearly seven BioCrossroads Indiana Future Funds. “If there are excellent opportunities to invest in Indiana, we ought to be looking…
A joint venture between a local hotel operator and the owner of three downtown apartment buildings is bringing an extended-stay hotel to the west side of White River near IUPUI. Bloomington-based Pinnacle Asset Management and Indianapolis-based Dora Brothers Hospitality Corp. purchased Riverpointe Apartments in June. The partnership plans to convert the north tower of the two-building complex into a 143-room Candlewood Suites, said Dora President Timothy Dora. The south tower will remain apartments, but will be extensively renovated, said Pinnacle…
One of Marcus Ballance’s cousins is in prison for shooting another man. Another was recently shot after serving a prison term of his own. Ballance, a 12-year-old who attends Margaret McFarland Middle School, lives with his mom, her boyfriend and a baby sister on the city’s east side. He’s been exposed to crime and drugs his entire life. Some would say that means Ballance has a good chance of ending up either a victim of homicide or in prison. But…
Sources close to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway say management is working on plans for a convention-level hotel on a 16-acre lot just south of the track’s 16th Street entrance. Under consideration is a multilevel hotel connected to the track via a skywalk and a new set of track-side suites and condos near turn two where the Brickyard Crossing Inn sits. The inn would be torn down to make room for the suites and condos, which will better complement the new…
