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I’ve had quite a few odd things cross my desk recently, none of which require much attention individually, but taken together are worth a mention. They deserve some attention because at the heart of each is an idea-sometimes a great idea. The first is probably the greatest idea of the bunch, and it’s one of those things that cause me to ask myself why I didn’t think of it first. Last summer, a student in England named Alex Tew was…
Every buyer and seller of commercial property is familiar with Phase I environmental reports-the ubiquitous due-diligence requirement for commercial property transactions or financing. When they first began to be used, the work behind the reports-and often the reports themselves-varied greatly in thoroughness and completeness. With the advent of ASTM standards, more uniformity appeared, even if quality remained spotty. The front is about to change dramatically. Recent regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which take effect in November, have a…
Every day, the financial press and market pundits provide us with the reason for the previous day’s stock market activity. Following a down day, we might read an article headlined, “Investors sell stocks on fears of rising inflation.” Perhaps the next day the market rises and we see, “Stocks climb as investors see end to Fed interest rate increases.” What exactly happened overnight that caused this apparent shift in sentiment? Did investors sleep on it and the next morning collectively…
The incident drove home the importance of disaster planning. When the storm struck at 10 p.m. that Sunday, who was prepared for the emergency? Employees were told not to come in the next morning, but how would they do their jobs? What files could be retrieved? Would computer systems work on Monday and later that week? What would happen to incoming and outgoing telephone and e-mail messages? The questions and potential problems were endless. Each owner of a family business…
Even after all these years, my bride still sometimes forgets that there really are three sure things in life: death, taxes and the fact that television rules, especially in sports. As a guy who spent most of his life in the newspaper business, the increasing influence of television became an everlarger burr in my behind. Everything from the length of games (those four-hour-plus University of Notre Dame football games were especially excruciating) to deadlinecrunching late starting times to preferential treatment…
Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau released 2004 data showing that Indiana had 264,936 persons of Hispanic origin among its 6,058,930 population. That would mean 4.37 percent of Hoosiers, themselves or their ancestors, came from Mexico, Cuba, Columbia, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile and other Spanish-speaking nations. Don’t you just love that precision? 264,936 and 6,058,930 are merely estimates, not census counts. Anyone who has worked with numbers should be embarrassed to be more specific than 265,000 and 6,060,000. The…
In the past two weeks, central Indiana’s two fastest-growing high-tech companies have announced their sales to larger out-of-state firms. Local leaders are of two minds about it. On the one hand, there’s the enormous payday for investors. Massachusetts-based Hologic Inc. is buying Indianapolis-based medical-device maker Suros Surgical Systems Inc. for at least $240 million. And St. Louis-based TALX Corp. scooped up Carmelbased Internet testing firm Performance Assessment Network Inc. for $75 million. Optimists hope to see much of that money…
SMALL BUSINESS PROFILE WTH Firm mapping out its own success Owner shifts focus from old-school engineering to GIS Rex Jones wants to show off his company’s work, so the lights go down, a computer comes on and a map of Starke County appears on a screen. The map is a maze of green lines representing county and local roads, red for state/interstate highways, blue for water. Jones zooms in further, picking a random street in the rural county. Up pops…
Construction costs continue to rise in the wake of hurricanes, tornadoes, the war in Iraq, the building boom in China and general inflation. The trickle-down effect often lands at the feet of small business owners. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index, prices for materials and construction components increased 0.3 percent in February, following a 1-percent hike in January and continuing a threeyear upswing. The average building cost index has increased about 45 percent since 1995,…
Getting a good read on the Indiana economy is harder than you might think. That’s partly because there really is no such thing as the Indiana economy. State borders are, after all, purely legal contrivances that flows of dollars, workers and goods don’t worry much about. We’re a collection of regions, in actuality, some centered within our state’s borders and some not. But it is the public sector that does the scorekeeping on the economy, and it is public officials…
Instead of using her elementary education degree from Ohio State University to teach youngsters, Stephanie Boehm chose to teach managers as a corporate trainer for Olive Garden restaurants. She’s never regretted that decision. Boehm’s background and on-the-job training as manager of a local Outback Steakhouse led to her current career as owner of CR Heroes Family Pub in Fishers. Boehm moved to Indianapolis from Ohio in 1994, when her husband was transferred here. After spending time as a stayat-home mom,…
VIDE GAME with a message Local game designer Gabriel Entertainment mixes health education with virtual fun Few teen-agers would thrill at the prospect of an anti-smoking lecture. But if the same message were embedded in a video game, they might perk up and take notice. Indianapolis-based Gabriel Entertainment is counting on it. The company is just a few weeks away from completing the prototype of its new title, “Ocean Secret.” Aimed at pre-teen and teenage girls, the game is a…
The federally funded Central Indiana Commuter Services has finally won over a dozen workers to share a van to and from work-somewhat of a feat in a region where a vanpool might as well be a bathing option for a conversion van. Besides a vanpool program that runs between Cloverdale and Indianapolis, CICS recently signed on a handful of Fishers residents to share a seven-passenger van between the Hamilton County town and downtown Indianapolis. Lately, CICS has been trying to…
It’s the scenario entrepreneurs dream about. After just over five years in business, the founders of Carmel-based Performance Assessment Network Inc. have sold their company to a publicly traded St. Louis firm for $75 million in cash. Since PAN had only a handful of investors, its backers’ profits are enormous. What’s more, they can enjoy their payday with a clear conscience. Although PAN’s acquirer is headquartered outside state lines, TALX Corp. plans to keep growing the operation here. PAN’s executives…
The locally based Certified Electronics Designers & Installers Association recently selected Don Gilpin as its new executive director. Gilpin, 42, is an eightyear veteran of the trade group and had served as executive vice president. The Minnesota native and Franklin College graduate spoke with IBJ about his appointment and the issues facing the organization. IBJ: As executive director of CEDIA, what is your role? GILPIN: CEDIA has different departments within it, and they range from expo to marketing to legislative…
No wonder word leaked early this year that Union Federal Bank was about to be sold. A new federal filing reveals that a deal had been brewing since early last year-spawned largely by mounting frustration among investors that they were unable to turn their stake in the bank’s privately held parent, Fort Wayne-based Waterfield Mortgage Co., into cash. “The concerns over liquidity were voiced by many shareholders at Waterfield Mortgage’s annual shareholders’ meeting in the spring of 2004,” according to…
On the last day of the regular season, many professional teams schedule “fan appreciation” ceremonies. Judging by the numbers of empty seats in Conseco Fieldhouse, the Indiana Pacers might hold “fan depreciation” night April 19 when the regular season comes to a merciful conclusion. The paying customers, as is their wont, are voting with their feet. Time to spend their evenings at home, or outdoors, enjoying the benefits of daylight-saving time (blame it on Mitch!), rather than witnessing another dark…
As I left work April 10, I noticed a steady stream of cars pulling off Washington Street into the IBJ Corp. parking lot. The cars were full of Hispanics who had come downtown for the Big March. The sidewalks, too, held a steady flow of Hispanics heading east toward what turned out to be one of the largest public political rallies in city history. Most of the people I saw looked young-in their teens, 20s or 30s-and seemed to be…
All right, boys and girls, what are we to make of the survey that says worker morale in America is tanking? Harris Interactive conducted the survey for staffing agency Randstad and came up with figures showing only 40 percent of employees said morale at their workplace was good or excellent, down from 44 percent a year ago. This, of course, raises the question: How did it get so high to begin with? I see little good coming from this survey….
The microwave oven has been a staple in most American kitchens for so long that there is now a generation of young adults who’ve never lived without them. And for that same generation, the doughy, limp texture of foods like pizza quick-cooked in a microwave, in contrast to the crisped, browned texture produced over a longer time by conventional heat, is associated with the food, not the technology. If you’ve grown up eating from a microwave, that’s the way food’s…
