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Pumping out healthy profits: Stand-alone heart hospitals now bustling, earning millions after overcoming slow starts

Business heated up so fast for The Heart Center of Indiana last winter that it averaged 103-percent occupancy for an entire month. That meant the Carmel hospital often had to hold patients in an emergency room or short-stay location until space opened for them, Heart Center CEO John Stewart said. “We literally, multiple times, had to refuse [patient] transfers,” said Stewart, whose hospital is spending $4 million to add 20 beds that should be ready for patients next month. After…

Coastal is in the name, central Indiana is its game: California-based firm cultivating its local operations

Despite its name, Coastal Partners LLC is firmly entrenched in the heartland. Most of its current projects are in central Indiana, as are about half its employees. In August, the Sacramento-based firm hired Tom Ott to oversee its central Indiana operations and new development. Ott, a respected 10-year veteran of the local office of Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis, plans to continue his relationships in the local brokerage community to further Coastal Partners’ presence in the area. Although the name…

South-side exit finally sparking development: Wal-Mart might by key to I-65/County Line interchange meeting expectations

An interchange linking Interstate 65 and County Line Road completed six years ago is finally helping attract large commercial development to a busy Johnson County corridor. While Greenwood city officials are pleased by the amount of activity occurring there, they question why it took so long. “We thought it would take off much sooner than it did,” said Ed Ferguson, Greenwood’s director of planning, zoning and economic development. “We still have several hundred acres available in what we call the…

VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: More than ever, developers give back to communities

As cities and towns work to attract businesses and residents that will make a positive impact on their tax bases and improve the quality of life in their communities, plan commissions, city and town councils and other governmental entities aren’t looking at land use the way they did a decade ago. Now, when a developer files for a rezoning, government officials look for ways that rezoning can improve a community’s standard of living and economic outlook. They evaluate how proposed…

Free market is best hope for health care:

Clearly, the U.S. health care system has its share of problems. Costs are rising rapidly, some 45 million Americans are without health insurance, and both doctors and patients decry their loss of options and control. But, would a government-run health care system be any better? Single-payer health care systems have been proposed in a handful of states as the solution to the problem of access for the uninsured. While single-payer plans can offer all citizens some type of health insurance…

Apartment industry embracing Ball State graduates: Program makes property management a career goal

During the 1990s, a booming Indianapolis apartment market was becoming increasingly competitive. About 10,000 units were added to the market in the second half of the decade and professional, well-educated managers to run them were in short supply. Enter the Apartment Association of Indiana, which figured the best way to find the professionals apartment owners needed was to grow their own, so to speak, by creating a post-secondary education degree program for the industry. At that time, Virginia Tech was…

Web service hungry for business: 46 local restaurants sign up for online takeout ordering

When pharmaceutical rep Andy Knopfmeier needed lunch for a 29-person obstetrics office he was calling on recently, he made it happen without picking up a phone or idling in a drivethrough lane. Instead, Knopfmeier-who provides lunch to doctors as a way to get in the door-went online two days before the meeting and ordered sandwiches, chicken nuggets and waffle fries from a Noblesville Chick-Fil-A. He prepaid the bill with a credit card and entered instructions on when he’d pick up…

Women gain place at table: Increase in WBE firms seen at airport

At $1.66 billion, the 1.2-millionsquare-foot midfield terminal project, scheduled to open in late 2008, is more than the future gateway to the city. It is a gateway of opportunity for many local women-owned business enterprises (WBEs). The Indianapolis Airport Authority’s commitment to increasing participation of women-owned businesses is more than lip service. “Over half of the users of our airport are women,” said Lacy M. Johnson, president of the IAA board of directors and champion for women-owned and minority businesses….

Bye-bye blight?: Developers grabbing parcels east of Circle Centre mall

Several groups are floating plans and crunching numbers for downtown hotel or condo projects east of Circle Centre mall, an area that has been largely passed over for new developments in recent years. One of the more imminent projects is a large mixed-use development for the quarter-block at Maryland and Pennsylvania streets, now occupied by surface parking lots and a 9,000-squarefoot office building. A group that includes local developer J. Greg Allen has four separate parcels at the corner under…

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Economy likely to purr on despite hurricane mayhem

Did your company miss its earnings targets last period? Or did your household spend a little too much on your last vacation? Or maybe you’ve just added a few extra pounds on your waistline recently. Then you should do what just about everyone else is doing-blame it on Katrina. It seems as if every disappointing result in the economy is being blamed on the big storms that have rolled in from the Gulf of Mexico in the last six weeks….

SPORTS: Hoop paths of Indiana and Lithuania finally cross

In the small republic by the Baltic Sea-population 3.4 million-many youngsters grow up dreaming the same kinds of hoop dreams young Hoosiers do. “Basketball in Lithuania is even crazier,” Jasikevicius, a 6-foot-4-inch guard, said recently at Conseco Fieldhouse, moments after finishing his first official practice as a Pacer. “We always call it our second religion.” During the 50 years Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union, players from the republic were the nucleus of the USSR national teams. It was…

Pacers’ new game plan: polish team persona: NBA squads must comply with tough conduct rules

Almost a year removed from the infamous brawl in Detroit, the Indiana Pacers are ready to put their best foot forward. And they’re getting a hand-or more like a foot in the backside-from NBA Commissioner David Stern. Stern on Sept. 28 handed down new league dress code and conduct rules aimed at brightening the image of players and making them more accessible to fans, community groups and media outlets. The rules-which require players to wear sport coats, collared shirts and…

VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: Bubble won’t burst on commercial real estate investors

Winding down his remarkable tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan seems to have chosen “real estate bubble” as one of the themes of his swan song. And with housing prices in some cities soaring, the rest of us as mere mortals can reasonably wonder how long it will be before the bubble bursts and what will be the fallout if and when that happens. Many private equity investors with holdings in commercial real estate are beginning to…

Born again: Old churches gain new life as commercial space

God may be eternal, but His houses aren’t. Congregations expand, move or fade away. When they leave a house of worship behind, sometimes they find a different congregation to take over the brick-andmortar expression of their faith. Sometimes they don’t. In the latter case, finding a new life for churches and temples-often solidly built and packed with unique architectural details-can be something like working a miracle. But a handful of developers have managed to give new life to old churches,…

GERALD BEPKO Commentary: This is no time to fear traveling

Last month my wife, Jean, and I had the pleasure of joining another Indiana University Alumni Travelers voyage superbly planned by Alumni Travel Director Joan Curts and Gohagen Travel. In company with an agreeable and stimulating group of IU and Boston University alumni, we visited the Cotswolds in England, near where we had lived 27 years earlier when on sabbatical leave at Oxford. Tourism seems alive and well in the United Kingdom, but there is concern that current tourist volume…

INVESTING: Free markets, low taxes power economic engine

The Empire of the Rising Sun has been seeing a lot more sun lately. The Japanese stock market, as measured by the Nikkei Index, bottomed out only a few percentage points higher than the Dow Jones industrial average in March 2003. Since then, our Dow has rebounded 42 percent, but the Nikkei is up 78 percent! While Japan has been a democracy more than 50 years, the culture has not been as individualized as here. There is a socialist flavor…

NOTIONS: It’s not science: A role for religion in our schools

In Harrisburg, Pa., last week, a trial was in progress. Attorneys and witnesses weighed in on a federal case involving the Dover Area School District. Last year, school board members there voted 6-3 to impose a curriculum mandate. It said “intelligent design,” the newfangled term for what used to be called Creationism (the biblical explanation of how life began), must be taught in high school biology classes alongside science-based theories such as evolution and random selection. After the vote, the…

Browning launching $10 million equity fund: Firm seeking investors for local industrial properties

After 28 years in the real estate development business, Browning Investments Inc. is inviting investors to take a cut of some of its deals. The locally based firm plans to launch a private investment fund to buy properties, mostly central Indiana industrial buildings. Browning officials are working on raising $10 million in equity for a fund that will leverage debt to acquire $30 million to $40 million in properties. They hope the fund will be the first of several. The…

Herron-Morton planning grows beyond art campus: Foundation hopes to redevelop 3 nearby buildings

Members of Herron-Morton Place Foundation Inc. are ecstatic that city planners chose their proposal to rehabilitate three vacant buildings as part of a larger redevelopment of the former Herron School of Art campus. The dilapidated structures, known as the Foundry buildings, are a block east of the campus. Under the foundation’s plan, they will be transformed into retail shops and should benefit from the foot traffic generated by the revitalization of the Herron property on 16th Street. But now comes…

Child-safety concerns lead to new division: Company uses R&D to manufacture innovative car seat

Indiana Mills & Manufacturing Inc. is creating a new division, launching a new product, and cutting a new path straight to retail consumers. It’s a big departure from the 45-year-old company’s historical path to profitability. Westfield-based IMMI has long made its money supplying a lengthy list of manufacturers and distributors in the transportation and heavy-equipment sectors with its innovative seat belts, rollover systems for heavy trucks, and restraint systems for school buses and on- and off-road commercial vehicles. But company…