To refine your search through our archives use our Advanced Search
Many of you who read this column know I do a number of things to make a living. I host the morning radio show at WXNT-AM 1430, practice law, write this column, teach at the University of Indianapolis and Ivy Tech Community College, act, perform stand- and most recently started doing commentary at WRTV Channel 6. I make a pretty good living and, with the exception of my son, who inherited his adopted father’s bad spending habits, I don’t do…
I’m standing in the Convention Center downtown, looking down sourly at my cell phone. The designers of the phone have failed me, and I want to know why. It was the IUPUI graduation last May, and the hallways were filled with thousands of people in fancy dress and black robes. I was trying to contact just one of those thousands, but I didn’t know his cell number. I knew he was there, and probably within a hundred yards, but without…
Almost overnight, the nation’s lending climate has tightened dramatically, and the timing couldn’t be worse for two Indianapolis companies. A pair of private equity firms are trying to line up billions of dollars in debt financing to complete their $5.6 billion purchase of locally based Allison Transmission from General Motors Corp. Meanwhile, locally based Finish Line Inc. plans to rely on debt to pay nearly the entire cost of its $1.5 billion acquisition of Tennessee-based Genesco Inc. Those deals still…
I had a boss once who was infamous for his adages, always having one of these nuggets immediately at the ready. True, he would occasionally misfire, tossing off a “let’s throw it against the wall and see what sticks” when the situation may have clearly called for something more genteel like “run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.” But most of the time, he was right on the money. One of his favorites was the old “How do…
Working three years on one project can be tedious, but Mark Sims enjoys every minute he spends preparing dinosaur fossils
for display at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Sims, 44, works in the Paleo Prep Lab at the museum’s Dinosphere exhibit,
picking away at the dirt left on 65-million-year-old fossils.
When it comes to advertising and marketing, the city’s two tallest skyscrapers are Class A, all the way. But throw out that
notion at tax time. The owners of Chase Tower and OneAmerica Tower–and some of the city’s other large office buildings–have
successfully lobbied for lower building “grades” that save them big bucks on property taxes.
The 10 hotels either under construction or in the planning stages downtown would increase the amount of rooms in the city’s center more than 40 percent-a far greater number than the market likely could absorb, experts fear. The projects are largely in response to Lucas Oil Stadium, slated to be completed by August 2008 and an expansion of the Indiana Convention Center that will nearly double its size by 2010. If all 10 hotel projects come to fruition, almost 2,300…
Here’s a preliminary rendering of the Penn Centre development planned along Pennsylvania Street between Maryland and Georgia streets. The J. Greg Allen project is being designed by locally based Browning Day Mullins…
Profit is booming at Escalade Inc. thanks to growing sales of archery equipment along with fewer discounts on other sporting goods. The Evansville company said today that earnings shot up 105 percent, to $2.4 million, in the second quarter ended July 14. Most of the increase was driven by archery sales, said Chief Financial Officer […]
Premier Properties has unveiled some of the details of its $750-million plan for a huge mixed-use development at the southwest corner of 86th and Keystone Avenue. The project is called Venu, a…
Indiana State University in Terre Haute is among 39 post-secondary schools being investigated by the New York Attorney General’s Office for its student loan practices, reports The Tribune-Star. The New York attorney general is looking into whether ISU directed students to Student Financial Services Inc. regardless of interest rates the company charges in exchange for […]
Shelby County Councilor Tami Grubbs has asked Gov. Mitch Daniels, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and the Indiana State Board of Accounts for an opinion whether the Intelliplex technology park is operating properly. Grubbs wants to know if the Shelbyville park is operating ethically, legally and in line with state guidelines for Certified Technology Parks, […]
Beleaguered mortgage lender American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. said last night it will close most of its operations-bad news for Fort Wayne, where the Melville, N.Y., company employs 155. In a statement, American Home Mortgage said it would shrink its workforce to 750 from 7,000 today because there is “no realistic alternative.” The Fort Wayne […]
Jim Rogers, the Beeland Interests Inc. chairman who predicted the launch of the commodities boom in 1999, is convinced the nation has yet to see the worst of the housing decline. In an interview with Bloomberg, Rogers, whose New York company bears his middle name, said he has sold short stock in house builders and […]
Locally based Urban Space Commercial Properties is working to fill space in a new hotel/retail project at the northeast corner of Meridian and South streets, company founder Brian Epstein said today. Here are preliminary renderings for the project, which is…
Indiana University and ChaCha Inc., the human-assisted Internet search engine based in Carmel, said this afternoon that IU will make its librarians and information technology staff available to ChaCha users. The IU experts will help ChaCha users sift through unwanted material in order to focus on the information users want. Users will be linked by […]
Saying its need for electricity can be filled in other ways, Evansville-based Vectren Corp. announced yesterday that it will not go forward with a southwestern Indiana coal gasification project it planned with Duke Energy Corp. Vectren instead will turn to buying power and will rely more on natural gas-fired peaking plants, renewable resources and persuading […]
Rising costs to sell and market a broadened line of electronics helped reduce fiscal fourth-quarter profit at Kimball International Inc. to $4.5 million from $10.4 million a year earlier. The Jasper electronics and furniture maker said the most recent quarter also looked poor because the same quarter a year earlier benefited from a tax break. […]
