After more than four years on the market, the Carmel estate built for Conseco Inc. founder Stephen Hilbert is listed at
$9.9 million—less than half of the original asking price and a third of the $30
million it was estimated to be worth in 2001.
Indiana ranked No. 35—unchanged from last year—on UnitedHealth Foundation’s annual state-by-state ranking of overall public health. While Indiana ranks higher than it did three years ago, the state actually fell five places since UnitedHealth started compiling the ranking in 1990. Since then, obesity in Indiana has surged 130 percent while smoking rates have been stuck for a decade at 26 percent. UnitedHealth’s report says Indiana has good rates of health insurance coverage and does a good job of limiting infectious diseases. But the state suffers from poor air quality and very low public-health funding. The UnitedHealth Foundation is an arm of Minnesota-based health insurer UnitedHealth Group.
Researchers at Purdue University have shown how an experimental drug might restore the function of nerves damaged in spinal-cord injuries and could also treat multiple sclerosis. The experimental compound, 4-aminopyridine-3-methyl hydroxide, has been shown to restore function to damaged axons—slender fibers that extend from nerve cells and transmit electrical impulses in the spinal cord. The researchers’ findings, based on experiments with guinea pig spinal-cord tissue, appeared online Nov. 18 in the Journal of Neurophysiology.
Dr. John Hayes, vice president of Eli Lilly and Co.’s research laboratories and the company’s neuroscience branding leader, will deliver a keynote speech on the possibilities for neuroscience development in Indiana as part of the Neuroscience Summit organization by the Indiana Health Industry Forum. The summit will occur Dec. 4 at University Place Conference Center at IUPUI.
The merged operations of Carmel-based BehaviorCorp and Anderson-based Center for Mental Health will adopt the name Aspire Indiana Behavioral Health System on Jan. 1. The new organization has more than 400 mental health professionals and supporting staff members. Aspire Indiana will serve primarily patients in Madison, Hamilton, Boone and northern Marion counties.
-Capitol Construction Services Inc., Fishers, has started a 5,254-square-foot tenant build-out for Encore-Sotheby’s
International Realty at 9510 N. Meridian St. The project is scheduled to be completed Jan. 8.
-D.B. Klain Builders
LLC, Carmel, recently completed tenant interior renovations of 5,253-square-feet of office space at 4005 Vincennes Road. The
space is occupied by Pillow Express Logistics.
-D.B. Klain Builders LLC, Carmel, recently completed tenant build
out of a1,750-square-foot office space located at 1007 3rd Ave., SW, Carmel. The space is occupied by Comm Works.
Carmel-based Conseco’s second deal with Minnesota-based Wilton Reassurance Co. will bring in $45 million.
Airport concessionaires stung by a 10-percent drop in passenger traffic have asked the Indianapolis Airport Authority to ease
a policy that was implemented more than 10 years ago to keep prices in line with what consumers pay outside
the airport.
Hot Box Pizza plans to open a downtown location in the Harness Factory Lofts building, and WineTyme, a new local shop selling
wines, craft beers and gourmet food, is coming to Fishers.
Thoughts on Rhythm! Discovery Center and Bands of America.
Conseco Inc. plans to sell about $230 million in stock and use half of the net proceeds to repay debt under its senior credit
agreement.
The Indiana Supreme Court on Wednesday delivered some good news to the widow of former Conseco Inc. Chief Counsel Lawrence
Inlow, reversing a lower court’s order that she pay his estate $284,034 for funeral expenses.
Senior real estate executives remain pessimistic about the prospects for the Indiana market in 2010, although they see signs
of improvement in the investment and residential sectors. That’s according to a survey of leaders of the local real
estate community that the Urban Land Institute plans to unveil Thursday.
Bloomington-based Author Solutions Inc. announced Tuesday that it has entered into a self-publishing partnership with Toronto-based
Harlequin Enterprises Limited, a prolific publisher of romance novels.
I’ve driven by countless strip-mall eateries without giving them a second glance, but there always has been something
about Carmel’s Mangia! that has drawn my attention. Maybe it’s the exclamation
point.
A summer advertising campaign launched by the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association helped produce more visitors
and dollars for central Indiana, even though the organization spent less this year marketing the region.
Consumers are using technology to look for the greatest value, not necessarily the lowest price.
Locally based Duke Realty Corp. netted more than $1 million during a Tuesday auction of surplus development parcels in Indianapolis,
Fishers, Plainfield and Lebanon.
The city’s Veteran Business Enterprise program aims to increase the representation of veteran-owned businesses on city projects—an
effort that has generated $217,000 in contracts for such firms so far.
A panel of medical advisers recommended against wider use of Zimmer Holdings Inc.’s spine stabilization
device, according to Reuters. In a 5-1 vote, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel said the data for Zimmer’s
Dynesys Spinal System were unclear and left them with questions about the device’s durability and propensity to break.
Warsaw-based Zimmer already markets the device, which is a series of screws and flexible spacers that help align and support
the spine, for patients who have received fusion surgery. The company is seeking
FDA approval to market Dynesys for stand-alone use. FDA officials will weigh the
panel’s recommendation before making their final approval decision.
New Jersey-based Enzon
Pharmaceuticals Inc. has agreed to sell its specialty pharmaceutical business, along with its
Indianapolis manufacturing facility, to Italy-based Sigma-tau Group. As of January 2008, Enzon’s
facility in Indianapolis employed about 150 workers. It made four medicines, which treated certain kinds of leukemia, meningitis,
fungal infections and the immunodeficiency malady known as “bubble boy disease.” Sigma-tau
paid $300 million for the business, as well as royalties and other payments contingent upon future sales
and development achievements.
Arcadia Resources Inc. sold nearly 16 million
shares of stock in a registered direct offering that raised $11.1 million. Arcadia Chief Financial Officer
Matt Mittendorf said the Indianapolis-based company would use the cash to fund the rollout of its DailyMed pharmacy service
to customers of Indianapolis-based health insurer WellPoint Inc. in Virginia and soon
in California. The company needed more cash, as its reserves had dwindled to $517,000 at the end of the
second quarter, down from $2.4 million a year earlier.
California-based Beckman Coulter
Inc., which makes biomedical testing instrument systems, said it is relocating its precision
plastics injection molding operation to Park 100. The move will add about 100 jobs to the 400 people the company already employs
in Indianapolis. The jobs will pay $22.30 an hour, on average. In 2007, Beckman Coulter closed its 220-employee centrifuge
development and manufacturing facility in Palo Alto, Calif., and moved operations to the Indianapolis area.
For
the 14th straight year, St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital won a Consumer Choice award from the National Research
Corp. The award identifies hospitals that health care consumers have chosen as having the highest quality and image in more
than 300 U.S. markets. No other Indianapolis hospitals won the award this year.
As pharmaceutical
giants re-evaluate their pipelines and seek to sell off products that no longer fit their strategies, it gives opportunities
for pharmaceutical startups. Such divestiture of pharmaceutical products will be discussed Tuesday at the Life Sciences Lunch
at the Barnes & Thornburg LLP law firm in downtown Indianapolis. The lunch will include three speakers:
Reed Tarwater, director of pharmaceutical consulting services at Carmel-based Anson Group LLC; Ron
Ellis, CEO of Endocyte Inc. in West Lafayette; and Eli Lilly and Co.‘s Pete Robins. The
lunch costs $10 per person and begins at 11:30 a.m.
Former President George H.W. Bush will come to Indianapolis
Nov. 19 to speak at a $250-per-person fund raiser for Alzheimer’s research. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Indiana
Alzheimer Disease Center at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Indiana Chapter of the
Alzheimer’s Association. Money will also go to the Deane F. Johnson Center Foundation at the University of
California at Los Angeles, a clinical trial center that supports the research of such companies as Indianapolis-based
Eli Lilly and Co. Bush’s speech, which will occur at the Indiana Roof Ballroom, is sponsored
locally by Fishers-based Ambassador Healthcare and the Central Indiana Community
Foundation. Ticket information can be found here.
