E S TA B L I S H E D 1 9 8 0 L O C A L LY OW N E D 41 E. WASHINGTON STREET, SUITE 200 INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46204-3592 317-634-6200 Fax: 317-263-5060 Editorial Fax: 317-263-5406 E-mail address: [email protected] site address: www.ibj.com PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER Chris Katterjohn VICE PRESIDENT/ SALES & OPERATIONS Greg Morris EDITORIAL Editor – Tom Harton Managing Editor – Greg Andrews Associate Editor – Tawn Parent Focus Editor – Jeff Newman Enterprise Editor – Andrea…
I’ve been scanning laptop buyer’s guides lately, and I have to say that many magazine test labs seem utterly out of touch with business users. They extol the big screens, fast multimedia and other capabilities business users just don’t care about. They act as if weight is a big factor for those of us who have to cart our hightech symbiotes around with us, but laptops long ago dropped below that critical barrier. Hewlett-Packard had a little notebook unit in…
It’s 2:30 p.m. on a Tuesday and a steady stream of customers continues to patronize Claus’ German Sausage and Meat Market on East South Street. By March, however, the butcher shop likely will have abandoned its longtime home for a new building on South Shelby Street in Fountain Square. Whether its loyal clientele will follow concerns owner Claus Muth, who purchased the store from relative Gerhard Klemm in 2003 and changed the name from Klemm’s in April. “Since [the new…
Chunsheh Teo is a driven man. The 28-year-old sometimes works long days as an architectural graduate at Ratio Architects Inc. and spends his off time building furniture for the home he and his wife recently purchased in Irvington. On a recent weekend, he built a new fence for the yard. Oh, and he also enters international design competitions in his down time-about seven in the last three years. “It’s just kind of a fun thing to do,” Teo said. At…
CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary ‘Pop’ group: Cosby, White & Dungy Bill Cosby, Eugene White and Tony Dungy are a pop group of a different kind. They are out and about these days calling on men to be better fathers. Comedian Cosby was in Baltimore late last month urging fathers to help raise their kids. “This is a great evening because we’re calling on men to come claim their children,” Cosby said to the crowd. “And that’s part of being a man….
“You will have 30 minutes.” Most project interviews begin with those five words. Design firms usually get 30 short minutes to persuade prospective clients to hire them for a project. Often, when all is said and done, both the designer and prospective client for the project, however, the guy sold his firm and retired to Florida. The interview certainly can make a difference, as it did in these three cases (although mostly for the wrong reasons). But most marketing experts…
Poor Pluto. One day it was spinning through the galaxy, meandering around the sun at a stately 248.54 Earth years per lap, rotating in the wrong direction as compared to the other planets, minding its own business, and then-Bam! It got downsized, reclassified as a planetelle or planetina or planette, whatever they’ve decided to call it. Reminds me of some businesses I know. One day everything’s A-OK, to use space parlance. Next thing you know, Pluto is putting all the…
Local officials have lured another sports-related company here and taken a huge step in assuring the NFL Scouting Combine stays in the city long term. National Football Scouting and sister company National Invitational Camp, which operates the Combine for NFL team owners, moved its headquarters in August from Tulsa, Okla., to Indianapolis. NFS and NIC moved into the Pan Am Plaza office building, across the street from the RCA Dome, where it has held the Combine since 1987. NFS also…
A failed barbecue and chili cook-off backed in part by owners of locally based Dick’s Bodacious Bar-B-Q has left unpaid vendors hot under the collar. Brothers Richard and David Allen, who franchise the Dick’s concept of serving smoked, Texas-style meat, are among six partners in Bodacious Blues-B-Q LLC, which staged the May event in Carmel in 2005 and 2006. The competition racked up more than $30,000 in losses, prompting organizers to drop plans for future events and begin the process…
When Emmis Communications Corp. Chief Financial Officer Walter Berger bolted in January for the same post at CBS Radio in New York, the Indianapolis company said little publicly. But it’s now apparent Emmis officials were more than a little peeved. In recent weeks, they’ve filed an arbitration case against Berger in hopes of recouping some of his compensation, and they’ve sued CBS alleging tortuous interference with his contract. “I think this case is very clear-cut,” said David Barrett, vice president…
There’s a real buzz about job growth in Indiana these days. Announcements of job creation, big and small, are echoing through the business media, and many economic development officials tell us their phones are ringing with calls from new prospects at a rate they haven’t seen in years. Yet the data used by most of us to track job growth tell a slightly more sobering story. The 2.94 million workers on Indiana payrolls in July, as reported by the Department…
To put it mildly, the hype about China (and now, increasingly, about India) has been enough to choke a horse. I know. I got right to the front of the bandwagon three years ago when I started writing about India. But when it comes to your cash, it’s only worth talking about stuff that is going to make you money. We are not in a classroom. And with your money firmly in the front of our mind, let’s find out…
Langsenkamp, CEO of Sigma Micro Corp. in Indianapolis, began conducting research on the patented Reverse 911 Interactive Community Notification System in 1990. The technology, however, didn’t hit the market en masse until a decade later. Today, roughly 350 law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada, including those in Carmel and Beech Grove, use it to blast warnings to residents. “It was the first system that ever allowed people to dial phone numbers and deliver messages based on the…
Bruce Hetrick is on vacation this week. In his absence, this column, which appeared on Aug.19, 2002, is being reprinted. Dear Reader: In our nation’s capital, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol Street, the Smithsonian Institution has converted a former post office into the National Postal Museum. Carved into the white granite wall is an inscription called “The Letter.” Written by former Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot and edited by former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, it…
In the last year, Emmis Communications Corp. Chairman Jeff Smulyan has led efforts to sell his company’s television stations, change radio formats, reduce debt and take the company private. He even proposed using company funds to buy a Major League Baseball franchise. Now, after his recently failed attempt to buy the Indianapolis company, many Wall Street analysts and investors are wondering what Smulyan might do next. Some industry experts believe the only way for Smulyan to do what’s best for…
A few weeks ago, my 18-year-old son, Austin, said he was in the mood for a movie. His friend, Jon, had been to see “Miami Vice.” Jon said it was “cool.” I said that the old TV version-which began airing before Austin was born-had been “cool,” too. So based on that trans-generational cool factor, we grabbed dinner at Chili’s and went to see America’s most celebrated vice cops, Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, do their undercover thing. On the big…
Every time Indiana experiences one of its summer cloudbursts, the rainfall sets into motion one of a real estate development’s most expensive and least appreciated systems. As rain hits the ground, it quickly collects into wellengineered courses to swales and gutters, through pipes and culverts and into detention ponds. Flowing around, over and through the land that once absorbed it, the water is efficiently collected and conveyed off the site. In other words, gather it up and drain it off….
If State and English avenues in the Fountain Square district were on a Monopoly board, they would probably be the ones available immediately after passing “Go.” But after the Southeast Neighborhood Development Inc. is finished there, the intersection will move several spaces closer to Park Place. The not-for-profit is investing $1 million to renovate three dilapidated buildings it bought to convert them to residential/work spaces as part of its Fountain Square Corners development. A local photographer who will live in…
In September, about 30 big names in the art world will converge at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. It will be the Eiteljorg’s first attempt to host a big-name Western art show featuring representational styles, those depicting natural objects realistically. Eiteljorg officials hope the Quest for the West art show and sale bolsters its reputation as one of the nation’s elite Western art museums. For artists, the show will provide a rare opportunity to reach collectors…
By the demanding standards of recent history, the justcompleted second quarter was a tough one for the U.S. economy. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported an annualized growth rate of just 2.5 percent in the overall economy in the April-June period, significantly lower than historical trends and well below the blistering growth of the preceding three months. In addition, there was unwelcome inflation news, causing some analysts to dust off an old word that hasn’t been used since the early…
