Indiana’s automotive manufacturing employment for the last decade peaked at 142,000 in 1999. Since then, the sector has shed
20,300 jobs-a staggering one-seventh of its total. Another 5,220 are slated to be cut soon. And there’s no end in sight.
French Lick Resorts & Casino is already struggling, less than four months after its launch. And the casino’s owners are downright
terrified legislators soon will allow both of the state’s horse-racing tracks to become “racinos” and add up to 5,000 slot
machines.
Until now, gaining entrance into the exclusive nine-hole golf course built on 40 acres next to the Indianapolis Metropolitan
Airport in Fishers was as difficult as a commoner scoring an invitation to a royal palace. But admittance to Balmoral is loosening–a
little.
At least 35 new bank branches have sprouted in Hamilton County in the last three years, and more are on the way. Familiar
names like Charter One and Chase have added eight and seven branches, respectively. Other institutions are entering the market.
Each week at David Alan Chocolatier in Lebanon, three employees make a different variety of chocolate truffles, nut clusters
and other chocolate-laden delights. Alan uses 7,000 pounds of chocolate a year to make his products out of the renovated gas
station he has operated at since 1984.
World War II could have been fought seven times over since Ralph Reed and sons first tried to build Mallard Lake Landfill
outside of Anderson. The Reeds’ dream of big cash from trash has
upset hundreds of residents in subdivision-dotted fields since the family asked Madison County to rezone their 254-acre farm
in the 1970s.
Fortville-based Genesis Manufacturing makes helmet pads for U.S. troops through Colorado-based Skydex Technologies, which
won a contract this fall with the U.S. Air Force for 120,000 helmet pad kits. Most of the helmets have wound up in Iraq, where
the military has discovered soldiers need something more than Kevlar-lined helmets to survive roadside mines and exploding
Toyotas.
The potential redevelopment of Verizon Wireless Music Center in Noblesville could open the door for a new concert venue in
Indianapolis, but industry veterans don’t expect it would look anything like the popular Hamilton County amphitheater.
Randy Ibey, owner of Randy’s Toy Shop in Noblesville, is legendary among antique toy collectors and dealers worldwide. Ibey
can fix more kinds of toys than an elf in Santa's workshop–from a German tin soldier created in the 1850s to a remote-control
Pluto made a century later.
Plans are in place for a 400-acre mixed-use development off Interstate 70 just west of Plainfield–an area quickly becoming the next big thing in industrial real estate.
Four former top scientists at Eli Lilly and Co. have formed a Carmel-based company to develop diabetes therapies–a venture observers say has the potential to become the kind of blockbuster success BioCrossroads was built to stimulate.
Two new Carmel newspapers will soon join eight others in Boone and Hamilton counties. While the region is one of the fastest growing in Indiana, journalism experts said having 10 newspapers serving a population of just under 300,000 is astounding.
Clarian North Medical Center has stumbled out of the gate, with the Carmel hospital reporting losses in its first six months of operation that “well exceed” expectations, a new report says.
The 156-year-old Terre Haute company that quietly churned out nothing but its trademark baking powder for more than a century is now serving notice to General Mills’ Bisquick and other well-known brands that the status quo is dead.
Lauth Property Group is working to complete the purchase of 550 acres it has under contract at the northeast corner of Interstate 70 and State Road 39, one interchange west of Plainfield. Lauth plans to build 7.5-million-square-foot industrial park, dubbed Westpoint Business Park.
Increased oil and natural gas prices are hammering many manufacturers, but Franklin-based Grimmer Industries Inc. is flying high. Grimmer specializes in making Hurricane brand air compressors and compressor boosters used in oil and natural gas well drilling and aggregate mining.
In the 2-1/2 years following a 2003 overhaul of Conner Prairie management orchestrated by Earlham College, the Hamilton County attraction was mired in uncertainty over its future and an increasingly bleak financial outlook. Now the skies are brightening.
Ball State University is preparing to stake a big claim in downtown Indianapolis, where it will offer classes and graduate degree programs at a new satellite facility.
The idea of rapid transit is popular locally, but there’s no consensus on how to finance it. For construction alone, it would cost at least $546 million for suburban express bus service up to $1.4 billion for an "automated guideway" system similar to a monorail. And that's for only one corridor.
Just 5,900 Marion and Hamilton County commuters would park their cars in favor of rapid transit if that were an option, according to data from a late-2001 report for Indianapolis’ Metropolitan Planning Organization by New York firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.
