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Boone EDC Weekly
Greetings from the Boone EDC,
Welcome to Boone EDC Weekly.
As an organization, the Boone EDC is constantly researching and benchmarking to learn what our competing communities are doing to attract and retain business. Boone EDC Weekly is a compilation of noteworthy National and Indiana news about economic development trends. We will also post information about upcoming conferences, events and webinars that you may find interesting.
Boone EDC Weekly is another tool that you can refer to as a community leader to help Boone County continue to move forward in a positive manner.
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Indy Partnership Appoints Board Members
Inside Indiana Business
A new board of directors has been named to lead the Indy Partnership, Central Indiana's regional economic development group, under its new structure as a business unit of the Indy Chamber. Doug Esamann, President, Duke Energy Indiana, has been named the chairman of the board of directors.
"The Indy Partnership has served the nine-county greater Indianapolis region for 20 years, with a focus on attracting new businesses, jobs and capital investment," said Indy Chamber President and CEO Scott Miller. "Doug and the other members of the new board are proven leaders in our community and will serve as key players as we continue to attract more high-paying, high-growth jobs to the Indianapolis region."
"The Indy Partnership will play a critical role in strengthening the economic growth of the Indianapolis region as we look to leverage our pro-growth, pro-business economic climate," said Esamann. "I look forward to collaborating with partners across the region to market Central Indiana as the best place to live and do business."
Board of Directors:
- Matt Bailey, IU Health
- Dennis Dye, Browning/Duke Realty
- Doug Esamann, Duke Energy
- Mark Fisher, Develop Indy
- Harold Gutzwiller, Hoosier Energy
- Skip Kuker, Hancock County Economic Development Council
- David Lewis, Eli Lilly and Company
- Dax Norton, Boone County Economic Development Corporation
- RJ McConnell, Bose McKinney & Evans
- CJ Potts, Milestone Contractors, LP
- Al Smith, Chase in Central Indiana
- Steve Sullivan, Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors
Click here to learn more.
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Indiana Ranked 8th Amount Best States for Doing Business
Area Development
Certainly, Indiana touts a central location that is well connected. It is home to more than 4,700 miles of mainline rail track, three international airports and more than 11,000 total highway miles. Each year, more than 1.1 billion tons of freight travel through Indiana, making it the fifth-busiest state for commercial freight traffic in the nation. Indiana also has the only statewide port system that provides international connections via the Great Lakes and Ohio- Mississippi River system.
In addition, Indiana is moving forward with a record-breaking $10 billion infrastructure improvement plan. That improvement plan includes a 10-year, fully funded highway initiative that calls for more than 200 new construction and 200 major preservation projects, according to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC).
Indiana has launched several major initiatives that have helped the state to emerge as a leader in the economic recovery. Earlier this year, Indiana became the 23rd state in the nation to enact a right-to-work bill into law. The state also passed legislation that reduces Indiana's corporate income tax from 8.5 percent to 6.5 percent. The tax will be reduced by 0.5 percent per year until 2015. Legislators also cut property taxes by one third and established a constitutional cap on tax rates for all classes of property. State legislators have also increased the Venture Capital Investment Tax Credit. The maximum amount of tax credits that early-stage firms can use to attract investment is now doubled from $500,000 to $1 million.
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Transportation and Housing Costs are Outpacing Incomes
The Center for Housing Policy/Neighborhood Technology
In 2006, the Center for Housing Policy released A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families in partnership with the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC-Berkeley. By documenting the trade-offs that moderate-income households make between their housing and transportation costs, A Heavy Load encouraged practitioners and policymakers to take a more comprehensive view of housing affordability. This broader approach adds the costs of travel to daily destinations to the traditional components of housing costs - rent or mortgage payments and utilities - to compute a combined cost that better reflects the full costs associated with selecting one housing unit, and its location, over another.
In this new report, the Center for Housing Policy and CNT have partnered again to gauge the housing and transportation cost burdens of moderate income households living in the 25 largest metro areas at the end of the decade. Newly available data give us an opportunity to assess the impact on combined costs of the rapid rise and fall of home prices during the 2000s, the recent rebound in rents and the nation's increased suburbanization
over the past decade.
Click here to learn more.
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There Will Be a Factory Skills Shortage. Just Not Yet
Bloomberg Business Week - Peter Coy A shortage of skilled manufacturing labor is on the way, says a new study by Boston Consulting Group. But, says the firm, it hasn't arrived yet. Many factory managers claim they're already suffering from a skills shortage. Sixty-seven percent of respondents reported a moderate to severe shortage of available qualified workers in a survey last year by Deloitte Consulting for the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers. BCG senior partner Harold Sirkin, co-author of the research and a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor, says manufacturers could solve most of their problems finding good people by offering higher pay and training new hires. He says there's no reason that a skills shortage need derail the "manufacturing renaissance" BCG has been forecasting. The consulting group predicts that rising U.S. exports and "reshoring" could create 2.5 million to 5 million U.S. jobs in manufacturing and related services by decade's end. The firm looked for places where manufacturing wages are rising rapidly as evidence that demand is exceeding supply. By that criterion, "only five of the nation's 50 largest manufacturing centers (Baton Rouge, La., Charlotte, Miami, San Antonio, and Wichita) appear to have significant or severe skills gaps," the study said. "Occupations in shortest supply are welders, machinists, and industrial machinery mechanics." |
Huntington County Hometown Improvement Initiative Moves Forward
Herald Press - Lucas Bechtol The Huntington County Hometown Improvement Initiative, which launched earlier this year, is ready to start its next phase. The initiative, coordinated by Marshall Sanders, plans to create an action plan that will work to improve the quality of Huntington County along five pillars: Entrepreneurship, family life, charitable giving, youth and leadership.
The initiative started with a survey taken by nearly 900 Huntington County residents, Sanders said at the Huntington University Foundation Breakfast last week. These data have been analyzed and the initiative is ready for the next phase: planning.
"We've created a vision, our beginning vision, which is creating opportunity daily," Sanders said. There are three steps to this phase, the first being cleaning up the county's appearance. "We want to make, if you will, the county sparkle," he said. "And efforts are underway to do that, and there has been success.
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Entrepreneur's Cafe
The Agurban
The Entrepreneurs' Café in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is a program that provides micro-funding awards and business services to entrepreneurs that reside in the Eastern Panhandle of the state. The goal of the Entrepreneur's Café is "to encourage the development of an entrepreneurial class by creating a forum where they can build a sense of community; hone their sales skills; access resources; obtain ideas and guidance from others; and receive reinforcement for their ideas."
During the event, local entrepreneurs are invited to "pitch" their idea or project for funding. Attendees pay $10 for a meal, have the opportunity to hear small business development ideas and vote on their favorite project. The winning entrepreneur receives the proceeds from the purchase of meals and a special cash award provided by a different partner each month.
The Entrepreneurs' Café program is part of a long-term plan to develop the entrepreneurial climate in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.
Click here to learn more.
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Video Blog
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Meeting Dates
Boone County Commissioners: - November 5 @ 9 a.m. Boone County Council: - November 13 @ 8:30 a.m. Boone County APC: - November 7 @ 7 p.m. Boone County RDC: - November 16 @ 2 p.m. Advance Town Council: - November 12 @ 7 p.m. Jamestown Town Council: - November 6 @ 7 p.m. Lebanon City Council: - October 22 @ 7 p.m. Thorntown Town Council: - November 19 @ 7 p.m. Whitestown Town Council: - November 13 @ 6:30 p.m. Zionsville Town Council: - November 5 @ 7 p.m. Boone EDC Board of Directors: - October 25 @ 4 p.m. Boone EDC Executive Committee:
- November 8 @ 7:30 a.m.
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