Lucretia Cardenas is the Editor of the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly and joined Charly Butcher on “Fort Wayne’s Morning News” to talk about the articles in this week’s issue.
1) A work in progress
The Northeast Indiana Regional Development Authority didn’t really make an exception to the rules when it rushed through a recommendation that the Skyline Tower project in downtown Fort Wayne receive $2.8 million in Regional Cities Initiative funding – because, at the time, the rules still hadn’t been written.
2) Riding a wave of demand
Product innovation at Brunswick Corp.’s Harris and Cypress Cay Pontoons and national pontoon boat demand trends have supported at least 58 percent employment growth at the company’s Fort Wayne area plant in recent years.The company employed 161 in the Fort Wayne in 2013 when it relocated local production to a 360,000-square-foot plant at 1111 N. Hadley Road to accommodate the growth it was expecting. Last year it told local economic development officials the plant’s workforce had expanded to 255.
3) Stutzman trails Young in Senate fundraising
Congressman Todd Young of southern Indiana held a nearly two-to-one fundraising edge over northeast Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman this year in the run-up to the Republican primary election for one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats. Young’s lead includes a substantially larger amount of contributions from political action committees. The two candidates each out-raised the race’s Democrat candidate, former Congressman Baron Hill.
4) Annexation resistance grows in Allen county
State Reps. David Ober (R-Albion), Bob Morris (R-Fort Wayne), Casey Cox (R-Fort Wayne) and Martin Carbaugh (R-Fort Wayne) as well as State Sen. Dennis Kruse (R-Auburn) joined Himsel, NACS Board President Kent Somers, NACS Board Vice President Liz Hathaway and East Allen County Schools Superintendent Ken Folks at NACS Central Office on April 26 to speak out against the city’s annexation plan.
