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  • Pete the Planner’s advice for Gen X’s retirement dilemmas

    Pete the Planner’s advice for Gen X’s retirement dilemmas
    2025/06/30
    Coming after the baby boomers, Generation X is often referred to as “the forgotten generation,” the first self-reliant generation and perhaps the last free-range generation. Today, you certainly could argue that it's becoming the financial-panic generation.The first Gen Xers hit the workforce right around the time pensions gave way to 401(k) accounts with self-directed invested assets. Recent studies indicate that Gen Xers who have retirement accounts have saved on average somewhere in the neighborhood of $180,000. That’s well below the $1 million popularly seen as the minimum requirement for beginning a comfortable retirement. (Of course, the ability to sustain income in retirement depends a lot on your spending habits and the quality of life you try to pursue.)Nearly 50% of Gen Xers don’t even have a retirement plan, according to asset management firm Schroders. So IBJ Podcast host Mason King began compiling some of the most common questions his fellow Gen Xers ask about pending retirement or, if need be, semiretirement. For example, when is the best time to start taking Social Security, especially given that it’s headed for a funding deficit early next decade? What exactly do you do with your 401k funds once you retire? And what should you start doing today if your retirement savings are in the five figures or low six figures? In this week's episode of the IBJ Podcast, columnist Pete the Planner weighs in on the big questions for Gen X and warns against a common strategy for diversifying portfolios.
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    50 分
  • Purdue's plans for downtown Indy extension and city's move to fix West Street

    Purdue's plans for downtown Indy extension and city's move to fix West Street
    2025/06/22
    Nearly one year ago—July 1, 2024—the urban university in downtown Indianapolis known as IUPUI—or Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis—officially split into two separate campuses. This created Indiana University Indianapolis, a standalone campus in the IU system, and Purdue University in Indianapolis, which is considered an extension of Purdue’s main campus in West Lafayette. IU Indianapolis took the vast majority of the land and buildings considered part of IUPUI. The school is focusing in part on research, commercialization and student opportunity in the life sciences and biotech sectors. With its Lafayette extension, Purdue wants to draw more students interested in engineering and business to the university, including through new degree programs such as motorsports engineering and executive education. With a relatively modest amount of land set aside for its Indianapolis operations, Purdue needed to figure out how it eventually could have an outsized impact. It recently revealed its long-term plans—16 buildings ranging from five to about 20 stories on just 28 acres of land in the northwest sector of downtown. In this week’s edition of the podcast, IBJ’s Mickey Shuey unpacks Purdue’s high-density strategy to serve 15,000 students per year by 2075. Mickey also digs deep into perhaps the greatest hindrance to growth in that area—West Street, the wide and heavily trafficked thoroughfare that essentially creates a barrier between the Mile Square and everything to the West. As Mickey reports in the latest issue of IBJ, tearing down that figurative wall is becoming a greater priority for the city of Indianapolis. The Hogsett administration has begun “preliminary discussions” with the neighborhood and universities to develop potential solutions. But any fix likely to come from those talks—whether spanning the roadway with bridges or tunnels, creating a parkway, or adding more crosswalks to slow traffic—will be expensive and likely require consensus from many stakeholders.
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    41 分
  • CEO of fast-growing Indy housing developer on urban and suburban markets, being ‘a joiner’

    CEO of fast-growing Indy housing developer on urban and suburban markets, being ‘a joiner’
    2025/06/16
    Indianapolis-based housing developer Onyx + East recently scored a three-peat on IBJ’s annual list of fast-growing companies—all of which were on the watch of CEO Kelli Lawrence. She took the top job in 2019, when its annual revenue was about $19 million. By 2024, its annual revenue had climbed to $90 million—a nearly 375% increase over five years. Founded in 2015 as an offshoot of Indianapolis-based apartment developer Milhaus, Onyx + East has specialized in for-sale housing such as townhomes, duplex homes and single-family residences within planned communities in high-demand urban and suburban areas. Its focus has widened from Marion Couty to the Indianapolis metropolitan area to markets in Ohio and Florida. It also has expanded into the build-to-rent category. Kelli Lawrence grew up in a traditional suburban home in Toledo and was a first-generation college student. She entered Ball State University with a strong sense of what she wanted to do—study urban planning and development in Ball State’s school of architecture—and a hunger for student governance, joining and leading a wide array of campus organizations. He first job out of school was long-range planner for the city of Carmel, getting involved in the early stages of some of the city’s signature projects. All of these topics are on the table for this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, as well as her current role as CEO of Onyx + East. We discuss the economics of developing and pricing its projects in central Indiana, how to onboard new employees in the midst of business growth, her early years in the housing development when she often was the only woman in the room, and why she describes herself as a “joiner.”
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    47 分
  • Doug Boles on his ‘physically and emotionally draining’ May in dual role for Speedway, IndyCar

    Doug Boles on his ‘physically and emotionally draining’ May in dual role for Speedway, IndyCar
    2025/06/09
    Doug Boles already had his dream job as president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway since 2013. Then Roger Penske, owner of both IMS and the IndyCar Series, asked him to be president of IndyCar following the departure of Jay Frye in February. The pitch: Boles would retain his first job while also taking on the second. “It wasn’t something that I expected,” Boles says in this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast. “When Roger Penske calls you and says, ‘I need your help,’ you don’t usually say, ‘No.’ You say, ‘Yes, sir, how can I help?’ And then you get on board and you start figuring it out.” A few months later, early in the morning after qualifying for the Indy 500 on May 18, Boles called Penske to inform his boss that he felt it was necessary to ratchet up the severity of penalties against two Team Penske drivers—including two-time defending champion Josef Newgarden—by placing them at the very back of the field. “It was not the [phone] call I wanted to make,” Boles said. Nor was it the only difficult conversation Boles would have with IndyCar teams about costly penalties by the time the Indy 500 victory banquet rolled around on May 26. “This month was probably the most physically and emotionally draining and taxing month that I’ve had since I’ve been [IMS] president,” Boles told IBJ. These have been the highest-profile decisions to date in Boles’ tenure as IndyCar president as he works on implementing Penske’s larger vision. Most importantly, that means bringing together IMS and IndyCar to work more as a single unit and leverage their strengths. It also means working with Fox, IndyCar’s new broadcaster, to find ways to build the audience. It means working with promoters and sponsor. All of those topics are on the table in this wide-ranging podcast, as well as emerging efforts to improve inspection of cars and to create an independent officiating board that would operate completely outside the Penske organization to quell concerns about conflicts of interest. Boles also shares his take on the need for the annual irritant shared by many local fans: the TV blackout of the live Indy 500 broadcast.
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    48 分
  • How Irsay’s daughters carved out big roles with Colts and could handle succession

    How Irsay’s daughters carved out big roles with Colts and could handle succession
    2025/06/02
    With an estimated value of $4.8 billion, the Indianapolis Colts franchise is arguably the best-known family-owned business in Indiana. While we reflect on the passing of team owner Jim Irsay, who had significant influence on building the physical plant and identity of modern Indianapolis, we have the luxury of knowing that three more Irsays are in a position to continue that work and stewardship of the team. Daughters Carlie Irsay-Gordon, Kalen Jackson and Casey Foyt already are co-owners of the team and have been entrenched for years as high-level executives. In particular, Irsay-Gordon has been so deeply involved in every aspect of football operations that it’s widely assumed she will claim the role of controlling owner. These women have spent much of their adult lives preparing for this eventuality, but experts maintain that succession in professional sports is always a challenge, regardless of the circumstances. Jim Irsay seemed very comfortable in the public eye and as a sometimes larger-than-life figure. His daughters have kept much lower profiles—so much so that many casual fans probably aren’t aware of their existence. In this week’s podcast, we’re going to try to change that. IBJ has interviewed both Carlie and Kalen in past years, and we’ll share excerpts from those interviews that are relevant to this moment. We also have comments from one of the team’s leaders on the field about his experiences with Irsay-Gordon and Jackson. Our in-studio guest is IBJ’s Mickey Shuey, who has a story in the latest issue of IBJ about the ways the three sisters have carved out roles for themselves with the Colts. He also explores how the NFL typically handles succession issues and what financial concerns the daughters likely will have moving forward.
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    43 分
  • Explaining the Indy 500 tumult, Team Penske scandal and firings, and what’s important

    Explaining the Indy 500 tumult, Team Penske scandal and firings, and what’s important
    2025/05/23
    The week between qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 and the actual race is usually pretty quiet from a news perspective. But there’s nothing usual about the last week in this year’s Month of May. Major penalties assessed to two cars owned by Team Penske—including the car driven by two-time defending champion Josef Newgarden—inflamed long-running concerns about Roger Penske’s ownership of both the IndyCar Series and arguably its most successful team. In an extraordinary press conference on Monday, IndyCar President Doug Boles announced that he and another Penske executive decided that harsher penalties were warranted in an effort to protect the integrity of the Indy 500. Their decision, he said, was made without the input of their boss, Roger Penske. Two days later, Team Penske announced something that would have been unthinkable before the 2024 season--that it was parting ways with three of the team’s top executives. That included President Tim Cindric, long considered to be Penske’s successor in the racing part of his automobile empire. The departures have been widely reported as firings. Boles dropped another bombshell late on Wednesday. He revealed that IndyCar has been exploring the creation of an independent governing body beyond Penske’s control to officiate the series without the appearance of bias. If you live in the central Indiana media market, these rapid-fire announcements might have been bewildering. You’ve heard references to “cheating” and “scandal.” You’ve heard that the smoking gun for the qualifying penalties was something called an “attenuator” that had been illegally modified in some way. You’ve heard that all of these developments are a “big deal” for Penske, and therefore the series. If you don’t follow IndyCar religiously, this week’s podcast gives you the relevant background and serves as a primer on which elements are important. Our guest is John Oreovicz, a journalist and author who has covered IndyCar for three decades.
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    47 分
  • Whatever happened to downtown’s elevated People Mover?

    Whatever happened to downtown’s elevated People Mover?
    2025/05/19
    You may have become so used to them that you no longer notice, but snaking through downtown Indianapolis’ northwest quadrant are the remains of a revolutionary public transit system that transported riders on elevated tracks 30-feet high. It was called the People Mover, developed for $44 million by Clarian Health Partners, the hospital system now known as Indiana University Health. From its launch in 2003 to 2019, it recorded roughly 6 million rider trips on a 1.4-mile track running between Methodist Hospital, University Hospital and Riley Hospital for Children. The People Mover had the cooperation of city officials, who allowed the track to use public right of way along Senate Avenue, West 11th Street and University Boulevard. And the People Mover was filled with promise, as some predicted it could be expanded to a larger public transit system that would include Indianapolis International Airport. But tram came to screeching halt in 2019, when IU Health said it would begin offering shuttle buses instead and expected to save about $40 million over 10 years. That also was about the time IU Health began planning a massive facility consolidation and modernization project downtown. IBJ reporter Daniel Lee has a personal connection to the People Mover and recently began looking into what remains of the twin-track system and whether IU Health has any plans to resurrect it. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Lee also gauges support for a proposal that would transform the infrastructure into an elevated trail celebrating the heritage of Black communities on downtown’s northwest side.
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    22 分
  • Pete the Planner on student loan collections, stagflation and holding our collective breath

    Pete the Planner on student loan collections, stagflation and holding our collective breath
    2025/05/12
    These are uncertain times for the U.S. economy. We’re in a grace period for many of the Trump administration’s promised tariffs on dozens of trading partners. U.S. consumer confidence plunged again in April, hitting its lowest level since October 2011. First-quarter gross domestic product for the U.S. hit negative territory for the first time since the first quarter of 2022. On May 7, the Federal Reserve again opted to hold interest rates at the same level, wanting to wait and see how President Trump’s tariff policies shake out. In the financial press, pundits are quibbling about how close we could be to a recession. At the same time, there are several positive indicators for the economy, including strong jobs reports. Trump recently told Americans via social media to “BE PATIENT!!!” for the economic boom that his policies will create. In essence, we’re holding our collective breath to see how all this plays out. In the meantime, the Trump administration on May 5 resumed collecting on defaulted student loans, ending a five-year pause that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. For more than 5 million student loan holders currently in default, this is significant news, and millions more could join them in the near future. The redirection of their income to loan repayment likely will have an effect on the economy as well. IBJ columnist Peter Dunn, aka Pete the Planner, returns to the podcast this week to sift through the data and help us get a footing in this economic limbo. He also takes a closer look at the decision to resume collecting on defaulted student loans and the possible consequences.
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    34 分