The IBJ Podcast with Mason King

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Why does downtown need a $90M sports arena, in addition to its NBA and NFL venues? Jun 05, 2023

Show notes

Indianapolis leaders made sports one of the focus points of its downtown economic development strategy as far back as the early 1970s. Today, we have the 70,000-seat Lucas Oil Stadium and the 17,200-seat Gainbridge Fieldhouse, not to mention the 9,100-seat Hinkle Fieldhouse and 6,500-seat Indiana Farmer’s Coliseum a few miles to the north.

Apparently, civic leaders believe there is room for at least one more indoor sports palace, and it intersects with another one of downtown’s evolving selling points: the campus of urban university IUPUI. As we’ve discussed, IUPUI is in the midst of splitting into two separate campuses—one for Indiana University, one for Purdue University—with its Division 1 sports programs becoming part of what will be known as Indiana University Indianapolis.

In the two-year state budget that they just approved, Indiana lawmakers allotted $89.5 million to design and build the midsize sports facility that would be home for the IU Indianapolis indoor athletic programs. But the local leaders who pushed for the funding want the 5,000-seat arena to play host to a wide variety of events serving the city’s best interests as a magnet for tourism.

On this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King chats with IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey about the rationale behind the plans for the stadium, what needs to happen before construction could start, and how it could affect Indianapolis’ sports ecosystem.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Indiana becoming garden spot for vital ag innovation, food security May 30, 2023

Show notes

For a century, Indiana’s identity has been informed by the bucolic farms folks can see from the window of an airplane or from the window of their cars as they zoom by on one of our many interstates. But folks on the ground know that the state has become one of the nation’s hubs for plant diagnostics, crop protection, gene editing, biotechnology, food preservation, field management, aerial intelligence, animal health and sources of renewable energy. The companies and scientists involved in this work have reached the critical mass for creating an ecosystem of innovation, where advancements in one area help drive results in another. Not only is this accumulated expertise good for the state’s economy, but it also plays into national security and global stability. What is more in mankind’s best interest than the production of healthy food in adequate supplies?
For the latest edition of the podcast, host Mason King is joined by Mitch Frazier, who draws on his considerable professional experience in technology and agriculture as president and CEO of Agrinovus Indiana. It’s a statewide organization devoted to fueling growth in the agbioscience economy. Frazier, who has one of the most expansive and rounded perspectives of agricultural innovation in the state, details how Indiana is becoming a major player in vital issues of food security.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The big challenges and costs of being a 17-year-old racer in an IndyCar feeder series May 22, 2023

Show notes

Dan Wheldon, Kyle Kirkwood, J.R. Hildebrand, Jay Howard, Sage Karam, Oliver Askew, Spencer Pigot, and Rinus VeeKay. Beyond the fact that all of these drivers are either past or current competitors in the Indy 500, what do they have in common? They all competed in the USF2000 series, which is one of the feeder series to IndyCar.

Al Morey IV is 17 years old and a rookie in the USF 2000 series, competing for Indianapolis-based team Jay Howard Driver Development. He lives in Fishers, and ever since he started racing karts at the age of 9, he has had his sights on the upper rungs of professional racing. But the road to IndyCar is never easy, in part because it is so expensive. Running an open-wheel car for a full season in USF2000 can easily run several hundred thousand dollars for the driver. That includes tires, engineering and mechanical services, parts and labor, track testing and travel, food, and lodging. Drivers can defray some of those costs with sponsor dollars, but they typically must arrange those relationships themselves.

Al Morey’s father, also named Al Morey, says the cost of this season could be anywhere between $400,000 to $700,000, depending, for example, on how often the car is damaged. In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, the father and son team talk about what it’s like in the trenches of professional racing, the costs involved, and how they work together to secure sponsors.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Rabbi Dennis Sasso on 275 weddings, 1,000 funerals, 800 b’nai mitzvah over 47 years May 15, 2023

Show notes

In 1977, Rabbi Dennis Sasso and his wife, Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, loaded up their car and drove from New York to Indianapolis. As the first practicing rabbinical couple in world Jewish history, they already had a fair amount of renown and had even appeared on the quiz shows “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell the Truth.” But they were young—just a few years out of rabbinical school—so it might have been a bit of a gamble for Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis to hire them as its spiritual leaders. Dennis was named senior rabbi, a position he has held now for 47 years.
The records are little spotty, but congregation officials believe he has led or been involved in more than 2,400 Shabbat services, close to 1,400 bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs, 275 weddings, 1,000 funerals, 800 bris and baby-naming celebrations and 470 board meetings. At the end of this month he will retire as senior rabbi, although the weekend of May 13 and 14th will be filled with special events honoring Sasso at the synagogue.

On the eve of the May 13th celebrations, IBJ Podcast host Mason King sat down with the two rabbis to discuss Dennis’ decision to step down, the months of preparation necessary for such a transition, what he sees as his legacy and, crucially, what exit music he would want heard as he dances into retirement.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The biggest questions dogging the bills passed by the Indiana Legislature May 08, 2023

Show notes

The 2023 Indiana General Assembly wrapped up about a week ago—specifically, 2:47 a.m. on Friday, April 28—after your state lawmakers hammered out a $44.6 billion budget for the next two years, filed 1,154 bills and approved 252 of them. Gov. Eric Holcomb has now signed all 252, as of May 4. As you know, both the Indiana House and the Indiana Senate have Republican supermajorities, so the GOP generally did not need support from Democrats to pass its priorities. And so these laws now venture out into the world to do the bidding of our elected representatives. It was hard to miss the big debates this year over the proposed ban on gender transition procedures for minors, which is now law. As are the controversial proposals to expand eligibility for the state’s school voucher program, ban instruction on human sexuality in grades kindergarten through third, and forbid state retirement system managers from investing in companies based on environmental and social factors.

For journalists who cover state government, the end of the legislative session is just the beginning. Now they must follow these laws and report on their consequences. We can assume that lawmakers go into these sessions with the best of intentions, but sometimes the laws they produce don’t work as intended. Sometimes they immediately end up in the court system through legal challenges. And sometimes they require a Herculean amount of work to simply get up and running. The reporters who covered this year’s session already have earmarked the laws that bear more investigation, and we have two of them join host Mason King on the podcast this week: Peter Blanchard, who covers politics and state government for IBJ, and Casey Smith, who covers the same for the not-for-profit newsroom Indiana capital Chronicle.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Pete the Planner on death, divorce and more of the most edgy questions in personal finance May 01, 2023

Show notes

The first episode of the IBJ Podcast was posted on June 4, 2018. This week, we present the 250th episode. As listeners know, the podcast’s only regular guest outside of IBJ’s editorial staff has been Pete Dunn, aka Pete the Planner. He first was featured on March 11, 2019, after becoming one of IBJ’s regular columnists for personal finance. Over about 20 podcast episodes, he and host Mason King have discussed investments, insurance, budgeting, retirement, buying a car, saving for college, giving to charities, quitting your job, and how to prepare for the next financial calamity.

After nearly every interview with Dunn, King has had the nagging suspicion that at least one important question—perhaps a bit too touchy, or even mercenary—goes unasked. This week, he asks those questions. The kid gloves are off, and Dunn has agreed to discuss some of the sensitive topics in personal finance. How can you help your spouse or elderly parents when they can’t manage their own finances? Who in a marriage should have the final say on big purchases? How should one prepare for the financial implications of divorce? How much should you ask about your pending inheritance? And, of course: How do you know when it's time to change financial advisers?

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Joel Kirk on how Indy became a musical incubator for Broadway Apr 24, 2023

Show notes

Joel Kirk doesn’t have an MBA or what you would consider to be a traditional business background. But he is every inch an entrepreneur and promoter, and he cut his teeth in one of the toughest markets in the world: New York City. And he has persuaded some of the most experienced philanthropists in central Indiana to back his venture that makes Indiana a conduit for one of New York City’s most famous products: Broadway-style musicals.

A native of Carmel, Kirk is the founder and CEO of Discovering Broadway, which brings musicals that are still in the developmental stage to central Indiana so the creative teams can work in relative peace and then stage their work here with a combination of local and national talent. For example, the creative team behind the musical version of “The Devil Wears Prada” rewrote most of the show’s script and created several new songs over the course of about a week in Carmel back in 2021.

In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Kirk discusses his own incubation period in Carmel and then at Ball State University before moving to New York at the age of 20 and starting a career as a theater director. He also tells the origin story of Discovering Broadway and explains how this one-man show—at least until recently—persuaded producers and creators with international reputations to make central Indiana their workshop.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Bosma VP: ‘I didn’t know how to be someone who was blind’ Apr 17, 2023

Show notes

You might recognize Indianapolis-based Bosma Enterprises as a not-for-profit that helps Indiana residents who are blind or visually impaired. Its business model includes providing products and services for the public and private sector. This provides jobs for people with vision loss who otherwise would face a 70% unemployment rate. In fact, more than half of Bosma’s employees are blind or visually impaired—including its vice president of external affairs, Lise Pace.
She was climbing the ladder in the banking industry in the early 1990s when she learned that she would eventually lose her sight to a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Married and the mother of a young son, she slowly retreated into a dark and isolated life as she lost most of her sight, stopped working and became a stay-at-home mom. As she says, “I didn’t know how to be someone who was blind.”
In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Pace tells the story of how her son inspired her to break out of a years-long funk and start volunteering. That led to a full-time job at Bosma and then a raft of promotions that brought her to her current position as a company executive. You could see her as a prime example of how someone with limited sight can excel in the corporate world. Indeed, one of Bosma’s missions is to help clients learn the skills required for succeeding in almost any business environment. But as Pace acknowledges, employers considering visually impaired applicants also need to see beyond sight impediments and trust the results from past work history.

Sweetwater’s Surack on selling stake in billion-dollar firm, backing Indy heliport Apr 10, 2023

Show notes

In 1979, musician Chuck Surack started a business in Fort Wayne called Sweetwater Sound by creating a mobile recording studio in a Volkswagen Bus. Fast-forward a bit more than four decades, and Sweetwater has evolved into one of the nation’s most prominent e-commerce sites for musical instruments and audio gear, with $1.6 billion in sales for 2022. Surack and his wife, Lisa, had total ownership of the company until 2021 when they sold a big stake to a private equity firm.

The Suracks have used that money to help further their already extensive philanthropic giving. Chuck also has more time to focus on Surack Enterprises, a collection of companies unrelated to Sweetwater, including several that stem from his interest in aviation. And that’s the reason why Chuck has been in the news in Indianapolis in recent weeks. The Indianapolis Airport Authority wants to decommission the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport, a move that’s supported by the city of Indianapolis due to the site’s attractiveness for redevelopment. Chuck is helping lead the charge to persuade the Federal Aviation Administration to deny permission to decommission the heliport. Chuck has a helicopter charter company that uses the heliport, but he also joins aviation experts and the Indiana Department of Transportation in arguing that the heliport is uniquely positioned to advantage of new developments in urban aviation. That includes electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Surack sheds more light on his decision to sell a controlling stake in Sweetwater and step away from day-to-day operations. And he explains the reasoning behind his desire to keep the heliport open.
The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Indiana’s Jiffy Lube guru on art, entrepreneurism, police relations and March Madness laundry Apr 03, 2023

Show notes

In the 38 years that Steve Sanner has owned and operated Jiffy Lube oil change shops in Indiana, he has laid down some serious tread marks. He is owner and president of Jiffy Lube of Indiana, which counts 51 locations and about 510 employees altogether. That’s the vast majority of the Jiffy Lubes in the state. But he hasn’t been content to simply make his mark as a major Jiffy Lube franchisee. He has volunteered at the highest levels of some of central Indiana’s highest profile organizations, including the Indiana Sports Corp., the local organizing committee for the Big Ten Football Championship and the Washington Township Schools Foundation. And he has used his Jiffy Lubes as a platform for some surprising community-minded initiatives. He has supported Indiana artists by commissioning 30 murals for his stores. He’s kicking off a campaign called “No ticket, let’s fix it,” in which police officers around the state give motorists $25 Jiffy Lube gift cards to get minor car repairs, at a total retail value so far of $300,000. It’s a great way to get motorists into Jiffy Lube, but Sanner says he also wants to promote positive interactions between police and motorists while keeping roads safer.
Sanner is the guest for this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast. He starts with a few wild stories about his early days as an entrepreneur and how he got a foothold as a Jiffy Lube franchisee. He reacts to some of the common complaints that consumers have about oil change shops. And he talks at length about his secondary career as a volunteer, including being in charge of all of the laundry in the March Madness bubble when Indianapolis hosted all of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2021.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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