The IBJ Podcast

Program hopes to reduce infant mortality in Indy by focusing on housing

Recent studies from across the country have helped solidify the link between housing instability—for example, substandard conditions, homelessness or needing to move regularly—and poor infant health. In a pilot program based in Ohio called Healthy Beginnings at Home, organizers wanted to test the impact of providing pregnant women struggling to find stable homes with rental assistance and other services to secure their housing situations. In the group of mothers in the pilot program, there were no infant deaths, and there were more full-term healthy births than in a control group. The pilot group also saw shorter stays in neo-natal intensive care and a reduced need for emergency health care.

 

The Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI has received a five-year, $2.4 million federal grant to launch an initiative to reduce Indianapolis’ infant mortality rate. And it specifically will address housing instability. Called the Housing Equity for Infant Health Initiative, the program will provide support for pregnant women and mothers with infants under 1 year old. The organizers then will evaluate the program’s impact on birth outcomes and health care costs.

CareSource, a not-for-profit that provides health care insurance coverage through public programs including Medicaid and Medicare, was a key participant in the Ohio-based pilot of Healthy Beginnings at Home. It is also a key player in bringing Healthy Beginnings at Home to this Initiative in Indianapolis. A second major piece of the initiative is focused on health justice. Led by the Indiana Justice Project, it will combine legal education, direct legal services, strategic litigation, and advocacy to improve both housing stability and housing conditions for pregnant Hoosiers.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King digs into the details with two guests: Dr. Cameual Wright, an OBGYN and vice president and market chief medical officer with CareSource; and Jack E. Turman Jr. He’s the director of the Housing Equity for Infant Health Initiative and the Grassroots Maternal and Child Health Initiative, as well as a professor in the Fairbanks School of Public Health. They cover the link between unstable housing and poor infant health, the difficulty in quantifying the extent of the problem, and the hope that the initiative will lead to larger efforts across the state.

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GangGang’s founders on promoting art, equity and Indy culture

In just two years, the arts and culture startup known as Gang Gang has become one of the most influential and active producers of events in Indianapolis, promoting the creative economy and the concept of equity. The founders are Malina Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon, working from the precept that creative people of color continue to be underrepresented and underrecognized for their contributions to culture. GangGang means to change that. The group wants to bring these artists to the forefront, but everyone is welcome to collaborate.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, guest host Dave Lindquist asks Jeffers and Bacon about the impact of “We. The Culture: Works by the Eighteen Art Collective,” a ground-breaking exhibit curated by GangGang that debuted last month at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. They discuss Butter 2, the second edition of GangGang’s fine art festival featuring work by Black visual artists. They also touch on the blueprint that GangGang is creating for stimulating the creative economy, why the group is trying to raise $500,000 by the end of the year, and what they foresee for GangGang over the next five years.  

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Butler’s Barry Collier on longevity, competing in Big East and hiring Thad Matta

To the extent Butler University has become a known quantity at the national level, we can thank its basketball program. Since 2006, the Bulldogs have earned seeds in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament 10 times, including reaching the national championship final twice. That 16-year period also coincides with the tenure of Barry Collier as Butler’s athletic director. He didn’t need an introduction to Bulldog fans when he was hired for the job, since he had coached the basketball team from 1989 to 2000, earning three NCAA tournament appearances. During that stretch, he was Horizon League Coach of the Year four times.

Over the past 16 years, Collier also has presided over an aggressive push into higher levels of competition, jumping from the Horizon League to the Atlantic 10 in 2012, and then to the Big East in 2013. Since then, Butler has invested tens of millions of dollars in renovating or building athletic facilities for a broad range of sports, with the cost largely picked up by donors. And in fact, Collier has enjoyed particular success since 2006 increasing the number of donors and the amounts they give to Butler athletics.

In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King asks Collier, now 68, whether he plans to retire soon. That leads o a conversation about long-term goals, his success in fundraising and improving Butler athletic facilities, and Butler’s transition to the Big East. He looks to the past, including what he learned from Butler coaching legend Tony Hinkle, and to the future and his expectations for Butler basketball this year with the return of Thad Matta as head coach.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Whiskey a-go-go: How Hotel Tango went from Fletcher Place to 25 states

In 2013, the Indiana Legislature created a path for artisan distillers to produce and sell spirits to the public by the glass, bottle or case. The hope was to start a micro-distilling industry in Indiana, and one of the first businesses to take the leap was called Hotel Tango Distillery. It was co-founded by husband-and-wife attorneys Travis and Hilary Barnes. With the help of a handful of investors, they opened a production facility and tasting room in an early 20^th century carriage house in the Fletcher Place neighborhood.

In eight years, it has grown to three tasting rooms in Indiana and retail sales in 25 states and on 120 military bases around the world. For 2022, Travis Barnes expects total sales of about $6 million.

Travis is a former Marine who served in the elite special operations Reconnaissance force. He enlisted right after 9/11, and it turned out to be a life-changing experience, going well beyond the serious injuries he suffered in Iraq. A lot of what he learned in the military is encoded in the values and processes of Hotel Tango. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, he discusses Hotel Tango’s creation, its rocketing sales and how one of the state’s first micro-distilleries could establish such a big footprint in less than a decade.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Indianapolis, suburbs banding together to free up more state road funding

Indianapolis leaders have pleaded with state lawmakers for decades to change the state’s formula for funding local roads, which they say shows favoritism to rural counties with sparse traffic. When the state determines how much funding to pass along, it counts streets, roads and thoroughfares by their length. So, for example, a one-mile stretch of a two-lane road in rural Parke County would carry the same weight as a one-mile stretch of the six-lane Keystone Avenue on the north side of Indianapolis. City officials would prefer the funding formula place greater importance on traffic volume and an area’s population.

But there’s new hope leaders in the Indianapolis area can persuade Indiana lawmakers to make some changes. Suburban mayors in cities like Carmel, Fishers and Greenwood are becoming acutely aware that that the state’s funding mechanisms put their municipalities at a disadvantage.

The cities are banding together in hopes their collective voice will be heard during next year’s General Assembly. In a conversation with IBJ Podcast host Mason King, IBJ reporter Peter Blanchard discusses the state formula and the potential that legislators would be receptive to funding charges.

 

Indiana Fever’s president on team’s 5-31 season and strategy for rebuilding

The Indiana Fever just endured its worst season since joining the WNBA in 2000. On Aug. 14, it finished the season on an 18-game losing streak, posting a record of 5-31.

The Fever won the WNBA title 10 years ago, but the team hasn’t made the playoffs since 2016. It also hopes to see a major turnaround in attendance. Due to ongoing renovations at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the team hosted home games in three arenas last season, and its average home crowd fell to about 1,800 fans. That’s roughly a quarter of what it drew in the mid-2010s.

In 2019, Allison Barber was named president and chief operating officer of the Fever, which already was in rebuild mode. Since then, the team has won roughly a quarter of its games. Barber has an impressive resume that includes significant communications and community relations positions at the American Red Cross, White House and Department of Defense. Prior to joining the Fever, she was chancellor of Western Governors University Indiana.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King asks Barber why progress on the court has been so slow in coming. And Barber shares her take on the 2022 season, the franchise’s new rebuild strategy, her top priorities in the off-season and the challenges of leading an organization mired in a rough transition.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Pete the Planner: Money lessons for your kids (and refreshers for adults)

We want our kids to learn how money and personal finances work at a fairly early age so they learn how to make smart decisions. IBJ happens to have a good resource for this bit of childhood development: personal finance columnist Pete Dunn, aka Pete the Planner. He has two kids, ages 10 and 13, and has spent several years trying to imprint them with economic wisdom. IBJ Podcast host Mason King has a 6-year-old with a keen interest in money, so he has turned to Pete for his advice in this week’s edition of the podcast.

There are two kinds of advice here. There is the practical, mechanical side of money: yeaching your kids how to make money, how to save it, how to spend it, how to invest it and how to earn interest. Pete has been guiding his daughter through hands-on experiences with money since at least the age of 7, as she buys shares of stock, starts internet businesses and helps pay the family’s mortgage every month. The other kind of advice is more about values. How should you handle debt? How much should you rely on your family for financial help? Is becoming rich, by itself, a worthwhile goal? Is the experience of a teen working a regular job more or less valuable than trying to burnish a college resume with sports and academics?

In the end, a lot of this advice is just as appropriate for adults.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

How do you solve a problem like Monument Circle?

Monument Circle is the heart of Indianapolis—and has been since the town of Indianapolis was platted in 1821. Unfortunately, the Circle is subject to the same wear and tear as any street.

In the 1970s, its surface—both the street and the adjacent sidewalks—were replaced by red bricks. As a nod to the Circle’s historic status, bricks are terrific. But those bricks must continually be replaced, which is a constant challenge for the city. More recently, it has become evident that the very foundation of the Circle below those bricks needs to be replaced. What’s more—the conventional wisdom for more than a decade has been that we could do more to make the Circle more attractive, more pedestrian-friendly and more conducive to public gatherings.

In 2014, the Ballard administration plotted a complete rebuild of the streets and sidewalks of Monument Circle and its four main spokes on Meridian and Market streets. The cost—$54 million—was prohibitive.

The city has since embarked on similar projects along East and West Market Streets, which officials hope can serve as a kind of proof of concept for a Monument Circle redo. The Hogsett administration has dusted off the Ballard plan and is strategizing how to turn it into reality. It very likely will require a mix of city, state and federal funds, plus perhaps some philanthropic assistance, to the tune of $60 million.

A circle seems like a simple shape, but this is a very complex puzzle for city officials. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Dan Parker, director of the Indianapolis Department of Public Works, talks with host Mason King about the direction the city is taking and what roadblocks could be in the way.

 

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

Cake Bake Shop founder living Disney dream, but ‘leveraged’

It’s no small achievement that Gwendolyn Rogers correctly predicted that Hoosiers would pay a pretty penny for high-end baked goods in an environment right out of “Cinderella.” In 2014, she opened The Cake Bake Shop in Broad Ripple, transforming a free-standing home on the north side of the village into a kind of confectioner’s paradise, populated with sparking accents and a cozy but high-end aesthetic. It offered regular table service, topped off with towering and indulgent cakes—including the deluxe chocolate cake she used to win the London Cake & Bake Show in 2013.

In 2019, she opened a second Cake Bake Shop in Carmel. And in April of this year she announced that a longtime dream of hers had come true: The Walt Disney World Resort revealed that a Cake Bake Shop would open next year at Disney’s BoardWalk.

But there’s a lot more to the Cake Bake story than the new location. Rogers has put a lot on the line over the last eight years to establish and grow the brand, including a hefty financial commitment. She was saved during the pandemic by a relationship with Williams Sonoma that made her cakes available on the high-end retailer’s website. In eight years, she has gone from a single employee to nearly 190. But as she tells host Mason King in this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, she dreamed of opening in Disney World even before launching the Broad Ripple store.

 

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

After triple-bypass surgery, Chuck Lofton is doubling down on extending TV news career

Chuck Lofton was hired as a weather forecaster and anchor for WTHR Channel 13’s “Sunrise” morning show when it debuted in 1985. He since has survived any number of severe weather events, including tracking tornados, as well as the notoriously fickle TV news business.

But in March, he had a big health scare, followed by triple-bypass heart surgery and a two-month recovery off the air. At 65, he would seem to be a prime candidate for winding up his career and taking it easy. But in some ways, he is healthier now than he was five years ago, and he’s enjoying the work more as well. At one point he assumed that 65 would be the end of his career, but now his attitude is much more open-ended.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Lofton chats with host Mason King about his longevity in the TV news business; the offers he’s had—but not taken—to move up from the Indianapolis market; the close shaves he has experienced in the field; and whether there is room on local TV news to talk about the politically charged topic of climate change.

 

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.