February 2007
Welcome to eFYI,
your exclusive monthly e-newsletter from Greater Louisville Inc. - The
Metro Chamber of Commerce. As one of our valued partners, you can count
on eFYI to cover the topics and issues of most interest and benefit to you. Share
your comments and ideas with us any time at VFisher@greaterlouisville.com.
 Louisville lands major pharma company
Encouraging educational attainment news
Louisville International gains new non-stop flight
options
New institute to focus on heart
Norton Healthcare to invest $100 million to expand
cancer programs
Community and local businesses top national rankings
City buying building for science center expansion
Co-founder of Apple to speak at festival
Forbes: Louisville firms among best big companies in
America
Ali will return home, buys Louisville house
Louisville movie team sells 2 films at Sundance
Purdue to expand presence in area
Louisville lands major pharma
company
Landing
Louisville's
fifth Fortune 1000 corporate headquarters excites city economic
development officials for more reasons than its 200 high-paying jobs.
Corporate headquarters like that of PharMerica Corp.,
a new institutional pharmacy company that chose
Louisville as its base, are highly
desirable because of their potential for growth and their ripple effect
on the local economy.
For example, liquor company Brown-Forman Corp. is valued for its 763
headquarters jobs as well as the money it pays to hotels and airlines to
bring brand managers to town for meetings.
Corporate headquarters hire services that many other operations don't --
including auditors, banks, law firms, advertising companies and public
relations firms.
The PharMerica headquarters, formed by a merger
involving Kindred Healthcare's pharmacy unit, is expected to create about
200 jobs with an average salary of about $77,000. Those employees will
join about 100 Kindred pharmacy headquarters employees already in
Louisville. Read
more.
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Encouraging
educational attainment news
Recently released data indicates increased graduation rates of young
adults in
Louisville and that more
Kentucky college
graduates are staying in the Commonwealth. The news is a positive
indicator for that efforts to develop and grow a well-educated and
qualified workforce are netting positive results.
A study from KentuckianaWorks, the work-force development board for the
seven-county area around
Louisville, shows
Louisville's
drive to create a better-educated work force has gained some traction
among young adults.
More local adults 25 to 34 years old are completing high school,
attending college or getting their bachelor's degree.
The board's annual Human Capital Scorecard measures the metropolitan
area's educational achievements and compares them to 15 similar cities in
the region, including
Indianapolis,
Nashville, and
Cincinnati. Read
more.
Also, acccording to a study released by the state's Council on
Postsecondary Education,
the vast majority of people who earn degrees at
Kentucky's public colleges and
universities stay in the state after graduating.
The study -- which compared 2006 figures with a 2000 study -- also found
that more out-of-state students are choosing to stay in
Kentucky after earning their degrees.
Roughly half of international students also remain in state. Read
more.
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Louisville International gains new non-stop flight options
Announcements by two airlines offer air travelers into and out of
Louisville
International
Airport
new options for non-stop flights to top destinations.
 Frontier
Airlines will begin offering two daily nonstop flights serving
Denver on April 1, adding a major Western route at
Louisville
International
Airport.
Republic Airlines, which handles regional flights for Delta Air Lines, US
Airways, American Airlines and United Airlines, will operate the
Denver flights for
Frontier. Read
more.
And ExpressJet has announced that it will offer new nonstop flights at
Louisville
International
Airport.
 ExpressJet,
which operates Continental flights in
Louisville, is launching its own brand
of air service in 24 cities. From
Louisville,
it will fly two daily nonstop round trips to
Kansas
City,
Mo., and two round
trips to
Raleigh-Durham,
N.C., starting in May. Read
more.
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New institute to focus on heart
Heart disease is endemic in Wayne Gunnell's family, so he welcomes the
new Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, which will research and develop
treatments for heart disease -- including cutting-edge devices such as
artificial hearts.
The institute, a partnership between the
University of
Louisville
and Jewish Hospital & St. Mary's HealthCare, officially opened in
January.
The institute will focus on heart-assist devices as well as gene
therapies and other technologies.
For instance, researchers will continue work on an
artificial heart for children. They also will study using implanted
sensors to detect increases in pulmonary artery pressure, so that heart
problems can be treated early. And they will look at helping the heart
recover using adult stem cells. Read
more.
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Norton
Healthcare to invest $100 million to expand cancer programs
Norton Healthcare Inc. is pledging to spend an additional $100 million in
the next five years to increase its clinical cancer care program. The
company also is renaming its Norton Cancer Care program to Norton Cancer
Institute.
As part of the effort, the company will provide more prevention and
support services across the community.
Last year, Norton spent about $54 million on cancer-related programs and
services, according to figures provided by Norton. The $100 million in
investments will be in addition to the company's current operating costs
for cancer care.
The investment will include expanding resources not only to diagnose and
treat more cancer patients but also to provide education across the
community about early detection and prevention -- services that in many
cases do not generate revenue. Read
more.
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Community and local businesses
top national rankings
Louisville and
businesses in Greater Louisville continue to rate high on national polls
and lists.
For the second year in a row,
Louisville
has been named one of the "100 Best Communities for Young
People" by
America
's
Promise.
The organization was started by former U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell to promote mentoring, education and volunteerism to
children and young adults.
Louisville was selected for its partnerships with Jefferson County Public
Schools, including Every 1 Reads, an initiative that aims to have all
children reading at or above grade level by 2008; the Louisville
Education and Employment Partnership program, which provides mentors to
at-risk students; and Kid Trax, a computer software system that gives
after-school programs access to a database of students' school records. Read
more.
Of the 50 companies chosen as winners of the third annual Best Places to
Work in
Kentucky competition, 20 are
located in
Louisville.
The awards, given by The Kentucky Society for Human Resource Management
State Council and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, are based on an
assessment of employee policies and an employee survey. Read
more.
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City buying building for science
center expansion
 The
Louisville
Science
Center,
a mainstay on
West Main
Street since the late 1970s, soon will be
expanded with the purchase of a neighboring building by
Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government.
The science center plans to invest $1 million initially to convert the
first floor of the facility into a science education wing.
The new wing, with more than 5,300 square feet, will
include four science-workshop laboratories designed for hands-on student,
parent and teacher activities. Construction is expected to begin in late
spring or early summer and be complete by early 2008.
The new wing will allow the center to strengthen its mission of improving
math and science proficiency statewide and allow for future science
center growth. Read
more.
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Co-founder of Apple to speak at
festival
 Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak, inventor of the company's first computer, will
be a speaker at the 2007 IdeaFestival in
Louisville in September.
Besides Wozniak, the festival is working to attract
journalists, chefs, designers and filmmakers.
IdeaFestival gathers thinkers from various backgrounds to talk about big
ideas and how innovations can change the way we live. Read
more.
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Forbes:
Louisville
firms among best big companies in
America
Brown-Forman Corp., Humana Inc. and The Genlyte Group were among the
names on Forbes Magazine's recent Platinum 400 list of the Best Big
Companies in
America
.
Forbes compiled the list based on examinations of more than 1,000 corporations
in a range of industries with annual revenue of $1 billion or more.
Forbes examined a range of measures, including one- and five-year stock
returns, earnings-per-share and revenue growth, debt-to-capital ratios
and long-term growth prospects. Read
more.
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Ali will return home, buys
Louisville house
 Muhammad
Ali is coming home.
The three-time heavyweight boxing champ and
Louisville
legend and his wife, Lonnie, have purchased a $1.9 million home in an
eastern
Jefferson
County subdivision.
The move to
Louisville
would bring Ali close to the museum and education center named for him,
as well as to the city where he was born Cassius Clay and learned to box. Read
more.
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Louisville movie team sells 2
films at Sundance
Louisville film
entrepreneurs Ed Hart and Bruce Lunsford caught lightning in a bottle at
the Sundance Film Festival when they sold not one, but both of their
festival entries.
One of those movies, "Grace is Gone," is in the running for
Sundance prizes and is creating buzz as an Oscar contender. It is a story
about a family's grief after their soldier mother is killed in the
Iraq
war.
The other movie, "Dedication," is a dark romantic comedy.
Sundance, the Park City, Utah, festival started by Robert Redford, chose
only 122 feature films for screening out of nearly 3,300 entries. Read
more.
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Purdue to expand presence in area
The Purdue College of Technology in
New
Albany, a branch campus, is increasing the
number of four-year degrees it offers, including computer graphics
technology.
The Purdue expansion is designed to attract and meet the needs of more
students from
Kentucky
and Southern.
And the expanded degree programs aren't the only
Southern
Indiana initiative for Purdue.
It's also planning to open a
New
Albany technology center in fall 2008, with
classrooms and space to nurture high-tech businesses. Read
more.
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