Staff / BizTech
Stories by Nathan Prescott 21
BizTech
Ozinga opens East Chicago slag cement mill, with about 50 union jobs at full run
The Mokena-based concrete company cut the ribbon Oct. 13 on a plant it says will grind 1 million tons a year of cement from steel-mill slag, shipping by rail, barge and truck.
BizTech
Amazon’s third million-square-foot I-65 box rises on Crown Point’s 101st Ave.
The Times reports construction on a new Amazon warehouse south of the Mississippi Street facility — the corridor’s third shed over 1 million square feet. Crown Point’s Plan Commission also put Venture Park 65’s secondary plat and site plan on its October calendar.
BizTech
PNW's Hammond Impact Lab lands $2M federal grant for a startup academy
A U.S. Commerce Department award will fund a 16-week entrepreneurship academy at Purdue University Northwest's Roberts Impact Lab in downtown Hammond. The first cohort is planned for spring 2027.
BizTech
Burns Harbor grain terminal is back in business under Louis Dreyfus
The Lake Michigan export terminal in Portage reopened Sept. 30 after three idle years. It has 11 workers, 7.2 million bushels of storage and a new buyer for Region corn and soybeans.
BizTech
Microsoft’s Granger datacenter clears another county vote with a second utility MOU
St. Joseph County’s Redevelopment Commission and Board of Commissioners approved a second memorandum of understanding with Microsoft on Oct. 6 for Mishawaka water and sewer to the roughly 900-acre Granger campus — not final project approval. Up to 300 full-time jobs are expected.
BizTech
UChicago Medicine buys into Valparaiso with 43,500-square-foot care center
The academic health system will turn a finished but never-used Glendale Boulevard medical building into a primary, imaging, infusion and specialty care site, with a 2027 opening.
Tech
Indiana is a data-center hub — here’s the money, megawatts, and map
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta have pledged tens of billions and gigawatts of power across Indiana and Northwest Indiana. Sourced figures make the growth tangible — and show why announced load still isn’t energized load.
BizTech
Your 2020 dollar buys about 78 cents — N3 Ledger reading the CPI
FRED’s CPIAUCSL puts the U.S. purchasing-power index at 77.6 as of August 2026, about a 22.4% drop since January 2020 — what that means for Northwest Indiana grocery carts and pay stubs.
BizTech
Real hourly pay barely beats 2020 — N3 Ledger on wages after inflation
Derived real average hourly earnings sit at index 102.98 (Jan 2020 = 100). Nominal $37.75/hr is about $29.28 in early-2020 dollars — and the index slipped 0.27 points year over year.
BizTech
30-year mortgage at 7.03% — N3 Ledger on housing capital costs
Freddie Mac’s MORTGAGE30US averaged 7.03% the week of Sept. 24, 2026 — far above the 2.65% trough hit in January 2021. What that rate gap means for NWI buyers and employers.
BizTech
Amazon leases Crown Point fulfillment hub, pledges 500 jobs
A 1.2 million-square-foot Venture Park 65 site on the I-65 corridor will handle large-format inventory, with operations eyed for 2027 and hiring a month or two before open.
BizTech
Cliffs consolidates NWI plate mills — no layoffs, company says
Cleveland-Cliffs is idling a Burns Harbor plate line and its Gary Plate finishing operation inside U.S. Steel’s Gary Works, shifting work to a larger 160-inch mill while promising transfers, not cuts.
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