Southern Indiana update: the region's top business stories.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: REGIONAL REPORT SOUTH

A GROWING MEDICAL-device industry and a second casino in the region are top stories in southern Indiana.

High wages. Jeffersonville landed a new employer when Louisville-based MedVenture Technology Corp. chose NorthPort Business Park as the site for its new 85,000-square-foot operation. The company is a contract design, development and manufacturing firm that handles various aspects of client products, including minimally invasive surgical products for major medical-supply firms. It will hire 170 by 2007 and 500 by 2010. "These jobs are high-wage positions," says Jack Ragland, president of the Southern Indiana Economic Development Council.

Also in the NorthPort park, Key Electronics will soon expand into its new $4 million, 160,000-square-foot building. The company currently employs 94 and plans to add another 40 over the next three years. It makes components for occupational and environmental medical devices, electronic instrumentation and other consumer and industrial control products.

Good bet. Orange County residents will soon have their pick of some 1,400 new jobs as tourism reawakens with a $250 million infusion of renovation dollars and new casino construction. Blue Sky Casino opens year-end 2006. French Lick Springs Resort is open, with remodeling under way And by May 2007, a renovated West Baden Springs Resort will reopen.

Caesars Indiana in Elizabeth, this region's other casino and the largest Harrison County employer with 2,115 on the payroll, has been purchased by Harrah's Entertainment. The 93,000-square-foot casino, the state's biggest, and its 500 hotel rooms and nine restaurants are being re-branded as a Horseshoe Casino.

Furniture makers. Jasper Seating Co., with plants in Paoli and French Lick that employ 200, launched a contract-office-furniture division in 2005 that boosted sales by 30 percent, says Judy Gray, executive director of the Orange County Economic Development Partnership. "Plans are to continue to invest in buildings and equipment," she says. The company also makes upholstered seating and library furniture.

Ravaged by floods that hit Salem in 2004, the children's furniture maker, Child Craft Industries, has relocated to New Salisbury in Harrison County The family-owned business took over a facility vacated by Keller Furniture when it consolidated sites. Employment at Child...