The Columbus Young Professionals group is accepting nominations for its NextGen Awards, a program supported by the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce. CYP will accept nominations for the following categories until July 27th:

YP Volunteer of the Year
YP Innovator of the Year
YP Educator of the Year
Unsung Hero
NextGen Business of the Year

Nomination forms are available online at columbusyp.org/nextgen.

Finalists and category winners will be recognized at the NextGen Awards Ceremony Luncheon on Friday, September 7th at 11:30 a.m. at The Commons. Tickets for the event will go on sale later this summer.

Three North Vernon residents were arrested Saturday night. North Vernon Police say that at 10:55 p.m., 26-year-old Sheldon Vanosdol, was arrested for Possession of Methamphetamine, Possession of Paraphernalia, Possession of a Syringe and Operating while Suspended with a Prior Conviction. Twenty-two year-old Devin Short was arrested for Visiting a Common Nuisance and 20-year-old Kaleigh Brown was arrested for Possession of Methamphetamine. All three subjects were arrested on South State Street.

A ceremony recognizing the 10th anniversary of the June 2008 flood in Columbus will be held in the Pleasant Grove neighborhood of East Columbus this week.

Organizer Eric Riddle explains the importance of the former Pleasant Grove Area:

He said that the area was one of the hardest hit by the 2008 flood, leading to more than 40 homes being removed.

In 2011, a group of students created the Puddles to Parks orchard, planting fruit trees at the sites of the former homes.

At Thursday’s anniversary event you can help plant 10 fruit trees in commemoration.

The ceremonies will be from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Thursday afternoon.

The JCB Neighborfest concert series in downtown Columbus will kick off its season with the Woomblies Rock Orchestra from Indianapolis Thursday .

The show will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday evening on Washington Street outside The Commons.

Erin Hawkins with the Columbus Area Visitors Center explains a new partnership that will help make Neighborfest even more fun:

Fun on Fourth is a company formed by the operators of The Garage and Fourth Street Bar to better promote downtown Columbus.

Fun on Fourth will be providing drinks for the concert, while Savory Swine will be offering food for sale.

The concert series is also moving its start time to later in the evening, than in previous years. The Neighborfest concerts were originally scheduled assuming that people would come straight from work.

The free Neighborfest community concerts are held on the first Thursday of the month, June through September. For more information on the Neighborfest concerts, or any Arts Council event, you can go to artsincolumbus.org.

Data Cave, a Columbus data storage company has been sold to Immedion of Greenville, South Carolina. Immedion announced the acquisition this morning.

Immedion said that the Data Cave offers geographic diversity and will help expand the company’s reliable, high performance data Cloud services. Data Cave marks eight data centers in seven markets that the company will operate.

Data Cave features 28 private, independent data suites with dedicated heating and air conditioning, fire suppression and electrical distribution systems. The center is rated to withstand an EF5 tornado. The company said Columbus was attractive because of the low-risks of severe weather, the low population density and low crime rate.

Immedion Press Release

The Columbus Redevelopment Commission is announcing a special meeting tomorrow. The agency will be meeting at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday  to consider the need to continue to capture all of the revenue possible from the city’s four tax increment financing districts.

The decision will affect millions of dollars in tax revenues that are being taken away from the county, schools, libraries and other taxing units that overlap the city’s four tax increment financing districts.

In a tax increment financing, or TIF district, a baseline property tax revenue level is set when the district is created. That base will always go to overlapping taxing units such as the city, county, library and school district. Any rising tax revenue above the baseline goes to the redevelopment commission to be spent on projects in that district.

However that decision has to be renewed annually. Since the TIF districts were first formed., Columbus has decided to retain all of that revenue. That has been a frequent bone of contention with some of the other government bodies who would like to see some of that new revenue, such as Bartholomew County.

Columbus has four TIF districts including the downtown and Walesboro areas, the Cummins Engine Plant  on Central Avenue and the airport.

The TIF districts are estimated to bring in more than $12.5 million dollars to the Redevelopment Commission this year.

4 p.m. Friday update

Thousands of residents in our area remain without power after severe weather swept through yesterday afternoon.

Duke Energy is reporting about 4,500 customers in southeastern Indiana without power, including about 1,500 customers without power in the Bartholomew County and almost 1,200 in Jennings and Jackson Counties.

Chip Orben with Duke says that crews are having to clean up a lot of downed vegetation before they can get to restoring power in some areas. Extra crews are on scene, he said.

Bartholomew County REMC is reporting 18 customers without power. Crews had to come in for a mandatory rest period last night before heading back out this morning to make the rest of the repairs.

Jackson County REMC says that about 75 customers are still without power and Southeastern Indiana REMC is reporting about 640 outages in their service area, including 85 customers in Jennings County.

The Town Square in Hope will be a busy place this weekend.

The first farmers market for the year in the town of Hope will be tonight on the Town Square. The markets are from 5 to 8 on the first Friday of the month. In addition to vendors and produce, the farmer’s markets feature a classic car cruise-in on the east side of the square and live music. This week’s show will feature the Night Owl Country Band. The markets are organized by Main Street of Hope.

On Saturday, the Hope Town Square will be the site for the town’s Relay for Life. That will be from 8 a.m. in the morning until 11 p.m. Saturday night. WISH Tv weatherman Randy Ollis will be the featured speaker, at 9:30 at the bandstand on the HOpe Town Square. He will be giving the survivor’s speech and will be talking about his very public battle with the disease.

Thousands of residents in and around Columbus remain without power as of 4:30 a.m. after severe weather hit the area Thursday afternoon.

Duke Energy is reporting several scattered outages says that some costumers may be without power for hours.

Bartholomew County REMC says that 156 customers are without power.

Jackson County REMC says that nearly 1,200 customers are still in the dark.

Southeastern Indiana REMC announced that over 2,300 customers are without power. Officials say that crews had to stop work at 10:30 Thursday night for a mandatory eight-hour rest period and that work to restore service will resume this morning.

South Central Indiana REMC is reporting that six customers in Brown County and four in Monroe County remain without power.

We will update these numbers as this story develops.

Columbus Firefighters extinguished a storage shed fire Thursday morning in the 3200 block of Sycamore Drive. Capt. Mike Wilson, spokesman for the Columbus Fire Department, says that at approximately 6:34 a.m. firefighters were dispatched to a report of a tree on fire in in the back yard of a home. As firefighters responded to the scene they were informed that a storage shed was also on fire. The caller told dispatchers that flames were spreading to additional trees and that a two story apartment complex was very close to where the fire was located.

Firefighters arrived at the scene at approximately 6:40 a.m. As they approached the blaze they found that a wooden privacy fence was also on fire. This fence separates Legacy Oaks Condominiums, and the subject property. Wilson says the fire was extinguished within minutes. As firefighters continued to apply water to smoldering hot-spots, they noted damage to an additional storage structure owned by the apartment complex. Radiant heat warped vinyl siding of that building. In addition, Wilson says that a pair of trees located near the shed were charred and low hanging limbs burned away.

The shed contained a lawn mower, lawn and garden items and bicycles. Damages to property and contents at are estimated at $ 3,000. Damage to the storage facility at the condominiums is estimated at $500. No injuries were reported and a cause for the blaze has not been determined.