Action Air Fishers: Heating and Air Conditioning Company Keeps It Local

Action Air owners John and Kandie Dinger with co-owner Gary Sylvester. (Front) Bentley.

When John Dinger got a call to repair a furnace some 35 years ago, little did he know that service call would lead him not only to his future wife, but also his business partner. John and Kandie Dinger started Action Air Heating and Air Conditioning back in 1986 as a two-person company that they operated out of their garage. Today, they are headquartered in Fishers and with 15 employees, they service Indianapolis, Fishers, Geist, Anderson, and the surrounding areas.

About ten years ago, they partnered with Gary Sylvester who helped round out their team by bringing management skills and a business acumen to the company. John is involved in the technical service-call side, and Kandie handles all the office, payroll, human resources, and marketing functions. Having a hands-on woman in charge in what is typically a man’s field, she says, is rare. But she says people realize quickly that she knows her business.

Action Air specializes in the service and replacement of all major brands of furnaces, air conditioners, and heat pumps. They also handle indoor air-quality issues such as filtration and duct cleaning. One area that they pride themselves in is their low-cost maintenance program which includes two service calls per year: one for furnaces during the heating months and the other for air conditioning during the cooling season. The Action Air Service Club can help save customers money by keeping equipment operating at peak efficiency, extending the life of the system, and troubleshooting potential problems before they happen. Kandie says that the average lifespan of a furnace or air conditioner is 12 to 15 years, and one of the biggest reasons that they don’t last longer is lack of maintenance.

She stresses that unlike many other HVAC firms that are owned by large foreign companies, Action Air is truly a local mom and pop business. ”We’re a local company and live in the area. A lot of the people we do furnace and air conditioning work for are people that we are friends with.” She adds that Action Air takes full responsibility for their work; and if it doesn’t get fixed properly the first time, they will make sure the job gets done right. “We try really hard to take really good care of folks. We’re not just going to do a drive-by, 15-minute tune-up on your air conditioner. They’re usually in your home for an hour to an hour and a half. They’re really thorough,” she says.

One of the challenges to the heating and air conditioning business these days, Kandie says, is all the added regulation and new requirements. The cost of providing freon or coolant for older units is becoming prohibitive, so, as a result, it is often cheaper to replace an older unit with a more modern one. Action Air can help you choose the type of system that is best for your home should you need a new one, and financing options are available.

Action Air has been an Angie’s List Super Service Award winner for eleven years in a row and is highly rated by the Better Business Bureau. And as Kandie says about their Mom and Pop operation, “Mom and Pop go to work every day.” So does their dog, Bentley. It really is a family affair.

Action Air
13284 Britton Park Road
Fishers, IN 46038
317-585-8981/Toll Free 1-866-585-8981
www.ActionAirFishers.com
Kandie@ActionAirFishers.com

Petal Pusher: McNamara Florist is Homegrown

Toomie Farris, owner of McNamara Florist, touches up some holiday decorations.

I defy you to walk into a McNamara florist shop and not come away feeling better. The combination of incredible smells, vibrant colors, and the presence of the miracle of living things is an instant mood enhancer. It is compounded by the fact that McNamara goes all out in its arrangements and decorations, especially during the holidays. The holiday decorating doesn’t just happen either; it takes months of preparation and literally days and weeks of work according to McNamara’s owner, Toomie Farris, who says they make 1600 arrangements for Christmas alone. He is so hands on that he does all the holiday ordering himself.

Farris has done it all for McNamara ever since he went to work for its founder back in 1980. Bob McNamara started the business in 1954 and is still on the company’s board of directors. Farris bought the business in 2007 after going through a string of transitions. Since 1990, it has been owned by several companies including Marsh Supermarkets, which sold out to a private equity firm in 2006 taking McNamara Florist along.

McNamara employee Barbara Hines works on a flower arrangement

It was at that point that Farris put a group of investors together and bought it. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t the best as the economy took a major dive in 2007. He says the impact was pretty dramatic. “We expected to be growing in upper single digits to double digits like we had for the last 10 or 15 years. Instead, we started declining in double digits which was pretty typical of retail around that timeframe. So it was challenging, but we managed to keep our head above water.” He adds that the economy is still not great but they are proud of their continued growth and expansion despite the weak economy.

The company’s growth includes moving the original store in Broadripple to Glendale last year and opening a store in Geist at Brooks School and Fall Creek and another store in Avon in November of this year. That brings McNamara’s store count up to 9, including a 6-acre greenhouse and garden center/flower shop complex in Fort Wayne, plus a 58,000-square-foot warehouse in Fishers. There is an industry trend toward importing flowers; and Farris says even though McNamara does import from six continents for seasonal varieties, they also grow a lot of their own flowers in Fort Wayne. “We’re pretty unique in the country in that we are vertically integrated – that we still are growing things ourselves. Most people just buy products from other growers. We really want to keep that homegrown local flavor as much as possible.”

Homegrown is what makes McNamara stand out. The company focuses on local relationships, and they are proud that most of McNamara’s store managers have been with them for a long time and have developed their own relationships in their own communities. He points out that companies such as ProFlowers, 1-800-Flowers, and FTD are national businesses that charge customers a service fee and then place the order with a local florist at a deep discount. So, he asserts that everyone loses in that situation: The customer is basically paying for the privilege of doing business with them and is being overcharged, and the local florist is being underpaid for the product.

Each McNamara store has decked the halls for the holidays.

Farris is very involved in a national movement called “Florists for Change,” which is made up of florists who want to create a different scenario. Farris says they don’t want to go the way of the local grocery store and disappear, and he thinks the kind of business that is personal and relationship-based is not just about selling product. “People can go buy flowers anywhere, if they just want to drop them in a vase or something. But if they want something to give their wife for their anniversary or they want to send it to the funeral home, they want it to be special. It means something. What we do is express emotions. It isn’t buying a widget, so there is creativity involved and there’s customization. As a business, we custom design same day and deliver. There’s not much else you can do that can be custom designed to your wishes – that you can call in the morning and have it delivered that afternoon.”

Farris says his company is also unusual in that it is expanding its retail stores when others are closing them and the small florist is being squeezed out. But he says part of the McNamara brand is being able to come into the stores and see and embrace what’s there and come away with ideas. He says they are available online 24 hours a day, by phone, and they will even come out to your home or business and work with customers on site. But he thinks people are still looking for experiences in retail and that’s why he’s still going all in on brick and mortar stores. “When they walk into one of our stores we want them to feel good and feel welcome, get ideas and be able to look at all the pretty things and be inspired.”

Like many businesses today, everything isn’t all rosy in the floral industry. Farris says it’s a tough business because the product is so perishable and it’s also so labor intensive. It takes a ton of people to make it work because they need designers, people to process flowers, drivers waiting to take the order. In fact, he says the company’s cost for labor is more than its cost for product. McNamara employs 120 people and is the biggest locally-owned florist in the state. If you are trying to follow the trend to “buy local,” that would be good to keep in mind.

After almost 60 years in business, Farris is still bullish on the future for McNamara. “We’ve just kind of gone through the evolution of building the brand and being a part of the community over all that time, and it’s just my watch right now to watch over it and continue the brand and values. We are proud that the founder, Bob McNamara, is still on our board of directors. So, we value that heritage and those core values. There’s a lot of tradition. Even though we change and update and we stay on top of design trends and everything else, we still think that foundation is really important.”

You may wonder what a guy who lives and breathes flowers likes when he picks out flowers for himself. Farris says he gets excited about seasonal flowers such as tulips in the spring and orchids in the summer and he adds, “For the most part, I just enjoy the beauty of flowers. I will take whatever is seasonal and really pretty and just drop it in vases to have at home. And I try to keep flowers around all the time.”

So, here’s my suggestion for a natural pick-me-up. Drop by your neighborhood McNamara Florist and fill your senses with the smells and colors of nature. If you want to take some home with you, that’s fine, too, since you will be helping the local economy.

Community Development or Destruction? Zoning Petition Causes Flap

Property along 96th Street near Fall Creek Parkway could be rezoned commercial, and nearby residents are not happy.

Folksinger Joni Mitchell famously sang “pave paradise and put up a parking lot” in her environmental anthem against spoiling nature and overbuilding. Admittedly, she was writing about Hawaii – not Fishers, Indiana. But to hundreds of homeowners in the area of 96th and Mollenkopf, their “gateway to Geist” (as they call it) is a paradise, and it’s in the sights of those who would like to put up another parking lot.

Here’s the back story: There are 7-½ acres on the northeast side of 96th and Mollenkopf that are owned by seven families who currently have houses on the land. Those families have banded together and would like to have their property zoned commercial. Obviously, that means they want to sell it to developers; getting it rezoned is the first step. To that end, the Fishers Advisory Plan Commission heard a petition at its meeting August 14 from the landowners. (Download Gordon Byers’ petition)

In his presentation, the property owners’ attorney, Gordon Byers, gave some historical background that the area in question was once under the jurisdiction of the town of Noblesville and that some of the residents have lived on the property for more than 50 years, pre-dating the Geist and 96th Street development. By way of explanation of why his clients want to sell, Byers emphasized that the area has changed dramatically and that because of road improvements, the petitioners have lost 60 feet of front yard and are now on a primary arterial road. He told the commission that this move to rezone has been “baking in the oven” since about 2005 when they first proposed changes to the zoning. He also pointed out that it is unusual that he would be representing the actual owners of the land and not developers in this bid to allow commercial development.

Landowners and local residents had an opportunity to voice their concerns to the Fishers Advisory Planning Committee.

Of course, there are many major concerns about what would actually be developed on the land, and the details of that have not been made public. Byers explained that there is a contract that all seven of the landowners have signed that binds them to sell all of their property as one entity to one developer and that there are details in the contract that are not being made public – a point that didn’t seem to go over very well with those in attendance who oppose the plan.

What he could share was that they want C1 and C2 commercial designation. C2 would be on the west end of the property and would be a building for retail and service-type businesses. To the east would be office buildings which are designated as C1. He emphasized that there would be no fast food or gas stations going up on the land. Byers said any building plan would be sensitive to the surrounding neighbors, a comment that was met with groans by the 50 or so members of the audience. He told the commission that it would not be a big-box retail store, it would have a pitched roof, it would be constructed of stone with upgraded signage and lighting, and that there would be a buffer brick wall on the backside and a mound on the eastern flank. He said they were open to keeping a tree buffer and that there would be a retention area built to deal with drainage issues.

When the Commission president opened up the meeting for remarks from any interested parties, there was no shortage of hands that went up from the crowd. In all, about ten residents addressed the Commission. Some came prepared with written remarks, some brought maps and other visual aids, others brought signed petitions, but most just spoke from the heart about what the area means to them and how they don’t want to see it altered. Many of those who made remarks either back up to the property in question or look at it from across the street. They fear that commercial development will spoil the natural beauty of the area, will inevitably create more parking that cannot be hidden by walls and plants, and will, eventually, harm their property values.

Jim Allan, who has lived in Geist Woods for many years, was the first of many who pointed out that there are already three commercial buildings west of the land that have nine vacancies, and he questioned the need for more commercial property. Others mentioned that since the roundabout was built, traffic has been flowing well through the area. However, they are concerned that if more commercial property is added, it will add more traffic. This could undo the positive impact of the new and improved road and could be a safety hazard for children in the area. Several people commented on how they now have a beautiful back yard and if a new strip mall goes up, they’ll be looking at a wall.

The president of the Geist Woods Homeowner’s Association spoke of changing the fabric of the area and how even if it might happen slowly, it does do damage. Next, Matt Watkins addressed the Commission and spoke bluntly about what he feels is the motivation for the petition: “It’s very evident that whenever you have everything you need within a three-mile radius – Walmarts, CVS’s, grocery stores – that it’s greed at work here and greed is the motivating factor for this and it doesn’t benefit the community at all. And it really poses a safety concern. It really impacts the road construction that they now have made so beautiful and such a great redesign. There will only be more risk now and potentially will cause more accidents and safety concerns.”

Most of the people who spoke are long-time residents of the area who bought here because of the beauty and tranquility of the area. One of those residents is Jennifer Bennett who told the Commission, “If I wanted to live in an area where commercial development was in my back yard, I would have bought a house there instead of here. I believe the majority of the residents are in agreement with me.”

Several committee members spoke before it was voted to delay a decision until next month’s meeting when more questions can be answered and input can be received from the public. The majority of the commission members appeared reluctant to approve the petition with the exception of Jay Kirby who seemed to have a somewhat favorable attitude when he indicated that he would like to see development in that area and that flexibility is needed.

There were certainly a lot of impassioned pleas made at the meeting, but there was no shouting or name calling. The Commission President, Warren Harling, commented at the end that he appreciates the “kinder approach” and hopes it can continue since these issues can get very personal. The fact that residents spoke with great civility about an issue that is extremely important to them and that they fear will change their very lives says a lot about us as a people and how our democracy works.

In the room where the Commission meeting was held, you couldn’t help but notice numerous plaques heralding Money Magazine’s choosing of Fishers for its “Best Places to Live” list several years running. One would question whether the number of strip malls Fishers has figured into that selection process.

By the way, the rest of Joni Mitchell’s song goes like this:
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.

Click here to download the Byers plan.