Regional Development Authority Gets N. Buffalo St. Update
September 9, 2020 at 2:36 a.m.
Regional Development Authority Gets N. Buffalo St. Update
By David [email protected]
After the public meeting, the board held an executive session, which included a tour of the Buffalo Street project.
The 2017 grant was for $3.5 million to the city and its development partner, Dave Matthews of Matthews LLC, for the Buffalo Street project. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation also approved the Regional Cities grant based on the recommendation of the NIRDA.
Matthews, an urban developer from South Bend, is investing over $20 million into the community, creating an urban housing development, as part of the project.
The project is part of the region's Road to One Million plan, which outlines a short-term goal of regional development projects in 11 counties. Through this long-term regional development planning, the 11-county region aimed to attain 1 million residents by 2020, according to an October 2016 news release. Northeast Indiana was one of three Indiana regions selected to receive state funding through the Regional Cities Initiative.
At Tuesday’s NIRDA meeting, the board heard quick updates on 28 projects, with extra time provided to the North Buffalo Street project, which is about one of six still under construction.
Michael Galbraith, contractor for the NIRDA, said a portion of the funds for the project were dispersed for the streetscape work done by the City of Warsaw.
On the project, Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer said, “We’ve been working diligently. We’ve had some delays with utilities, but we’ve had a lot of progress this summer with the boardwalk and plaza down at the lakefront.”
He said they’re still in the process of trying to work through the mixed-use building and “some of the players are changing a little bit.” Thallemer said the first three units look great and there’s been open houses and interest in them. He said the mews – smaller town homes – is probably the next phase.
“And then, hopefully, as we get some interest and some sales, we’ll continue on down the street,” Thallemer said.
City Planner Jeremy Skinner said the infrastructure portion of the project was completed about 1-1/2 years ago. Most of it was done a year prior, but “there was some things that kind of bled into the spring as we finished buying some land and moving some storm pipe.”
He said with the infrastructure in place, that caused the release of the city’s portion of funds to start the boardwalk/park project along Center Lake this past spring.
“It took us about eight months to get that project bid because pre-COVID it was really hard to find contractors, so we struggled a little bit. I think we bid that project out twice, but we finally got it awarded and it’s under construction now,” Skinner said. “Post-COVID now, the issue we’re having now is supplies. A lot of the supplies that are going into building that park project, they stopped manufacturing for three or four months and are on backlog. But we’re still moving forward and we’re expecting our portion of the project to be done sometime in January of next year, assuming we get the materials.”
There is an art piece that is being finished now and Skinner said they hope that will be installed sometime around October.
Matthews told the board he had the first building up with three units.
“We started hosting open houses every Sunday. We’ve done two of them now,” he said, mentioning the open houses take place midday Sundays.
“And then next week we should release pricing for the mews, which would be the smaller town homes about 1,200 square feet, one or two bedrooms, 1-1/2 car garages,” Matthews said.
Construction on the first mews will begin in about 1-1/2 to two months and will have four units.
“We’ve had a lot of very good interest in that price and size,” Matthews said, noting the price base is around “just under $200,000.”
The middle-sized town homes currently on Buffalo Street are priced between $380,000 to $650,000 and “we have three built, one finished and then the next one will have eight units,” he said. The model home is at $650,000, with the other two units at $380,000 and $550,000.
Across the street, Matthews said the plan is to do six city homes with private back yards, going for $750,000 and up. They will be 4,000-plus square feet.
After the regular meeting, and before the executive session, Galbraith answered a couple of quick questions about the Road To One Million projects.
“Most of them are complete. There are probably six to 10 that are not complete that are in various stages of construction,” he said. “One of the things that we wanted to make sure is that we keep an update so that we understand the progress of where those projects are, where dispersements are going to happen, when things are going to be complete so we can coordinate with local press and say ‘congratulations’ and be able to have a ribbon-cutting and all those nice ceremonies and celebrations” of these enhancements to Northeast Indiana.
After all the projects are complete, he said the board has a continuing possibility to work throughout Northeast Indiana.
“But we’ve been able to receive this one grant from the state of Indiana. There are possibilities for other grants, but those have not occurred at this point. That doesn’t mean that they might not occur in the future at some point,” Galbraith said. “So the board still can work across county lines for the betterment of Northeast Indiana as a whole.”
The original grant from the state to NIRDA was for $42 million.
“We’ve been able to leverage that into about $260 million worth of projects throughout Northeast Indiana,” he said.
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After the public meeting, the board held an executive session, which included a tour of the Buffalo Street project.
The 2017 grant was for $3.5 million to the city and its development partner, Dave Matthews of Matthews LLC, for the Buffalo Street project. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation also approved the Regional Cities grant based on the recommendation of the NIRDA.
Matthews, an urban developer from South Bend, is investing over $20 million into the community, creating an urban housing development, as part of the project.
The project is part of the region's Road to One Million plan, which outlines a short-term goal of regional development projects in 11 counties. Through this long-term regional development planning, the 11-county region aimed to attain 1 million residents by 2020, according to an October 2016 news release. Northeast Indiana was one of three Indiana regions selected to receive state funding through the Regional Cities Initiative.
At Tuesday’s NIRDA meeting, the board heard quick updates on 28 projects, with extra time provided to the North Buffalo Street project, which is about one of six still under construction.
Michael Galbraith, contractor for the NIRDA, said a portion of the funds for the project were dispersed for the streetscape work done by the City of Warsaw.
On the project, Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer said, “We’ve been working diligently. We’ve had some delays with utilities, but we’ve had a lot of progress this summer with the boardwalk and plaza down at the lakefront.”
He said they’re still in the process of trying to work through the mixed-use building and “some of the players are changing a little bit.” Thallemer said the first three units look great and there’s been open houses and interest in them. He said the mews – smaller town homes – is probably the next phase.
“And then, hopefully, as we get some interest and some sales, we’ll continue on down the street,” Thallemer said.
City Planner Jeremy Skinner said the infrastructure portion of the project was completed about 1-1/2 years ago. Most of it was done a year prior, but “there was some things that kind of bled into the spring as we finished buying some land and moving some storm pipe.”
He said with the infrastructure in place, that caused the release of the city’s portion of funds to start the boardwalk/park project along Center Lake this past spring.
“It took us about eight months to get that project bid because pre-COVID it was really hard to find contractors, so we struggled a little bit. I think we bid that project out twice, but we finally got it awarded and it’s under construction now,” Skinner said. “Post-COVID now, the issue we’re having now is supplies. A lot of the supplies that are going into building that park project, they stopped manufacturing for three or four months and are on backlog. But we’re still moving forward and we’re expecting our portion of the project to be done sometime in January of next year, assuming we get the materials.”
There is an art piece that is being finished now and Skinner said they hope that will be installed sometime around October.
Matthews told the board he had the first building up with three units.
“We started hosting open houses every Sunday. We’ve done two of them now,” he said, mentioning the open houses take place midday Sundays.
“And then next week we should release pricing for the mews, which would be the smaller town homes about 1,200 square feet, one or two bedrooms, 1-1/2 car garages,” Matthews said.
Construction on the first mews will begin in about 1-1/2 to two months and will have four units.
“We’ve had a lot of very good interest in that price and size,” Matthews said, noting the price base is around “just under $200,000.”
The middle-sized town homes currently on Buffalo Street are priced between $380,000 to $650,000 and “we have three built, one finished and then the next one will have eight units,” he said. The model home is at $650,000, with the other two units at $380,000 and $550,000.
Across the street, Matthews said the plan is to do six city homes with private back yards, going for $750,000 and up. They will be 4,000-plus square feet.
After the regular meeting, and before the executive session, Galbraith answered a couple of quick questions about the Road To One Million projects.
“Most of them are complete. There are probably six to 10 that are not complete that are in various stages of construction,” he said. “One of the things that we wanted to make sure is that we keep an update so that we understand the progress of where those projects are, where dispersements are going to happen, when things are going to be complete so we can coordinate with local press and say ‘congratulations’ and be able to have a ribbon-cutting and all those nice ceremonies and celebrations” of these enhancements to Northeast Indiana.
After all the projects are complete, he said the board has a continuing possibility to work throughout Northeast Indiana.
“But we’ve been able to receive this one grant from the state of Indiana. There are possibilities for other grants, but those have not occurred at this point. That doesn’t mean that they might not occur in the future at some point,” Galbraith said. “So the board still can work across county lines for the betterment of Northeast Indiana as a whole.”
The original grant from the state to NIRDA was for $42 million.
“We’ve been able to leverage that into about $260 million worth of projects throughout Northeast Indiana,” he said.
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