Two grants received by the city on behalf of Fellowship Missions will pay the majority share of the demolition of the former Jomac Products buildings at 1600 and 1624 E. Winona Ave., Warsaw, along with the removal of storage tanks at the site.
The first of the two grants is for $500,000 from the Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA) awarded to the city on Feb. 20.
City Planner Justin Taylor presented the grant agreement between the city and OCRA to the Warsaw Board of Public Works and Safety on Friday.
“Our partners at MACOG (Michiana Area Council of Governments) have been really instrumental in helping us mediate some of the brownfields around the city,” he said. He estimated that over the last five years the city has received over a million dollars to help remediate brownfield sites, which turned into economic development projects, spurring a lot of activity around Argonne Road.
“Really excited about the things happening related to these brownfield cleanups. Not only the environmental impact, but how we’re able to add housing to the community,” Taylor said.
The city was awarded the OCRA grant on its second try.
Taylor stated, “So really excited. This ties in to a lot of efforts that were recently undertaken with their corridor study that was done in 2023, and then the Winona Avenue Business Association, we’ve been working with them as well, to try to make improvements along that corridor. So this is one of those first steps in a hopefully long line of steps to improve that whole corridor of the city.”
Summarizing the agreement with OCRA, he said the total project cost will be around $694,943. The local match of $194,943 of the total cost will include $94,800 from a POSI (Petroleum Orphan Site Initiative) grant for storage tank removal from the site; $22,247 from in-kind work conducted by the city engineer related to bid solicitation; and $77,896 to be covered by Fellowship Missions.
“We are the primary applicant for the (OCRA) grant, but the city actually applied on behalf of Fellowship Missions,” Taylor said.
The Board of Works unanimously approved the grant agreement.
Taylor then presented the POSI grant for the board to accept, which they did. The grant is for up to $250,000 and the award was approved by the Indiana Finance Authority (IFA) on Feb. 20.
“As part of this grant, there was an effort to remediate the storage tanks that were underground. The OCRA grant did not cover that remediation, but the POSI program through the state does cover those, so we’ve got up to $250,000 for the remediation of those storage tanks and removal of those from the site,” Taylor said.
While the grant is for up to $250,000, the city estimates the cost of the removal of the tanks to be about $94,800.
Next, Taylor presented the subrecipient agreement between the city and Fellowship Missions Inc. concerning the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)-funded project for the demolition of the Jomac property.
“Since we are the recipient and we have a subrecipient, we have this agreement between us and Fellowship Missions delineating the responsibilities of each party,” he explained, noting that the city does not actually have any ownership of the property.
City attorney Scott Reust said, “We have many city employees that do a really good job, but I think Justin deserves some special recognition for this. Blighted properties are all over communities in the state of Indiana. Everybody’s asking for help to take care of blighted properties, and Justin was able to get these large awards to help fix a severely blighted property in our town. That’s really pretty amazing. He did a really, really, really good job. It’s going to have a big impact. We see it everywhere in all the municipalities. This was a really big get by Justin.”
Councilwoman Diane Quance thanked Taylor for “hanging in there” and going round two with OCRA.
Taylor said he appreciated Reust’s comments, but pointed to the city’s partners at MACOG, too. “They did most of the heavy lifting on this. We couldn’t have done it without their help,” he said.
After the board approved the third agreement, Taylor then presented the fourth and final agreement - a lien and restrictive covenant agreement between the city and Fellowship Missions Inc. regarding the CDBG program.
Taylor said OCRA wants to have control over the long-term use of the property “so right now that long-term use, per the grant, would be an open green space. This agreement basically states that if there is a change in that intended use, they would need to be notified in writing to make sure it was an approved use. They just don’t want someone to offload the property right after this grant is in place. So this is a five-year term for that.”
He said they can change the use “as we get it into” but there is a process to do that.
Fellowship Missions Founder and Executive Director Eric Lane told the board that Taylor and Donny Ritsema, senior planner at MACOG, were willing to step into the grant process to see the community changed and they were amazing.
“I know he doesn’t want to take credit for it, but he needs to take credit for it, he and Donny both, they both just knocked it out of the park. This will be a major step forward down that whole corridor to moving our community forward,” Lane said, adding a thanks to the board for allowing Taylor to do it.
Quance added a thanks to the Kosciusko County Community Foundation for the study that was done regarding the Winona Avenue corridor.
The board unanimously approved the fourth and final agreement.
After the meeting, Lane confirmed that the eventual plan with the property is to build a new homeless shelter there “to expand services because we already need more space and beds. So the idea would be to increase from our 51 to doubling if not over-doubling the space there, and also having space for families and single parents so we’re not just putting kids and moms on one side and males on the other. That’s just what we have now. So we’ll be able to have space for men and women, and then families and single parents, as well.”
He said they’ll be able to have a conducive environment to the need that they’re seeing.
“The need is not going away. It’s increasing. Nationwide, it was 18% in ‘24, and we have the numbers to prove that,” Lane said.
For more about Fellowship Missions, visit their website at https://fellowshipmissions.net/