Road improvements will be one of the biggest needs in the county in 2013, the Kosciusko County Redevelopment Commission heard Thursday.
But with gas tax revenue down, the Indiana Department of Transportation will be pretty picky on its projects, Dan Brown, chair of the Kosciusko Economic Development Corporation Infrastructure Committee, told the commission.
“They’re considering cost-to-benefit more so today than in the past, and spending the dollars where they will make the biggest impact,” Brown said. That puts Kosciusko County into stiffer competition to see infrastructure needs met.
With U.S. 30 acting as a major bypass to the Indiana Toll Road, the question the committee will be looking at next year, remarked KEDCo President George Robertson, is, “How do you get 30 on the radar for improvements?”
Brown said Kosciusko needs a multi-county coalition like the one that backed the U.S. 31 Kokomo Corridor Project, so his committee will get together with representatives of surrounding counties to make the case for 30.
“When you look at the big picture, the completion of 31 changes economic development in the state, and suddenly 30 becomes more important. It alters how transportation moves in Indiana,” Robertson said. “That’s why at some point we have to talk about (Ind.) 15N. It’s starting to become part of the bigger infrastructure picture, and in five to 10 years we’ll be looking at where we need to be.”
Ind. 15 is one of the roads vital to the Milford-Syracuse area, which are both in the middle of major projects expected to bring in new industry. Brown also singled out East CR 1300N, which connects the towns at Ind. 15 and Ind. 13, as a focus in the county.
Less tangible but no less vital to economic development in the county, Robertson also told the commission about a database of businesses KEDCo is building along with four other counties and the University of Notre Dame. The database lists the assets of businesses such as which machine shops have what certification, and what their capacity and order size is.
The results have been surprising, he noted, such as revealing clusters of tertiary industries that serve the aerospace and mining sectors.
“We’re finding clusters in this region that we didn’t know existed,” Robertson told the commission.
He added they’re still figuring out how to take the database public, time and cost being barriers, but that KEDCo can currently use it when contacted by a business interested in assets in the county.
He added that the database serves KEDCo’s hierarchy of keeping money in Kosciusko County first, then in the region, then in Indiana, and finally in the country.
