John Sampson, from Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, updated the Warsaw Common Council Monday night on the partnership and the region’s bid for a $42 million award from the state for projects aimed at attracting new residents. Kosciusko County joined the NEIRP in the summer in order to participate in the state’s Regional Cities Initiative. The county is represented on its five-member board by Brad Bishop, OrthoWorx executive director. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. is expected to pick two regions to award by December. Local projects on the Fort Wayne-area partnership’s list include $11 million for an update to the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts, $1 million for reuse of the Little Crow Foods building and $23.3 million for North Buffalo streetscape and redevelopment, among others. Sampson said the NEIRP recently made its final formal presentation to an Indiana Economic Development Corp. advisory committee put together to review the Regional Cities plan. “Ultimately, we would believe we’re going to be successful at this, but they will actually be meeting tomorrow (Oct. 20),” Sampson said. It will be the committee’s first meeting to consider what was presented to them. The committee then has until Dec. 15 to make a decision. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. board will actually make the final decision, he said. Sampson said what they’re hoping for is that Northeast Indiana will be one of those two regional cities receiving the $42 million. “We’ve actually built a very compelling proposal,” he said. The region proposed $1.5 billion worth of investment in quality-place assets, going all the way from the Wagon Wheel in Warsaw to a performing arts center in Bluffton and a riverfront development in Fort Wayne, he said. In the proposal, Sampson said everyone is focused on the $42 million from the state. “And we’re anticipating that could really accelerate our progress,” he said. “But if we understand as a community the significance of making these investments, without regard to the state money, if we’re successful at doing what our plan proposes to do, even without the state money, the return for these communities – in terms of growing our region faster – is critical to our future employment of this region.” The reason the partnership is making the proposal, Sampson said, is because if it doesn’t grow faster, the region’s collective employment is expected to decline over the next 10 years by 8,000 to 10,000 employees. “So that is the No. 1 challenge of employers today – finding qualified employees. And our best, and perhaps our most experienced employees, are getting ready to leave the workforce at a rate faster than we can replace them, which will put a great deal of pressure on us to attract young and new talent to our region. And that is what the sole purpose of the Regional Cities Initiative is – to create a vibrant set of downtowns and a connective region that will attract talent to be here in Northeast Indiana,” Sampson explained. He then reviewed a chart that showed the region’s total population today is 789,015. If economic conditions stay the same, the population reaches 841,907 in 2025 and 1 million in 2067. However, if the region can increase its growth by 2.1 percent per year, it will hit 1 million by 2031. “What’s really compelling, for us to grow that fast, we have to bring in the most mobile demographic into our region, and that happens to be the 25- to 35-, 40-year olds. They happen to be the most mobile of our population,” Sampson said. “And typically, they will bring a lot of four-year degrees, a lot of credentialed skills. That demographic dramatically changes the way a region’s economy works.” The Real Gross Domestic Product also will hit $60,492,000 by 2031 under accelerated growth economic conditions, while it would only hit $39,901,000 by 2067 if economic conditions remain the same as they are now. He encouraged the council to look beyond the state’s money. Even if the state decided not to give the money to Northeast Indiana, there’s still compelling evidence to figure out how to grow the region’s population faster at 2 percent a year, he said. Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer said, “The funding and this whole process ... all pretty much came into fruition at the legislature last year. Everything happened really fast when that money was finally approved. I give credit to our planning department, Jeremy (Skinner) and Tim (Dombrosky), and others worked long, hard hours to get these projects to the partnership. We kind of came a little bit late into the ball game and they’d been organized and working together for some time.” He said the city saw the commonality in working with the Northeast Region as did the county. “I feel very humbled and gratified that we’re included in this application. I’m looking forward to some good things. ... Funded or not, these projects are ... going forward anyway. And having that help would certainly push them along, but not necessary as far as our direction and things we’re going toward,” Thallemer said. Sampson said, “Remember that Brad Bishop from OrthoWorx was elected by all the mayors and commissioners to represent Warsaw and Kosciusko as one of the five directors of the Regional Development Authority. And now we’re going through the process of figuring out how to make that work because, given the first of the year and if we have access to that state funding, we’ve got to figure out how to get these projects in the ground as quickly as possible.” He continued, “We want cities and communities to be thinking about these projects – if we have to step forward with our 20 percent funding from local government, or if they’re private matches that you’ve assembled – give thought to how you would make those happen as quickly as possible because we’re actually asking the state for more money than they’re going to give us. So we know some of the projects won’t be funded right out of the gate. We think it should be those projects most compelling and the most ready to go that will be funded soonest. So we want communities thinking about that in advance.”
