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A contract with Anderson Bohlander LLC to begin exploring what a festival street would look like downtown Warsaw and its costs was approved by the Warsaw Redevelopment Commission Monday.
The contract for $30,000 followed the approval of the 2026 agreement with Main Street Warsaw (MSW) for $81,500 and the MSW 2025 recap presentation by MSW Downtown Development Director Terry Sweeney.
In his presentation, Sweeney explained in the 2025 contract between the city and MSW, MSW was charged with putting together a cultural district plan, doing new marketing initiatives and events “all with an eye toward the priorities contained in the 2030 Plan that we launched in February of 2025.”
He said the aspirations for downtown Warsaw are for it to be a cultural district.
“The downtown vision in our 2030 Plan talks about culturally focused - the community’s living room, aspire to be a cultural district and then how do we attract and retain creative individuals and businesses,” Sweeney said.
He then highlighted four events that were new this year, and then talked about the cultural district plan update. Those four events for the downtown included Le Diner En Blanc, Fashion Weekend, Sip ’N’ Shop and Run and Walk Training/Outdoor Fitness. The direct economic impact of three of those events - the fitness program didn’t have sales - was that $103,000 in sales and purchases were made, he said.
“That benefitted 18 downtown businesses and 15 musicians, artists and instructors,” Sweeney said.
With the help of Designing Local, he said they were able to go through about a seven-month process of developing the Downtown Warsaw Cultural Arts District Plan, which was presented to the public on Nov. 19. Significant public engagement was part of the process. He then recapped that plan for the Redevelopment Commission Monday, which included transformative, incremental and amplify projects. One of those projects was a festival street.
Sweeney talked about the various ways to fund the projects, which could include grants, incentives and potentially tax increment finance (TIF) dollars.
“There’s always been discussion about what a great pallet we have in this community for our downtown. A lot of people volunteer, work hard, invest, elbow grease, and I’m really gratified that we’re at a point where it’s kind of come together,” said former Warsaw mayor and Commission member Joe Thallemer. “These are ambitious projects, a lot of them. It’s not as easy as it looks, I found that out, but I think the direction is great.”
After the discussion on the 2025 MSW recap, the 2026 agreement with MSW was presented by Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner. He said the contract for $81,500 was about $2,000 more than last year. It will be paid for by the Redevelopment Commission out of the Northern TIF District.
“A lot of what we’re doing is finally getting to some of those segments in the council’s strategic plan that dealt with downtown. It took us a while to get here,” Skinner said. “... It’s amazing when we look back at what we’ve accomplished within that strategic plan and some of the things we haven’t. A lot of the downtown stuff we’ve struggled with.”
He said Thallemer’s rebooting of the Hyett Palma study led to this next phase and they’re trying to keep that ball rolling.
“We’ve got a lot of projects. You’ll see the next contract is kind of the beginning phase to look at the festival street. Yes, there’s a lot of money that has to be found, but we can’t find the money until we know what we’re looking for. So, a lot of groundwork that needs to be done. What Main Street has done this year is lay a lot of groundwork for us, so now we have to start taking that work and start making it become a reality. It’s going to take time, it’s not going to happen overnight. We’ve got a pretty good start here and a lot of good things that came out of the plan - the strategic plan, as well as the cultural district plan,” Skinner said.
After the commission unanimously approved the agreement, MSW Executive Director Rob Parker thanked Thallemer, Mayor Jeff Grose, the Redevelopment Commission and the Common Council for making the funding available so Sweeney could be hired “so we can have what we have in front of us. That wouldn’t have happened without leadership, that wouldn’t have happened without dollars, so on behalf of the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce and Main Street Warsaw, I just want to say thank you so much for allowing us to do that and continuing to grow our downtown. We think it’s vital to the future of our community, that the downtown is the maximum capacity that it can be to attract and retain talent.”
Skinner then presented the contract with Anderson Bohlander for the festival street.
“So this is kind of the beginning stages. Obviously, we did the strategic plan. Terry did the strategic plan, he did the cultural district plan. One of the things that came out of that cultural district plan was the potential for a festival street. So this is the very beginning of exploring what that looks like and what that might become,” he said.
The contract will do two things, Skinner said: work with the community to figure out what the community wants to see for a festival street and also start to look at what the costs are.
He said there’s obviously some costs with doing a project of this size, but there’s also some money out there “that this prepares us to potentially go after to make it feasible.”
The contract was approved.
In other business, the commission:
• Had a public hearing on and approved the confirmatory resolution to add the Shirley Polk Revocable Trust property to the acquisition list. The property is the parking lot on the southeast corner of Indiana and Main streets across from the Old Jail Museum.
No one from the public was present or commented on the matter. The resolution already went before and was approved by the Redevelopment Commission, Plan Commission and Common Council before returning back to the Redevelopment Commission.
The Redevelopment Commission then approved a resolution authorizing the acquisition of the property for $254,000. The average of two appraisals for the real estate was $277,000.
• Approved the Autocam Medical purchase agreement for the property at the northeast corner of North CR 200W and U.S. 30 in the Warsaw Technology Park.
Skinner said the agreement basically says they are selling the land to Autocam Medical for $1 and Autocam will build a 100,000-square-foot building; invest no less than $70 million and employ no less than 300 people within five years of the closing date. Construction has already started.
• Approved their 2026 meeting schedule. Meetings will be on the first and third Monday of each month at 4 p.m., except in January, February and September due to holidays that fall on Mondays.
• Approved December claims, including $203.01 for NIPSCO; $190,744.62 and $8,477.32, Phend & Brown; $227,254.81, Pulver Asphalt Paving Inc.; $25, Kosciusko County Recorder; $13,142.85, Warsaw Community Development Corp.; $56.04 and $30.77, The UPS Store; $114.41, Times-Union; $7,518.50, Barnes & Thornburg; $120, Skinner; $500, Liberty Mutual; $1,250 and $250, Argent Institutional Trust; $61,081.25, Regions Corp. Trust; $142,302.50, $56,437.50, $27,937.50, $83,500, $195,000, $76,066 and $75,97.50, Argent Institutional Trust; $44,049.25, The Bank of New York; $42,000, Westhill Development; and $300,000, The Bank of New York.
