Gary officials will host a public forum Wednesday to answer questions about a possible contract with a Chicago-based firm.
Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and officials with the Gary Redevelopment Commission have been in talks since June with MAIA Co., a company whose investors include former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
City officials previously have said they would want MAIA Co. to advise on ways they could acquire large tracts of land and clear them for future construction, while also helping to find developers willing to build projects in Gary that could lead to future economic development.
No deal is in place, although Redevelopment Executive Director Joseph Van Dyk has said Freeman-Wilson has expressed to him a desire to have a deal finalized by September.
Freeman-Wilson and Redevelopment board President Kenya Jones said that some information circulating about MAIA Co. isn’t true.
“Based on a lot of the feedback I’ve been getting from the community it seems there’s a lot of confusion out there,” Van Dyk said. “Some people don’t understand exactly what Redevelopment does, and we want to answer some of those questions.”
Redevelopment officials previously made a public presentation before the Common Council’s Ways & Means and Planning committees. They are scheduled to make a similar presentation at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall, although Van Dyk said it would be a “little different” in being geared toward answering public questions about the project.
Any final deal will need to be approved by the Redevelopment Commission’s board, as that entity has been involved already in trying to acquire small plots of land and put them together into larger parcels that could be of use to business-oriented developers.
The Common Council theoretically has no say in this matter, although Councilwoman Ragen Hatcher, D-at large, said she is taking an interest in the issue, and plans to make public any information she manages to obtain about the process as it goes along.
“We (the Common Council) don’t have a direct vote, but we still intend to have some input on this issue,” she said. “We want to keep the community updated on what is happening.”
Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
