The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority is holding a public hearing Thursday on a major step toward implementing its new 20-year strategic plan adopted in June.
The RDA plans to create a nonprofit land development entity to help municipalities assemble sites that can be difficult to develop, amassing enough parcels to create sites that will be more palatable to developers.
The nonprofit will also pursue grant funding for environmental remediation so brownfields can attract private sector investments and put the land back into productive use.
The hearing will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Purdue Technology Center, 9800 Connecticut Dr., Crown Point.
The land development entity is a key part of the RDA’s strategic plan.
“In conversations we had with business and civic leaders as we were updating our strategic plan, one thing we heard repeatedly was that a land development entity could be a powerful tool to drive private sector investment by facilitating the assembly, cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated or simply challenging properties,” Director of Communications David Wellman said.
“Now, this was not exactly news. This was something we had heard many times in the past, but other, more urgent projects like commuter rail expansion took precedence. But with Double Track complete and West Lake finishing up, we can now turn our attention to this.”
The land development entity is a natural follow-up to those two massive rail projects, with 14 extra trains already running on the South Shore Line’s lakeshore route and service possibly starting as soon as the end of this year on the West Lake Corridor route between Hammond and Dyer.
The new nonprofit “should be a great help to us in the Transit Development Districts and allow us to fully realize the return on that rail investment,” Wellman said.
Those districts offer substantial financial incentives, even more than a traditional tax increment financing district, to encourage development in the area surrounding South Shore stations. Michigan City is being held up as an example of what can happen in a TDD. The only remaining districts planned but not yet established are in South Bend and Valparaiso.
Materials related to the proposed land development entity will be on display Thursday at the RDA meeting. They’re also online at in.gov/rda.
Comments may be submitted in writing to the RDA offices or by email to dwellman@rda.in.gov until 10 a.m. Thursday.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
