The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority’s newly created Land Development Entity kicked off Thursday, aiming to turn brownfields and other troubled properties into redeveloped land.
“I think we have an opportunity to make a transformational difference in Northwest Indiana,” Chairman Rick Calinski, director of public affairs and economic development at NIPSCO, said.
“We have a lot of momentum, and it’s a perfect time and perfect opportunity,” Treasurer Pete Novak, CEO at the Northwest Indiana Realtors Association, said.
Matt Wells, named secretary, is president and CEO of One Region and chief engagement officer at Purdue University Northwest. He’s excited about “the unique window of opportunity that Northwest Indiana has right now.”
“The missing piece that will be solved in large part” is fragmentation sprawled across the region’s geography, he said.
Households and businesses will be even more inclined than they already are to invest in the right properties in the right location once brownfields are cleaned up and parcels of land assembled for redevelopment, Wells said.
RDA President and CEO Sherri Ziller serves as CEO of the Land Development Entity as well. Identifying brownfields and funding to clean them is a top priority for the LDE and the RDA, she said.
That’s low-hanging fruit in the RDA’s new 20-year strategic plan, she said.
“We can acquire and stabilize challenging properties,” Ziller said, and work in conjunction with the RDA, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others to secure grant funding for redevelopment efforts.
Returning nonproductive properties to the tax rolls, creating jobs and boosting the quality of life are only some of the benefits of redeveloping troubled properties.
“Through our research, there’s a lot of brownfields that have been identified in our region,” consultant Aaron Kowalski of MKSK said. “There’s a lot we don’t know about as well.”
Among the tasks the LDE is charged with is researching properties’ historic uses and figuring out how to obtain clear titles to get sites ready for developers.
Kowalski showed the new nonprofit’s board two examples of the redevelopment of brownfields.
The Indianapolis One Health Campus transforms a 103-acre manufacturing plant into an innovative, health-focused mixed-use community, he said.
In Minneapolis, a former World War II facility manufacturing five-inch gun mounts for Navy vessels turns the former ordnance plant into an industrial park.
That can happen in Northwest Indiana, too.
Bill Sheldrake, of Policy Analytics, noted the RDA gave the LDE $5 million in seed money to prime the pump for grants. “$5 million doesn’t get the LDE very far when you’re talking about acquiring property, cleaning up property,” and hiring staff, he said.
However, there are opportunities for “very large funding sources,” he said, and the LDE will chase them. Already, Kathy Luther, of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission, has put in an application for a brownfield coalition assessment grant and is crossing her fingers.
One of the advantages of the LDE and the RDA is its scope, covering Lake and Porter counties.
“You have a broader umbrella across a number of municipalities” than many land banks, Sheldrake said. He predicts grant requests to be “quite successful.”
Novak, a former RDA member, said the time is ripe for the LDE. “The RDA has long been doing great work in the community,” he said, and the new nonprofit should continue in that 20-year tradition.
“I grew up in Hammond. I’m very familiar with some of those sites that will be targeted,” he said.
“It really is a milestone for the RDA today. We’ve been trying to do something like this for quite some time,” Ziller said.
“There is a need for this, a centralized agency in Northwest Indiana,” she said.
“Now the fun begins and the work begins,” Calinski said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
