A planned $1.4 billion in capital investment in the region could triple the population growth rate, allowing it to hit the 1 million mark 36 years sooner than projected, Kosciusko County Council heard Thursday.
John Sampson, president of the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, gave an update on the region’s bid for a $42 million award from the state for projects aimed at attracting new residents. He said he’s urging member towns and counties to move toward funding the list of 70 projects – 38 of them worth $400 million planned for the first two years alone, including an $11 million expansion of the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts – whether the 11-county regional development authority receives the award or not.
Kosciusko County joined the NIRP centered around Fort Wayne in 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 Council is expected to pick two RDAs to award by December.
Sampson said at the current population growth rate of 0.7 percent, the region isn’t expected to grow from the current population of 789,015 to 1 million residents until 2067. But if population growth was accelerated by following best practices for similar regions, he said they could reach a growth rate of 2.1 percent and see 1 million residents by 2031 – with almost 100,000 more young adults than otherwise projected, according to the report he distributed among council members.
Many of the projects are aimed at attracting young professionals, he said. The 70 projects are categorized in the report by arts and culture (including the Wagon Wheel expansion in Kosciusko); greenways and waterways (with four projects in Kosciusko, including the Winona Lake greenway); education and industry (which covers libraries throughout the region and includes finding a new use for the vacant Little Crow building in Warsaw); and downtowns and community development (with three projects in Warsaw, such as developing a four-block “Warsaw Winona Gateway”).
Sampson observed that the member towns and counties benefit from already working together for the past 10 years in many ways, and that the process might have been a struggle otherwise. A few regions less experienced with working together are lagging behind the NIRP in preparedness, he said.
Bob Sanders, county council president, remarked that the report shows the risk Kosciusko took in joining choosing one region over another has paid off, and said he’s happy to see the projects are spread throughout the region instead of clustered together in just a few spots.
“I’m seeing that what we decided to do in good faith is turning out to be what we’d hoped,” he said.
(Story By The Times Union)
