WABASH VALLEY — Marketing the Wabash Valley with its available industrial and commercial land, buildings and workforce has taken on a new, energized regional perspective that officials hope will allow Vigo County and five surrounding counties to produce new jobs.
The
Terre Haute Economic Development Corp. is now part of an incorporated entity, a six-county marketing effort, called “
Accelerate West Central Indiana Economic Development.”
The effort went online in August at www.westcentralindianaedc.com.
It is a cooperative effort of Vigo, Vermillion, Clay, Parke, Putnam and Sullivan counties.
That cooperative marketing approach has brought leads such as a drug manufacturer now eyeing the former Pfizer property in Vigo County. Pfizer laid off more than 650 workers from its former Vigo County plant in 2008 after it decided to stop selling Exubera because of slow sales.
That new company’s name and details of a potential workforce are not being released yet, but the Vigo County Redevelopment Commission is offering 200 acres for $6.47 million for use as pharmaceutical manufacturing for finished dosage forms.
Bids are to be opened Jan. 10.
Duke Energy had awarded a $20,000 grant in January for a feasibility study — which had been expected to take six months — to market that facility.
“We let that study sit idle after we got two or three prospects looking hard at the area,” said Rick Burger, Duke Energy Indiana’s west area manager. “We are in negotiations with that area and if something happens, then we will put a master plan together.
“We are close to putting a bow on a package,” Burger said.
Steve Witt, president of the Terre Haute Economic Development Corp., said the regional marketing effort has brought a focus back on to west-central Indiana.
“It has generated some interest from folks we normally talk to, the site location firms, but now it is like, ‘Oh, you are really bigger than Terre Haute and Vigo County. Your whole region has a lot to offer,’” Witt said. “Particularly in terms of workforce, when they learn we have a workforce that is greater ... that it includes the six counties in west-central Indiana and from our friends in Illinois across the border.”
One other lead generated was for
Farbest Foods of Huntingburg. However, that company has selected Knox County and will invest $69.2 million to build a 220,000-square-foot processing plant on 100 acres of land in the Highway 41 Industrial Park in Vincennes. That new facility, to initially employ 360 workers, is expected to open its doors in January 2014.
Still, Witt said despite losing the firm to Knox County, getting a lead on Farbest was “a perfect example of how our group has worked together.”
Improvements for Vermillion CountyOne area that is gaining attention in the six-county region is the
Vermillion Rise Mega Park.
Bill Laubernds, executive director, said marketing was not fully started until after Oct. 1, when more than 7,000 acres of the former
Newport Chemical Depot was transferred from the U.S. Army. Now the former depot is being marketed as part of Accelerate West Central Indiana Economic Development.
Laubernds and others in Accelerate have met with site selection firms in Indianapolis and Chicago.
“That has proved very favorable. They have taken the time to explain to us what their clients are looking for and how we can best serve the clients. From our perspective, any location in the region will benefit the whole region, including Vermillion County,” Laubernds said.
Vermillion Rise also has its own website — vermillionrise.com – and has partnered with the federal government working with agencies in the
U.S. Department of Commerce “that [are] charged with attracting foreign investment to the United States,” Laubernds said.
One such investment could come from Clean Coal Refining Corp. The project, announced in September 2010 from Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, could mean a $3 billion investment and 500 jobs.
“It would be the largest capital investment ever made in Indiana,” Laubernds said. “The key is we have a high level of interest in the site from multinational players,” he said.
The company, which would construct a direct coal liquefaction plant, performed a feasibility study for using a 1,500-acre section of 4,200 acres designated for industrial development. The company would use about 2.5 million tons of Indiana coal annually to produce about 8 million barrels of jet fuel, heating oil/diesel and utility fuel.
“Right now, everything still looks positive,” said Steve Aker, executive deputy director at Vermillion Rise, of that project.
Vermillion Rise contains a well field once used to pump enormous amounts of water that produced heavy water, used to develop a nuclear weapon. The property still has 48-inch water lines.
But the interior of the park needs a “more manageable system that will probably use an 18-inch line,” Aker said.
The park hopes to have that water project in place by early September 2012. The park has budgeted about $2 million for that project, Aker said, but the cost could be less. It includes an upgrade on a chlorination system and an upgrade for an elevated water tower.
“It is a project that has to be done,” Aker said.
Improvements to the park will be funded in part through crop sales. The park has contracted with
Farmers National Co., an agricultural management firm, to oversee 3,500 acres of land at the site, land that when planted in row crops is expected to generate about $750,000 annually.
“We have a long-term development strategy of having a sustainable development program and having megasites that are ready for development as well as taking the core existing buildings and treating it as a small industrial park,” Laubernds said.
“Our efforts in 2012 are to continue to make infrastructure improvements to the site, continue [to work] with prospects and the development community in west-central Indiana to market the region.” he added.
Marketing Terre Haute, Vigo CountyMike Heaton, chair of Accelerate and regional economic development manager at Duke Energy, said trips have been made to Japan with the
Indiana Economic Development Corp., where Witt visited top
Sony DADC and Toyota officials. Duke Energy has provided aerial photographs of the sites in the region that each county can use for marketing.
Marketing includes other factors, such as touting benefits of a region.
Terre Haute’s EDC is marketing its workforce as being low cost.
“Terre Haute offers a workforce at wage rates that are lower that most other parts of the country,” its website — terrehauteedc.com — states under its workforce overview.
“Obviously we want to increase wage levels for our workers, but we try to show that the overall cost of doing business is relatively low,” Witt said. “It is not just wages, but workers’ compensation rates, utility rates and taxes. All those things go into a company’s calculus,” he said. “Companies look for areas where they can be profitable and where their costs of doing business are relatively low,” Witt said.
Witt said education — Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Indiana State University, Ivy Tech Community College, St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, Harrison College and the Vigo County School Corp. — is the top asset for Vigo County.
“We have been working on some really nice opportunities the last several months. We hope to bring some projects to completion, but they are not done deals. They are large projects, they are complicated and we are in competition with other areas,” Witt said.
“That is why we are here. If it was easy, everybody would do it,” he said of the marketing effort.
When marketing Vigo County, Witt said, officials must shine a light on its advantages.
“We try to go after industries where we feel we’ve got a comparative advantage. Auto parts is a good example,” Witt said. “We have world class OEM [original equipment manufacturer] companies in ThyssenKrupp and
ADVICS Manufacturing and have several automotive manufacturing plants within a relatively short distance and we have received a lot of inquiries from automotive parts-related industries. That is one area that we feel like we have a comparative advantage, that our geographic location lends itself well to those types of companies.”
The same is true with metals, he said, citing two major metal companies in
Novelis.aspx">Novelis Corp. and
CSN which serve markets within a 200- to 300-mile radius. Another comparable advantage is logistics, “as the success of the Staples distribution center indicates, we are a good location for warehousing and distribution,” Witt said.
The county also has companies that are “somewhat homegrown, which started in the community through entrepreneurial efforts, such as Wabash Valley Packaging, Heartland Steel, which is now CSN, and
Jadcore is another,” Witt said.
Events draw crowds to Terre HauteMarketing cities such as Terre Haute involves a different approach.
David Patterson, executive director of the
Terre Haute Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the bureau has raised nearly $1.4 million from an innkeepers’ tax. About $750,000 of that is used to attract and maintain future events that will bring visitors to hotels and the city, he said.
The bureau generated $1.3 million last year and has grown its revenue stream every year for 16 years.
“While this year is a negligible increase, we didn’t lose 30 percent like a lot of attractions have,” Patterson said. “We are more event-management here. Communities that are attraction-based are hurting because people simply are not traveling for casual stuff.
“The event market is a little more recession proof, simply because sports and especially for kids sports, you will spend your last two nickels on their interest,” Patterson said.
“We have been lucky. We have defined this niche with sports and young adult or kids sports,” he said. If you think about the top five events on any Saturday in the last 10 years, they are all sports — whether football, basketball or another sporting event” such as cross country.
“The other things simply do not command the type and numbers that sports do, so it has been a great niche for our community,” Patterson said.
Terre Haute has hosted several NCAA Division 1 championships for cross country. And the city on March 3, 2012, will host the Indiana state girls high school basketball championship. That event will bring in 30,000 people on a single Saturday, Patterson said.
It will include eight teams and four games played at Indiana State University’s Hulman Center, with a banquet the evening before, Patterson said.
The city will also have the NCAA Division 3 Cross Country Championships, hosted by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, next year. There will also be a Nike Regional for high school cross country. Terre Haute is one of eight regions that host a high school cross country club event, and the winner of each region goes to Oregon for a Nike championship.
“We also have a huge Midwest soccer tournament that will be April 21 and 22,” at the Vigo County Youth Soccer Association fields along Springhill Road, Patterson said.
A middle school indoor track invitational on March 3 also will be held next year at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Patterson said,
In addition, Terre Haute’s hotels and motels are playing a role in Indianapolis’ hosting of the NFL Super Bowl in February. The city will designate just over 1,000 rooms for the Super Bowl — about half its rooms — from 20 hotels and motels, Patterson said.
“Several Indiana cities kicked in rooms as part of the bid package, as Indianapolis had to substantiate 25,000 available rooms within a two-hour radius,” Patterson said. “The hotels chose to be part of that.”
Patterson said Vigo County has some unique qualities than can attract more visitors once promoted, such as visitors to Sisters of Providence, founded by St. Mother Theodore Guerin.
“We have tried to identify things around the community, which are unique to the community, but grand enough to be seen by anyone in the world. When talking Division 1 Cross County and the eighth saint in U.S. history, those are powerful things,” Patterson said.