A decade ago, the vacant Pillsbury plant looked nothing like a catalyst for development on the banks of the Wabash River.
The hulking, white masonry building, with a dozen tilted gables across its top, seemed to symbolize Terre Haute’s past, not its future. Generations of locals once earned a living there. They made tin cans for American Can Company when the place opened in 1931, and then food products for Pillsbury until 1990. Its last activity was as a storage facility for ICON Transportation. The blue and white “ICON” sign is the only reminder of that activity. The building has sat vacant for most of the 21st century.
Until now. Indianapolis developer Core Redevelopment is investing $23 million to transform the factory and its 30-inch-thick concrete floors into 165 loft-style apartments overlooking the Wabash. The public-private project also includes $4.7 million in Industrial Recovery Tax Credits, and tax increment financing support from the city.
RiverFront Lofts should open by summer 2018, becoming the first housing along Terre Haute’s east bank of the river.
When people wonder what Wabash Valley Riverscape has accomplished, the nonprofit group’s leaders point to the transformation of the empty tin can factory as one of several examples. “Riverscape brought the developer to the table,” said Fred Nation, a board member of the nonprofit group aiming to deepen the community’s connections with the river and raise the quality of life here so people want to live, work, operate businesses and raise families here.
In the early 2000s, who would’ve expected the dormant ICON building to become scenic apartments? Probably no one. Yet, that project, along with Indiana State University’s new Gibson Track and Field Complex and a new Annex 41 student apartment complex nearby, represent progress along the riverfront.
“Ten years or 20 years from now, what will Annex 41 and the ICON building and the ISU Track and Field area look like?” Nation wondered aloud in an interview earlier this month.
Hard telling, but one thing’s for sure — it won’t be just RiverFront Lofts, Annex 41 and the track. Businesses to service and entertain riverside dwellers and visitors will follow. Maybe the National Road Heritage Trail will get expanded along the banks, leading into Fairbanks Park. Maybe a boardwalk.
Unfolding plan to be updated
With a comprehensive plan and the public will to implement it, the community can ensure the long neglected and abused Wabash will be properly treated as the historic, cultural and economic asset that it is. Riverscape crafted such a plan when it formed in 2008. Those ideas have steadily become realities through cooperation of countless people, groups and governmental entities.
The swampy lowlands on the western riverbank is now a protected wetlands, the Wabashiki Fish and Wildlife Area, which continues to grow. The North First Street sector of the riverfront got its jump start from ISU’s decision to relocate its track there, and then the Annex 41 and ICON renovation projects followed. So much has happened that Riverscape and others want to update and add to its 2008 plan.
Those results are what separates the Riverscape plan from scores of other well-meaning objectives for this town’s betterment.
“Unlike the 20 other plans that are sitting on a shelf somewhere,” Nation said, “this one is being executed.”
It’s not been simple. Or quick. “Good things take time,” said Charlie Williams, Riverscape’s president.
The general public may not immediately notice the results. This year, Riverscape efforts led to the purchase of properties in Dresser — an unincorporated community in the west bank floodplain — from willing landowners. That includes the 22-acre site of a former salvage yard that has been excavated and cleared. Once acquired, those lands then become part of the Vigo County Parks system, Nation explained. The funds involved include a $120,000 grant from the Indiana Bicentennial Nature Trust, and funds allocated to Riverscape from the county (usually $50,000 a year), ISU (typically $25,000) and various other agencies, including the county parks department.
Recreational possibilities
Given that commitment and funding by the county, Riverscape finds itself in the awkward position of opposing the Vigo commissioners’ decision to build a new, massive, $62-million county jail on 30 acres of county-owned riverfront property originally intended for recreational development. Perpetual overcrowding at the current county jail, which sits on two acres downtown, has exposed the county to lawsuits, forcing the construction of a replacement.
Riverscape continues to urge the commissioners to choose an alternative site, but has had no success, so far, in changing their minds. The 30 acres are part of the 62-acre site of the former International Paper mill, which closed in 2007. The mill was part of the southside industrial corridor, which has seen several longtime plants shut down. Riverscape believes the corridor can once again drive economic development through recreation and residential amenities, involving private-public partnerships. The corridor is the third leg of Riverscape’s plan, trickier than North First Street and Wabashiki “because the property is more expensive,” Nation said.
A sprawling jail in the heart of that corridor would complicate the enhancement effort, Nation and Williams believe. A hotel, for example, may be attracted to locate there because of a steady influx of visitors to a baseball-softball complex, as well as the Vigo County Aquatic Center across Prairieton Road, but may balk at operating next to a jail.
By contrast, the commissioners and county Sheriff Greg Ewing said in an open letter to community published in the Tribune-Star, the vacant paper mill property is the optimal jail site because it is “easily accessible to city and county law enforcement, a place away from prime street and highway routes and yet reasonably close to the courthouse, and, importantly, a site that provides sufficient acreage not only to build a facility to meet the projected needs today, but one that could accommodate additional construction decades from now.”
Nation and Williams say other options can be found, without inhibiting the riverfront’s recreational possibilities. They stated their case, most recently, to the Terre Haute City Council, which will vote next month on a county request to rezone the paper mill site to allow a jail there.
Riverscape’s successes, Nation said, “would not have been done without the consistent, loyal support of the commissioners and the county. And that’s what makes it so painful to us to say to them, ‘This isn’t a good idea.’”
It’s an eye-of-the-beholder situation, dependent on what future the beholders see for Terre Haute’s riverfront.