Rural county braces for billion-dollar transport hub
A sprawling 3,000-acre transportation hub is the 800-pound gorilla in Northwest Indiana's far east corner. It is expected to become one of the busiest transit centers in the country, an industrial area designed to be the meeting spot for trains, trucks and cargo from lake freighters.
Expected to arrive within the next two years, the intermodal center also will displace dozens of residents -- making some millionaires in the process -- and forever change the makeup of the now-rural towns of Union Mills, Kingsford Heights and Kingsbury in south central LaPorte County.
And yet, no one wants to talk about it.
A confidentiality agreement designed by Grubb-Ellis Cressy and Everett, the corporate and investment real estate development company based in Chicago handling the mammoth development, has sealed the lips of every politician and businessman involved in the project. Even the people living in the area targeted for demolition don't know when they will have to move.
Chris Davey, president of Grubb-Ellis, said he didn't want to talk publicly about the intermodal, but he has already offered landowners $10,000 per acre for their farms and homes.
Davey said he has the billions of dollars necessary to pull the intermodal together.
He told the homeowners that he's always in LaPorte working on the project that will offer thousands of jobs and millions of dollars to the area.
It all sounds very promising --- except for the fate of the farmers and homeowners who chose that area of LaPorte County for some of the very same reasons it looks so profitable for developers: It's flat, quiet and sparsely populated. There are 70 children in the graduating class of the local school; fast-food restaurants are few.
That's why some with family ties that stretch back generations insist they aren't going anywhere.
"We will not sell," said farmer John Lowenthal. "This is home. This is where we are supposed to be."
Right now, they are about the only ones talking.