The Accelerate Rural Indiana Regional Development Authority held its first meeting Friday afternoon at Greensburg City Hall.
This body is to act as the fiscal agent for the Accelerate Rural Indiana (ARI) region, which includes Shelby, Rush and Decatur Counties and Batesville. These communities banded together in 2021 to request Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) funding from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
The state granted the region $20 million to use toward a variety of economic development and quality of life activities. Shelby County intends to use theirs toward an Indoor Sports Complex at Blue River Memorial Park, an Early Learning Center, and Porter Apartments (behind the Porter Visitor’s Center).
The RDA will oversee the disbursement of the grant funding as these projects commence, as well as pursue a second round of READI funding, which will be made available if the state legislature approves the proposed budget.
The RDA is a five member board comprised of Andy Saner from Batesville, Virgil Bremer from Rush County, David Toll from Shelbyville, Bruce Everhart from Shelby County, and Bryan Robbins from Decatur County. These individuals were appointed by their respective local governments, and some of them have been involved in the READI planning prior to the formation of the board.
“We formed an RDA not only to solidify our partnership but also prepare for additional opportunities that may come down, such as READI 2.0, or any other funding both state and federal, that may help grow and develop our little neck of the woods here in Indiana,” Robbins said.
Each member of the board took the opportunity to go around the table and introduce themselves. Robbins is the director of Greensburg/Decatur County Economic Development Corp. Everhart is a retired banker of 40 years. Toll is the vice president of administration and member engagement for RushShelby Energy. Bremer serves as the vice chair of the Rush County Economic and Community Development Corp. Saner works in financial services.
The board appointed Robbins as its chair, Saner as its vice chair and Everhart as its secretary-treasurer. HWC Engineering serves as the board’s consulting firm.
Mason Gordon from HWC Engineering gave the board an update on the 17 projects ARI is pursuing. Twelve of these have been approved by the state, and four of them have been executed. The deadline to submit these projects is June 30.
Two projects – a skate park in Batesville and Pirate Park in Decatur County – have been completed.
“Real quick on the skate park in Batesville, being that I’m from that region, it has been well used,” Saner said. “It’s not just been Batesville, it’s really attracted [from out of the county]. ... I’m very surprised to see how far the license plates have [come from].”
Gordon highlighted these two projects, as well as a few others.
“As of today, we have fully dispersed $550,000 in READI funds to projects,” he said. “We do have $14,250 pending for Diamond Pet Foods. We submitted that dispersement request this week and hope to get a check sometime this month from IEDC. We still have a lot of dispersements to do, but as far as approvals and getting projects rolling, we are in really good shape.”
The total budget for all the projects is $499,389,403. This means that the $20 million in grant funding generated an additional $470 million in private investment.
All three Shelby County projects have been approved by IEDC and agreements for the development of the Early Learning Center and Porter Apartments have been drafted, according to Gordon’s project spreadsheet.
The total investment for the Early Learning Center is $8 million, and the RDA is to administer $3 million in READI funding to that project. The Porter Apartments investment is $34,337,467, and of that, $249,999 will come from the grant. The Indoor Sports Complex total investment is $22,517,260 and it was allocated $2.5 million of the grant.
More information about these individual projects will be available in TSN’s Business and Industry special sections, which will print in June.
On the agenda for the RDA was for the individuals on the board to take the oath of office, to adopt bylaws, elect officers, authorize Batesville to join the board, adopt a resolution allowing for board members to meet electronically, form a steering committee, approve to publish a request for proposals for administration, open a development fund account, investigate legal counsel and establish meeting times.
The motion to authorize Batesville to join the board came from the fact that only the county governments could form the board, and because Batesville is not in any of the participating counties, that city’s officials were not able to participate in the formation. The board had to be formed first, then they could allow the city to join.
The RFP for administration came about because HWC Engineering’s contract is expiring, and because they are paid over a certain dollar amount, the board is required to issue a RFP. HWC Engineering does plan on applying again.
The board also addressed but took no formal action on who to hire for legal counsel because there was confusion on whether they could use READI funding to pay for it. Currently, HWC Engineering has used Adam Steuerwald from Barnes and Thornburg for legal counsel.
The RDA will meet at 1 p.m. on the second Friday of the month at Greensburg City Hall.
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