The Southwest Central Indiana Region is a recently drawn portion of the state that economic developers and planners see as a key engine for growth and vitality in those counties.
The 11 counties that are part of this new region lie along the I-69 corridor — sometimes only distantly — but will be tied together in the future through shared goals and economic necessity. That’s according to a plan announced last week, along with a 130-page report on the area’s future. The $650,000 study and report was produced by the Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research and development organization.
Some of the region’s counties contain huge stretches of state or federal land. Monroe, Owen and Brown counties arc across the region’s top, with Bloomington its largest city and an economic driver and job producer for the entire region.
It also is home to Indiana University, a center of innovation and research in the state.
Daviess and Dubois counties are on the region’s southwestern edge, with Jasper, a prosperous small city and the Dubois County seat, an economic driver for the southern reaches of the region.
In the middle is the Naval Support Activity, Crane, and its Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center, among the region’s largest employers and an important research/technology center for the nation’s defense.
In its executive summary, the Battelle study points out key regional assets: IU and its place as a major national research university; Crane, which the study calls “a unique federal laboratory”; the area’s natural and historic assets; and the I-69 extension that will provide connectedness among the counties and a means to reach broader markets.
Challenges, though, are substational, the report points out. They include: lack of enough skilled workers, especially in technology; current failure to take full advantage of I-69’s substantial potential; lack of interaction and coordination between Crane and IU; lack of an entrepreneurial spirit through the region, and finally, lack of regionalism — that is, thinking as a unit rather than as 11 unique environments.
That last item perhaps should head the list. An already naturally difficult unification process is made more difficult by the southwestern Indiana go-it-alone temperament, demonstrated not so long ago when one of the counties turned down free, no-strings-attached federal dollars for a project — just because.
And there is the separation between Monroe County and its university from the other counties in the group. This county relishes the maverick’s role, one that is too often dismissive of our neighbors, while those others see us as foreigners.
It will take a lot of hard work to bring minds and hearts into the fold — work that will become increasingly urgent as the world threatens to pass us by.