The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority has created a new grant program to help communities prepare for transit-oriented development.
The RDA has kicked in $250,000 for the new Development Catalyst Grants program for individual grants of $10,000 to $75,000. The RDA will require at least a 10% match. Only communities in Lake and Porter counties are eligible.
The grant program comes after Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. and Michigan City Mayor Angie Nelson Deuitch spoke Wednesday about how expanded access to commuter rail service is boosting development in their cities.
Hammond plans to begin construction of a new South Shore Line station downtown as the city pushes to attract new residents there. The Banc, which converted the former Calumet Bank headquarters at Fayette Street and Hohman Avenue into a residential complex, was all filled up in just 60 days.
The Franklin, a $101 million mixed-use building attached to the new 11th Street Station in Michigan City, is expected to achieve similar results when it’s finished in mid-August.
The $1.5 billion expansion of the South Shore Line – including the Double Track NWI and West Lake Corridor projects – will be finished when service begins Tuesday afternoon on the new Monon Corridor between Dyer and the Hammond Gateway station in north Hammond.
The new RDA grants will help communities update zoning codes for transit-oriented development, conduct housing studies, write investor prospectuses for redevelopment areas, create placemaking materials for station areas and downtown districts, analyze infrastructure gaps to identify barriers to redevelopment and create master development agreement frameworks, among other potential uses.
“Every community has some of these, but few if any have all that they need to attract quality development in an increasingly competitive regional landscape,” RDA Economic Development Director AJ Bytnar said in a news release. “This grant program will help fill in the gaps and align local and regional priorities.”
“Successful development starts with preparation,” RDA President and CEO Sherri Ziller said. “From the start, the RDA has sought to provide our partner communities with the tools and strategies they need to be ready for developers’ calls. The development catalyst grant will provide funds to boost and round out these efforts so that communities are positioned to compete when opportunity arrives.”
The grants aren’t limited to communities with train stations.
“The strongest applications will connect local initiatives to RDA strategic priorities: transit-oriented development, brownfield redevelopment, lakefront access, tourism infrastructure and economic diversification,” Bytnar said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.