A massive development in Dyer is the first to receive money through Northwest Indiana’s transit development district financing plan.
The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority approved a memorandum of agreement Wednesday to provide funds to support the town’s $23 million commitment to the Central Park Commons development, expected to cost more than $200 million.
The development includes a grocery, fitness club, Hilton brand hotel, shops, restaurants, 363 townhomes and 199 units of senior housing, RDA President and CEO Sherri Ziller said.
The town approved the economic development agreement for the project last month.
An existing senior living building at the site will remain, Ziller said.
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The transit development district surrounds the South Shore Line’s nearby Munster/Dyer station. The district was formed in 2022 to provide incentives for this kind of economic development project near the train stations.
Other projects have been developed in transit development districts, Ziller said, but either the developers didn’t ask for the funding or it wasn’t set up yet.
“This is nearly a decade-plus work” to bring a project like this to the current stage, RDA Economic Development Director AJ Bytnar said.
“This is the first of many we’ll see,” he said.
“This will help create opportunities for the RDA to assist developers to get the type and scale of development” that everyone wants,” Bytnar said.
In other business, the RDA approved a $5.3 million contract with Homrich Wrecking of Detroit, Michigan, to demolish the former City Methodist Church and St. Mary’s Hospital buildings in Gary.
RDA member Randy Palmateer, business manager at the Northwestern Indiana Building and Construction Trades Council, was surprised by the choice of Homrich over eight other bids. “I never heard of this contractor,” he said.
Palmateer asked the RDA staff to verify that Homrich will follow all Gary ordinances, including a project labor agreement to ensure Homrich will pay the prevailing wages Northwest Indiana union workers earn.
Demolition will begin in the next month at the Genesis Center in Gary, Ziller said, with City Methodist Church and St. Mary’s Hospital to follow in the months after that.
The new Northwest Indiana Local Development Entity, created this year, plans to hire an inaugural director by fall. “We’re looking for somebody with significant brownfield experience,” Ziller said. Applications are being accepted until the position is filled.
The LDE aims to assemble and help remediate, if needed, challenging properties for redevelopment. The new director will, among other things, identify a handful of major projects to pursue and identify how to address them.
Additionally, a technical study is the next step for turning a stretch of U.S. 12 into an officially designated scenic byway, Ziller said. The idea is to pursue state and federal designation to boost small businesses and tourism while highlighting the cultural, historic and scenic aspects of the area along that stretch of U.S. 12 and the Marquette Greenway.
That study is expected to take about a year, she said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.