I attended the introductory meeting on READI 2.0 presented by South Bend – Elkhart Regional Partnership (SEBERP) at the Rees Theater yesterday. Honestly, attendance was pretty poor, but there was some good information. READI 2.0 is a refined repeat of the original READI (1.0) program which was a refined repeat of the Regional Cities Initiative. In various forms, these programs have been designed to incentivize municipal and private investment in statewide goals. As with the past programs, READI 2.0 offers the carrot of up to 20% project investment matched by 20% local government investment and 60% private investment. Whether the entire 20% is granted depends on the quality of the project, its merit for meeting goals and its ranking among other submissions.
Sand Hill Farm Apartments was awarded Regional Cities Initiative (RCI) dollars. Those funds, though only 7% of the project cost, provided some incentive to move the project forward when Culver‘s first Stellar application was unsuccessful. The project was initially to be the LIHTC portion of Culver’s Stellar application. When that wasn’t successful, the RCI funds helped make the project viable as market rate housing. Moving this project forward has been noted as instrumental in Culver’s success with their second Stellar application. Unfortunately, Culver did not follow through on their commitment, so some of those funds never were disbursed by RCI and those that were got redirected to reimbursements in lieu of benefiting the project.
Culver Sand Hill Farm was awarded READI 1.0 dollars for Water Street Townhomes. This is a mixed use building with 11 two-bedroom townhouses, 2 one-bedroom apartments and a corner commercial space. We are still working with the City of Plymouth to create the structure to put those dollars to work. SEBERP awarded less than the initial request, but Plymouth is following through with their entire match in order to make this project possible.
Culver Sand Hill Farm also submitted a townhouse project for Culver, Spirit Townhomes, which was named in the READI 1.0 Strategic Investment Plan. Unfortunately, after the fact, Culver chose to partner with a different developer on the much larger and more controversial project, The Dunes. (Discussed here.) C’est la vie! Sometimes you reap what you sow.
SBERP will be putting in an application for READI 2.0 funds for our region after the first of the year. Yesterday’s meeting was one of several where they are soliciting input on what goals of the SEBERP region fit within the stated READI 2.0 goals. This will help them refine their application. They feel confident that their track record managing the Regional Cities Initiative and READI 1.0 funds put them in a good position to receive the maximum award from READI 2.0. The handout to the right was provided at the meeting, showing some of the impact these investments have had. $878 Million in project investment through those two programs, which is 9.5 times the investment from the State. (See the backside of the flyer here.)
There is a rural component to READI 2.0, directing that 25% should go to rural areas. Of the three counties in SBERP (St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall), only Marshall County is designated at rural. That doesn’t mean that Marshall County doesn’t have to have competitive projects, but it gives a 25% set-aside leg up. L:ast time, READI 1.0 projects were rewarded on population, which put Marshall County at a disadvantage.
One of the interesting changes in the program is the option for receiving a loan in lieu of a grant from the program. The funds could be loaned out at a reduced interest rate, with the funds paid back to SBERP for future reinvestment in the region. While the concept is a good one, the implementation appears to be flawed, from my perspective. As it currently stands, the loan would be capped at the same 20% level as the grants. While both a grant and a loan could be awarded, they cannot total more than 20% of the project. I will need to hear more about this, but my initial impression is that there is not much incentive to take the loan in lieu of the grant, but I may be missing nuances here. It would make some sense to see loan amounts allowed to be larger percentages since the money will be recirculated. Then there would be more incentive to take that option.
An interesting sidebar – not only did I sit with Linda Yoder, Executive Director of the Marshall County Community Foundation (MCCF), at the READI 2.0 meeting, I also followed that up with an MCCF meeting at her office to hear from MCCF’s financial advisor on impact investing options for the newly formed Roger Umbaugh Local Impact Investing fund. (More on this in a future post.)
Impact Investing seems to be a great way to influence desired outcomes. Great projects that are good for the community often flounder because the investor ROI isn’t there. If Impact Investing can influence that through grants, loans and other creative means, then it benefits everyone.
I don’t yet know if or how Easterday Construction Co., Inc. (ECC) or Culver Sand Hill Farm LLC (SHF) will participate in READI 2.0. The experience with READI 1.0 hasn’t been bad, but there have been a lot of strings attached to it after the award that weren’t factored into the original project. I’ve been approached about several projects that would fit under the READI 2.0 umbrella. I’ll continue to monitor this and continue to be part of the discussion. Whether ECC or SHF participate or not, it seems that it’s another great opportunity for Marshall County and Marshall County communities.
The Culver Redevelopment Commission met last night and there was discussion on The Dunes project. There was a public hearing as they were entering a subrecipient agreement with the Town of Culver. (I always find these things amusing, where the Town Council comes hat-in-hand to request money from the Redevelopment Commission. Ummm… The Town Council are the elected officials that answer to the voters! They appoint the Redevelopment Commission members. If there is any issue with the CRC supporting the TOC, then there should be some reappointments made ASAP! Ha!)
The meeting was a little frustrating as there were no plans or even preliminary plans for The Dunes that they could share. They only shared verbal descriptions of what some of them had seen. The only new information that was shares was: a) The scope has increased to “300 doors” and b) the Town’s commitment to this will be greater than the $1.3MM originally contemplated in the READI grant application. My concern is that we’re getting a long way down the line without knowing what we’re doing. I had to leave the meeting early because of another commitment. I ran into a Town Council member outside who made the comment, “This isn’t like your project where we knew everything up front and knew what we were signing up for.” Well, Yeah!? Why not???
I keep coming back to The Dunes representatives being very careful with their wording. To paraphrase, “The capital contributions from the Town of Culver and READI will reduce the construction costs, but the housing created will be market rate housing.”
Market Rate = What the Market will Bear… I thought that was salient last night as there will be no requirements on the developer regarding costs. The development agreement that kicked off Sand Hill Farm Apartments included several cost controls and included requirements for 12-month leases among other things. It seems they have chosen not to pursue those this time. They (CRC) were even hesitant to use the term work-force housing as they said that it implied that it was subsidized. Ironically, wasn’t the whole reason for this discussion the subsidy they were giving? At the lowest point, the subsidy proposed is $2.6MM made up of $1.3MM from the Town of Culver and $1.3MM from READI.
A key point that was emphasized last night was that increasing the number of available housing options should bring down the cost of housing in Culver. Part of the audience’s concern was that the word “should” has been variously substituted with “could” and “ought to” and has included qualifiers like “hopefully”, “theoretically”, “ideally”, etc. This is an experiment.
In general, I am not opposed to The Dunes project and agree with the Town’s premises on increased housing options being needed. The current trends toward Culver having too many “second homes”, probably won’t be stopped by this, but could be affected by it. I am more concerned about my perception of a lack of vision for its effects. I’ve written about some of this before, but to reiterate:
I am not one to say we’re moving too fast on this. Time is money and as discussed last week, the numbers being discussed from the READI application are stale as they were put together a year ago. Blame who you like (I have my opinions), but inflation in construction costs is real. I am pleased that the Town has hired financial consultants to make sure the monetary side of this makes sense. I think they are missing a key component by not hiring an urban planning consultant to provide input. This is a major change to the community and all available expertise should be brought into this decision.
Those interested should be at the Town Council meeting tonight where there will be another public hearing on this issue. As the council member I spoke to said, “Bring a cushion…”
Great to see that Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) is back on track with Annual Reports. (And not just because of my teeny-tiny picture on the cover! Ha!) Riverside Commons actually has two references in the report, though not by name.
The lack of an Annual Report was one of the major issues in my last couple of years on the board. It got contentious with that director fabricating a false schedule for producing a report that never happened. Then it was apparently just completely disregarded by the next director. I’m glad to see that the new leadership under Greg Hildebrand includes living up to commitments, the Annual Report being one of these.
I don’t know how Greg is doing on the State and National levels, but on the local level, it’s been refreshing to have a MCEDC President that is not constantly burning bridges, MIA or joked about due to the inability to contact them or find them in the office. He also doesn’t take his title too seriously. IYKYK This will go a long way to improving MCEDC’s image and returning it to the mission it had when it was founded.
I hope we will be seeing quarterly newsletters again too. The organization has to be seen and seen as productive in order to continue to move the county forward. Even at its low points, I felt it was positive for Marshall County to have MCEDC. Good luck to Greg as he strives to make it an organization of which we can be proud once again.
Inside Indiana Business reported that three Indiana Cities took positions in the Wall Street Journal’s list of Top Ten Places for Remote Workers: Evansville was #3, Lafayette was #5 and Fort Wayne was #10. The topic of remote workers comes up often at the Culver Crossroads meetings. While Culver has done a lot to become attractive to remote workers, I’m not sure we’ve done much to actually attract remote workers.
Culver saw a lot of remote workers during the pandemic. Not surprising that a community of second homes became a desirable location to shelter-in-place. One advantage that Culver had over the cities listed above (for sheltering in place) was our small size. We have many of the necessary amenities without the large population. We undoubtedly missed an opportunity to capture more of those remote workers.
While we have boosted our amenities, we can’t compete with small city amenities such as colleges. (Though to some extend, Culver Academies fills a lot of that gap. That’s not necessarily obvious to someone looking in from the outside.) What we should do is promote our proximity to these. Two of the above cities, Lafayette and Fort Wayne, are within 75 miles of Culver. Lafayette gives us proximity to Purdue. South Bend and Notre Dame are 45 miles away. Chicago is only 76 miles away! Michigan Wine Country is only 76 miles away. We’re only 100 miles of Indianapolis. Yet we only continue to promote Culver as a destination. The Culver Visitors Center promotes itself as Find Culver.
What if we were to also promote Culver as a hub? Marshall County Economic Development Corporation has been doing this with manufacturers for years, pointing out the manufacturing centers and vast population within a 200 mile radius of Marshall County. (One of those interesting statistics is that there are more people within 200 miles of Marshall County, IN than within 200 miles of Atlanta, GA.)
I know we’re still working on things and there are some issues, such as broadband, yet to be solved, but I don’t think it’s too soon to talk about why Culver is a great place to live, not just a great place to visit. This is an across the board thing. Look at the sign CabinetWorks has promoting working in Culver (above) and the image from their website promoting Culver itself (right). How do we extend their suggestion of working in Culver to living in Culver. Culver assisted Sand Hill Farm Apartments and The Paddocks bringing in workforce housing. They are in the process of helping two other developers bring in upper income housing. Is it possible to broaden the Culver Visitors Center’s mission to include finding new residents, not just visitors?
LIHTC & Stellar
December 20, 2023
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver, LaPaz, Marshall County, MCCF, MCEDC, Plymouth, Sand Hill Farm, Stellar
Community, Culver, Culver Redevelopment Commission, government, LIHTC, Marshall County Crossroads
At the December meeting of the Culver Redevelopment Commission (CRC), Linda Yoder, Executive Director for the Marshall County Community Foundation (MCCF), made a presentation on One Marshall County. One Marshall County is the new umbrella organization that Marshall County Economic Development Corp (MCEDC) has spearheaded. Linda and I serve on the collaborative council discussing this new initiative and Linda had volunteered to make the presentation of the need for One Marshall County before the CRC. This also included a request for funding.
There were a few math errors in the presentation, but one of these jumped out at me was during the discussion of Stellar and the investment that Marshall County Crossroads brought to local communities. The numbers quite clearly did not include the investment from tax credits provided by IHCDA. The Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) provided by IHCDA amounted to the biggest single project investment from any of the State agencies involved in Stellar. In all, through the tax credits and loans, Plymouth and LaPaz shared $14 million dollars of investment in their communities with Riverside Commons. That investment didn’t show up in the presentation numbers. This is no shade on Linda! She didn’t prepare the numbers…
This isn’t the first time for this. Culver received approximately $10 million in tax credits and loans for The Paddocks, but that number rarely shows up in their Stellar discussions. These would be huge contributors to the ROI discussion, since local investment in these projects was largely limited to in-kind waivers and some inhouse work. (Culver contributed nothing to The Paddocks project. Plymouth gave waivers on improvements to surrounding alleys. LaPaz waived sewer tap fees and secured matching INDOT funding to improve the street serving the project.)
I think there are a couple of reasons for this lack of acknowledgment: 1) The Stellar Committees don’t really understand the program and 2) Unlike many of the project which were directly municipal projects, i.e. parks, trails, etc., that required more active involvement, the LIHTC portion of Stellar is directly administered by the project developer, so there isn’t a pass-through of dollars. The LIHTC award creates a private project. Where there was some shifting of dollars amongst the other municipal projects within the Stellar awards, that was not an option with LIHTC.
Despite the success of The Paddocks in Culver’s Stellar Community program, Marshall County didn’t even include a LIHTC request in their first application for Stellar Region. I had lobbied for its inclusion and felt that the group slighted IHCDA by not accepting their offer. I lobbied a little harder in their second attempt and Riverside Commons was included in that application, which was successful. This was probably not the only reason, but I firmly believe it contributed to the success of the second application.
There have been some complaints about The Paddocks, but The Paddocks has met or exceeded all of the metrics set forth for it. The same can be said for Sand Hill Farm Apartments, the precursor project that made Culver Stellar and The Paddocks possible. It’s too soon to document that for Riverside Commons, which has different goals, but I have no reason to believe the results will be different. As far as community acknowledgement, the LaPaz and Plymouth councils have done a great job of recognizing Riverside Commons. They each have a Stellar agenda item on their council agendas and request updates for each meeting. Culver did not include The Paddocks in their Stellar reports to the council.
I think it’s a missed opportunity when the LIHTC investment is not celebrated and included in the ROI… But then, I’m obviously biased!
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