Path to a plan

Redkey and Portland are heading down similar paths toward downtown revitalization, one after the other.

Indiana’s Office of Community and Rural Affairs awarded Redkey a $30,000 comprehensive planning grant in July to help kick-start the process of redeveloping its downtown area.

Portland has its own application in for the same type of grant from OCRA, with word on whether the city will receive the funding expected soon.

“We should probably know if we’re going to get it by the end of October,” said Jay County community developer Ami Huffman, who worked with Portland on the grant application.

In both cases, the grant covers the cost of creating an official redevelopment plan with the help of a professional planning firm and opens up a slew of possible funding opportunities for the future.

“It opens up quite a few other grants, we’re looking at becoming an Indiana Main Street, there’s a Historic Renovation Program, Downtown Enhancement Program, the Main Street Revitalization Program and a place based investment program,” Huffman said. “I think it’s important that all communities go through this extensive of a study, and go that step deeper into planning.”

With its grant funding in hand, Redkey has already started that process. The town hired Remenschneider Associates of Indianapolis in August and held its first steering committee meeting to begin the planning work Oct. 2.

At that meeting, representatives from both Remenschneider and Bloomington consulting firm Strategic Development Group learned about some of the wants, needs and goals of local leaders and business owners while also taking a look at the buildings in the downtown area.

While the downtown buildings are about 100 years old, Huffman said in general they are solid.

“Every community has a few that are in disrepair,” she said, “but for the most part their buildings have pretty strong bones.”

The next step in the process is gathering community input. That will include surveys, both in person and online, Huffman said, to help determine what Redkey’s priorities are. It will also seek to determine what draws visitors, both local and out-of-town, to the downtown area.

In the long run, the plan will discuss in depth what the town’s strengths and weaknesses are, review ordinances and policies, detail what services are lacking and what businesses have a strong probability of success and make suggestions on everything from zoning to sidewalks.

“Once we approve a downtown plan, then we can try for the grant that goes with that for the brick and mortar,” said Redkey Town Council member Doug Stanley, who is serving as the government representative on the steering committee. “So, it’s one step at a time.”

Portland began its current trek toward revitalizing the downtown area with a Ball State University study in 2016, but those efforts stagnated during the late spring and early summer. The city’s revitalization steering committee, created after the conclusion of the study, hasn’t met since April.

“It has been too stagnant and nothing’s being done. Part of it’s because there are some hard choices that are going to cost money to do,” said Geesaman, who had hoped to have new entryway signs installed this summer. “I’ve been a person, since I’ve come into office, that said we’re not going to kick problems down the road, we’re going to tackle them.”

Instead of pushing forward based on the BSU study, however, Portland is now hoping to follow the same process Redkey is currently undertaking in part because the city’s redevelopment commission expressed concerns with moving forward without plans developed by professionals.

Geesaman expressed optimism that the city will receive the OCRA planning grant.

“I feel pretty strongly that once they (OCRA) see what we want to do here in Portland that we’ll get that planning grant and move forward with the company (R and B Architects) that we signed the agreement with at the redevelopment commission,” Geesaman said. “It’s something that we’ve been working for a long time, and it’s not going to go away.”

Regarding the entryway signs, one of the proposals from the Ball State study that seemed close to realization, Geesaman said he is seeking partnerships with the private sector to fund their construction.

“We’re hoping to partner so we can offset some of the costs,” Geesaman said. But he also added that if partnerships fall through, the city will move forward on its own to install the signs, developed by Display Craft.

Geesaman said results will take at least a year, but that he intends on continuing to push the city forward on redevelopment.

“This is going to be a process. It’ll be a year from now before we see anything concrete,” he said. “This will take all winter and all spring. I think it’ll be this time next year before we can really see anything.”