A national economic development program is providing a person to work on a new project in Lake County, the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission has announced.
Celena Green, who has worked with social enterprises and small businesses during her career, including three years in South Bend, was selected by the Economic Recovery Corps Fellowship program to work with NIRPC for the next two and a half years.
“We’re really excited to be the host for her,” said Denarie Kane, coordinator of the Economic Development District at NIRPC.
Green will work on a project to redevelop former industrial sites – often termed brownfields — in Gary, Hammond, East Chicago and Lake Station that lie along an anticipated quantum computing fiber corridor from Chicago to South Bend.
“Experience working with brownfields has shown that sites often have barriers to development beyond the environmental concerns,” Kathy Luther, NIRPC’s director of environmental programs, said in NIRPC’s news release.
She said Green, with Luther serving as her mentor, will investigate multiple factors for each site.
NIRPC worked with the Northwest Indiana Forum in developing the program.
The project aims to identify eight sites, from 10 to 50 acres each, ready for business development or redevelopment.
Green lives in Oklahoma now but will be moving to Northwest Indiana and will work from the NIRPC office in Portage.
The Economic Recovery Corps Fellowship program began in 2023 with a $30 million cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. The International Economic Development Council leads the program, supported by six other national economic development organizations.
In other NIRPC news, Executive Director Ty Warner hopes legislation to increase the organization’s local funding can be revived and is still seeking support for the measure.
“We hope to still get it introduced as an amendment to another bill,” Warner said Tuesday.
He plans to talk with Lake County Council members on Thursday, though they are not likely to vote on the matter then.
Warner has contended that the lack of increased local funding limits NIRPC’s ability to seek federal grants.
“We’re basically giving up some federal dollars that we’re entitled to,” he said.
The LaPorte and Porter County councils have supported the increase. Porter County’s council included stipulations to phase in the increase and to review it in five years.
House Bill 1251, written by State Rep. Hal Slager, R-Schererville, would have increased the amount of funding from Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties – set at 70 cents per person by legislation in 1992 — to $1.50 per person, plus later increases tied to inflation.
The bill never got a hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.