At the May 14 meeting of the Kosciusko County Redevelopment Commission, Kosciusko Economic Development Corporation President George Robertson updated the commission on economic developments in the county.

“We’re standing strong, we’re above our historic numbers for people employed, we have people moving into the county,” said Robertson. “It looks like 2015 will be a strong year.”

Robertson advised the commission of the two expansion announcements that came before the Pierceton Town Council earlier this week. He also reported there are a couple of pending announcements that should be coming out in the near future.

One will be made at the Syracuse Town Council meeting next week. Robertson said that announcement would be for a significant expansion, likely to produce around 150 new jobs for the area. Another pending announcement has the potential to create another 200 jobs in the county. Robertson expects that at the commission’s next meeting he’ll be reporting 500 new job openings and economic growth of $30 million in the county.

Robertson also reported that at the most recent legislative session, no significant legislation was passed regarding TIF districts, though a resolution was passed for a summer commission study. He noted that Gov. Pence signed the Regional Cities Initiative last week.

Dan Richard of the Area Plan Commission and Warsaw City Planner Jeremy Skinner came before the commission to discuss riverfront district opportunities in the county. “A lot of people think it’s an opportunity to sell more alcohol,” said Commissioner Max Courtney.

“It’s an economic development tool,” explained Skinner. “It was designed to help downtowns bring in restaurants or entertainment type businesses. What we did was we created a riverfront development district by Center Lake.” Similarly, the town of Syracuse developed a riverfront district along Turkey Creek.

“We’re pretty blessed with waterways in this county,” said Richard. Richard noted that current laws regarding riverfront and lakefront districts poses some obstacles for the developing such districts in Kosciusko County.

While the county has plenty of lakes that would benefit from a lakefront development district, Indian state laws state that Lake Michigan is the only lake in the entire state eligible for lakefront district designation. Additionally, the state laws empower municipalities to create the district, which limits what the county could do with these economic development tools.

Ultimately, Commissioner Larry Teghtmeyer felt the commission should draft changes to it and would like to see to the laws and present them to a state representative.

Also at the meeting, the commission signed a declaratory resolution in support of expanding the Trupoint TIF District located near Milford. Additionally, the commission discussed taking the June meeting time to explore some potential economic development areas in the county.

The meeting adjourned with a motion from Commissioner Bill Warren.