Majority of READI requests in Southern Indiana for Clark, Floyd

Oct. 13—SOUTHERN INDIANA — Our Southern Indiana Regional Development Authority received 110 applications for READI 2.0 with the majority of requests coming from Clark and Floyd counties.

At Friday's RDA meeting, Our Southern Indiana provided a broad overview of the applications submitted through the recent call for projects for the Indiana Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative grant. The RDA received requests from all five counties it represents, including Clark, Floyd, Scott, Jefferson and Washington counties.

There were a total of 34 requests in Clark and 18 requests in Floyd.

The RDA meeting did not cover the specifics of individual projects, and Cory Cochran, executive director of River Hills Economic Development District, did not have the full list of submitted projects available for the News and Tribune as of publication time. River Hills is working with Our Southern Indiana to administer and manage the READI grants.

The total READI funding requests total $419.7 million, and the total cost of all proposed projects is about $1.3 billion, the RDA announced at Friday's meeting. In the previous round, Southern Indiana received the maximum amount of $50 million in regional funding, but for READI 2.0, the RDA is eligible for up to $75 million.

The Clark County READI requests total more than $205 million, and the Floyd County requests total more than $76 million. Of the total READI requests, 49% are from Clark, and 18% are from Floyd.

"These numbers are not allocations," Cochran said. "These numbers are not recommendations. These numbers are aggregate numbers that are based on and arrived at by totaling all the applications."

Our Southern Indiana RDA Chair Dana Huber said she is excited to work with communities to come up with an investment strategy for the projects.

"The most exciting thing to me is communicating well so our five counties know and understand the process, which I think is very important as we move forward," she said. "We are enthused, and we're engaged, and we're actually going to see a lot of great projects come to fruition."

Requests from this round of READI funding have doubled since the last round in Southern Indiana. In the first round, RDA received 54 requests for funding.

"We received several projects from all of the municipalities, from all of the counties, from multiple nonprofits, from multiple entities, and so I think that the word is getting out that READI funding is a good mechanism to get some projects really going for change," Cochran said.

He said the RDA has until February to submit an investment strategy for the proposed projects, and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation is expected to announce the READI grant funding in April.

"We'll be working on the investment strategy over the coming months working with the RDA and building that out to show exactly what our needs are and how we intend on spending $75 million within the region based on the call for project information," he said.

After the allocations are announced, Our Southern Indiana will submit requests for proposals in three categories, including quality of life, quality of place and quality of opportunity, according to Cochran. The RDA will then score and select projects for funding.

In the last round of READI funding, Our Southern Indiana created a detailed 259-page plan for the five regions based on project submissions, but the IEDC has "standardized" the application process, according to Cochran.

"I do think this will be an easier process than it was two years ago simply because of the amount of work that it's going to take to submit the investment strategy versus the regional development plan that was submitted two years ago," he said.

Huber emphasizes that regions are not guaranteed to receive a READI allocation, and she urged the communities and project leads to "work together to make sure we have the strongest campaign."

Of the projects submitted, Cochran estimates that between 90% to 95% of projects are new. A small number are continuations of projects that previously received READI funding or projects that were submitted in the last round but did not receive funding.

He said there is a "good mix" of project types.

"I think we're still going to continue to look at good quality of life projects [such as] trails [and] parks," Cochran said. "Those are the types of things that the RDA really loves and admires. But we also know we're going to have to invest in infrastructure. If we're going to have new housing built, if we're going to have new housing come in, we have to have the infrastructure to support that."

The "tourism, arts, culture & community projects" category received the highest number of total submissions at 28 requests, followed by "growth infrastructure" at 24 and "housing" at 21.

There is also a variety of project stages. Most are in the design phase, while others are in the pre-planning phase, bidding phase or construction phase.

"Projects that aren't fully ready today, they have about eight months to get ready, so start working on your designs, your engineering," Cochran said. "Start figuring out where your other funding sources are going to come from because if we get the funding from IEDC in the spring, we hope that the projects that will be scored and selected will be ready to go by next fall."

The RDA board also voted Friday to create a task force to help the administrative staff create the investment strategy for the READI grant. The RDA staff and representatives from each county are among the members who will be included in the task force.