GOSHEN — Despite failing to secure funds through the state’s Regional Cities Initiative earlier this month, proponents of a planned mixed-use recreational activity center known as “Central Park Goshen” say the project is still alive and kicking.
The proposed project is the brainchild of local businessmen Michael Dickens, Jonathan Wieand and Dave Pottinger, who were hoping to capitalize on the state’s recently approved $126 million Regional Cities Initiative to help fund a portion of the project. The project was moved to a group of projects for a final vote, but was not accepted for funding.
The Central Park proposal called for the construction of a recreational activity center near the Goshen Millrace, as well as a planned Apex indoor climbing and recreational facility in South Bend.
According to Dickens, chief executive officer of Apex Climbing Centers, the new activity center would be a mixed-use athletic facility with various continuous year-round activities as well as a covered but open-air seasonally reconfigurable space.
Year-round activities would include a dedicated rock climbing center operated by Apex, as well as a number of other year-round family-oriented activities. The seasonally reconfigurable space would also provide a full-sized ice skating/ice hockey rink in the winter that would be converted in warmer months into an open air amphitheater for bands and movies as well as courts for basketball, floor hockey, volleyball, roller/inline skating, and numerous other potential activities.
Dickens said he and his fellow project organizers were seeking $1.3 million in Regional Cities funding support for the Central Park Goshen project and $700,000 for the South Bend climbing facility.
Finalists chosen
After several meetings in late July and early August to rank and vet the various submitted proposals, the region’s Regional Development Authority — a five-member board made up of representatives from each of the region’s three counties tasked with overseeing dispersal of the region’s grant funding - selected a total of 15 finalists for funding assistance. While the Goshen Theater project was included among the finalists, the Central Park Goshen project failed to make the cut.
Yet according to Dickens, funding support for the 15 finalists is not yet a guarantee, as the 15 proposals must now be forwarded on to the Indiana Economic Development Corp. for final vetting before any funds can be released.
Given the possibility that one or more of the submitted finalists may not be approved by the IEDC, members of the Regional Development Authority met Thursday to discuss the possibility of selecting alternate proposals to have on standby. By the end of that meeting, four projects had been selected as alternates, one of which was the Central Park Goshen-Apex Climbing project.
“So the Regional Cities RDA board has said they’re going to be meeting again in November to discuss the four projects, including Central Park Goshen and Apex Climbing,” Dickens said, noting that it will be during that meeting that the RDA will determine if any additional funding for the alternate proposals has become available.
Funding options
While securing Regional Cities funding support would be a major boon for the Central Park Goshen project, Dickens said failing to do so will not necessarily mean the project’s death knell, as he and his fellow project advocates are already working hard to secure additional funding sources and opportunities for the development.
“In Goshen, we also have applied for a grant from the Community Foundation of Elkhart County, which is actually the more substantial piece of the overall funding for it,” Dickens said, noting that the group is currently hoping to secure a grant of as much as $2 to $2.5 million through the foundation. “We heard recently that that grant has made it through the next part of it’s determination, so we will be meeting with the review board later this month to talk about that as well as determine the path forward — what we need to be doing, and what they’re going to be interested in seeing as the months go by. So we think that Central Park Goshen still has a lot of prospect.”
That said, Dickens noted that securing the Regional Cities funding could go a long way toward helping the group secure additional funding support for the project.
“It’s an attraction for investors and donors,” Dickens said of the Regional Cities funding. “I hear that from the people I talk with a lot. Now they don’t say without Regional Cities that they’re out. But they do say it would be really powerful if we could get Regional Cities support. So it does go a long way in terms of legitimacy.”