SOUTH BEND — The $42 million grant that north-central Indiana won through the state's Regional Cities Initiative will soon be put to work.
Regional Cities of Northern Indiana, which is the five-person board administering the grant for St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall counties, chose 14 projects on Tuesday to receive pieces of the $42 million pie.
The list of winning projects includes new sports facilities, places for outdoor recreation, technology centers, downtown housing developments and historic building restorations. The hope is that these projects improve the quality of life in north-central Indiana and attract more people to live here — which is the goal of the state-funded Regional Cities program.
"It's a really exciting day for the community," said John Affleck-Graves, executive vice president of the University of Notre Dame and chairman of the Regional Cities of Northern Indiana board. "This is going to be transformational for our region."
In total, the 14 projects — if they all move forward as planned — would receive $38.6 million from the Regional Cities grant. The remainder of the grant would be set aside as a reserve for administrative costs and potential changes in the plans.
Affleck-Graves and the region's other four board members had a difficult job. Northern Indiana's original application included 39 projects vying for more than $100 million in Regional Cities money.
"When you get a lot of tremendous projects, it's always hard to allocate the resources," Affleck-Graves said. "It's always going to be easy to think of different things we could have done, but I'm really excited."
There are a few more steps involved in the process as well.
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. will evaluate each project the board chose Tuesday to verify that they meet the Regional Cities criteria. The IEDC's review period is scheduled to continue into September, and the Northern Indiana board is scheduled to disburse the money for local projects in October.