Like most places, Terre Haute is experiencing a COVID surge, Churchill Downs has been selected as the new casino operator, the city allocates American Rescue Plan Act funds, and the mayor reflects on 2021.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett addresses these issues and more on a Zoom conference call. Listen to the full conversation with Indiana Newsdesk anchor Joe Hren by clicking on the play button above, or read some of the questions and answers below. A portion of this segment airs 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Wednesday on WFIU.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Hren: The Thanksgiving holiday just ended, we have colder temperatures have kind of this recipe for COVID spreading, what's the situation in Terre Haute and what are the metrics for more restrictions or mask mandates?
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Bennett: I guess kind of the bottom line is what I'm hearing is yes, there are some people that are being hospitalized, but they're not quite as sick as they were before and not as many people on ventilators. So that's encouraging. It appears to be the delta here still not seeing the newest variant.
I think the vaccinations have leveled off. I think maybe the news of the new Omicron variant is causing a few people to be concerned. When I was out in the community yesterday saying I'm just going to do it now. I just think we got to keep your guard up, it's kind of the same message, nothing has really changed. It's not over.
I think the county kind of made a decision not to do anything, several months ago. So I would say kind of hold our own here on and keep the recommendations that we have in place, but nothing mandate wise. Hopefully get through this winter season and come out on the other side looking a lot better.
Hren: Big news in Terre Haute recently, the Gaming Commission chose Churchill Downs as the operator of the facility after the commission chose not to renew the license of the original operator which was Lucy luck, and that's the one the city wanted. I know you're happy this process is over. But are you disappointed?
Bennett: A little bit only because I still feel like the best brand to come to Terre Haute would have been a Hard Rock, it would have made the most money, which means more money comes back to the community. We also really wanted that local partner, that local businessman and him wanting to give back to the community in even better, bigger ways than he does today.
When you looked at all four proposals, they were all very good, all good operators, I got to meet and learn a lot about all of them and their operations. So it's been quite a ride, it's been a lot of ups and downs.
They don't have their license quite yet, but they're doing other things they need to do to prepare for that, because they still have to resolve the complaint from Lucy Luck about taking their license away from them. And before they can award the new one, they're going to have to get that resolved.
When you look at their proposal, it was really kind of the biggest and had the most featurest. And they believe that's what this market will sustain. And they're pretty confident about that. They're a great business model that they have done very well financially, I did not realize they had so many casinos. And so they're very well versed in this market size.
Hren: Any mention of the casino location?
Bennett: They've proposed one down by the mall on the south side, US 41 and I-70 and they're still looking at that. I don't know if they're looking at any other options. They mentioned at the meeting, they would consider the east side. That's a decision they make and the Gaming Commission has to approve. Us local folks here don't have any input in that - we can say whatever we want, but they will decide their spot.
Hren: That's projected to bring about a $76 million annual impact to the area. This has been your whole point all along, hasn't it?
Bennett: It's a huge economic development project. When you talk about the 1,000 jobs that are created to build the facility, and the 500 or so employees that will be working there, and then the needs from the community for goods and services, increases workforce at those locations.
It'll probably drop our unemployment rate by at least a percent by itself, but then the revenue that's coming back in that's the key. That comes in through property taxes and business, personal property tax and their fees that they have to pay for people coming to the casino, it's about $10 million a year that will be a minimum coming back into our community to be reinvested. Just for us, just on our side, the government side.
If they generate $100 million of annual gross revenue, it's about 10%. So $10 million will come back into the community. $3 million will go into kind of a local community fund. And we'll have a board of directors that will help nonprofits and a variety of things in the community. Then there's about $2 million that gets split between the city and the county and the school corporation and our Regional Planning Initiative. And then there's about $5 million that comes directly to the city.
Hren: For those of you who listened to the show last week, we talked with Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop about the READI grant presentation they were making that week. Was that something that you gave recently, too?
Bennett: Yes, we just did and went really well from my perspective. We're asking for about $73 million for over $300 million worth of projects in a six county area here in West Central Indiana. We have worked really hard to position ourselves for a potential second version of that- workforce development, talent retention, and economic development activities across the board, the educational component - we think we hit all of those. And so how much do we get funded, I don't know.
There's several housing projects in there that will have a big private sector component to that, but I think is important. I think that all of our colleges and universities have a project in there that's going to help with educational components, but also the workforce development component, I think is something we need here.
I have a new athletic facility with a waterpark we're proposing here for Vigo County that I'm really excited about, two new hotels downtown with a parking garage to support our convention center, ready to roll with that with mostly private investment with that state component.
Hren: And I believe you have an update on some of the ARPA funds too?
Bennett: City Council last week approved expending just under $5 million of our $36 million total going to the public safety costs related to COVID, primarily, quite a bit in that the revenue loss that we've had in a couple of areas.
And so really, what we did was make ourselves hold for 2020 and 2021, with some of the losses and some of the expenditures we've had. I feel really good going into 2022 now that we can focus that remaining $31 million on things that are more community oriented versus just taking care of getting ourselves back to square one and city government.
So we will begin meeting again in January, we're going to get significant community input into the process, and figure out what the best uses of those funds are because we can partner some of that with a READI grant that it just opens up so many areas for us to leverage that money to make it go even further.
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