The city is getting $4.3 million to help build a parking garage downtown, how officials plan to attract casino-goers to downtown, and a local hospital installs a free naloxone vending machine.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett addresses these issues and more on a Zoom interview. 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: Wanted to start with the some of the biggest news since we last talked and that was the groundbreaking on the new casino off the interstate. You talk a lot about the economic development, but there's a lot that the city, and the state has to do as well?
Bennett: Out there it's the traffic flows. So the original casino was to be a little further to the east and a little bit to the north not far. But it would have been a different way to be the prime entrance to the casino. Now that they've moved down on Margaret Avenue itself, traffic has to flow in off the interstate, the majority of it and will get off there Margaret Avenue, which creates a bit of a bottleneck than we thought we would have.
So we're still working through that INDOT has a couple of plans. And Churchill Downs is working with them to select that. But then we'll have some longer term in the next few years and improvements that we're going to make. And then we'll make some improvements to the existing roads in the coming years once the casino open, that will deal with the adjustment in the traffic flow. It's all based on estimates. And so I want to be careful that the hours that we invest are ones that we know will solve any issues that we might have.
Hren: Is there some plan or is the city trying to figure out how to best take advantage of that economic development of keeping people shopping downtown and not just pass through?
Bennett: That's a valid point. Because you know, a lot of folks just come to the casino and they turn around and go home, we get that. We'll see some economic development out there in that corridor, just because of the volume of traffic, we're already seeing a lot of interest with a developer who owns most of that property out there.
Hopefully, some sit down restaurants, that's one thing we're kind of missing out there, besides what the casino is going to bring, I think those things will happen. But there's already discussions and we're trying to figure out how to get people from the convention center downtown, out to the casino. So have some regular transportation options to make that happen.
But there's all these people are going to be staying overnight periodically. They're here for another reason and they're going to come out and visit the casino. And that's all part of our strategic plan or community plan or tourism component. We've never been known as a tourism community and all these places bring people here anyway, but now we're trying to tie it all together in a way that we're selling it that way. So make a day, make two days of it. And that's our push with a tourism group.
Hren: The Wabash River Regional Development Authority is dedicating $4.3 million READI grant for downtown hotels and a parking garage project. I believe it's a public-private partnership, who's all involved in this connection, and is this in dealing with the new convention center as well?
Bennett: It's directly connected to the convention center. From the perspective, we knew we had two existing hotels about 200 rooms downtown. And to get to utilize the convention center to its full maximum capacity, we need a minimum of 400 rooms downtown.
Tim Dora and Craig Gibson who own those two existing hotels have proposed two hotels on the former school corporation property with a small parking garage kind of in between them. So the public private partnership component will be on the parking garage. They'll build the hotels, we'll probably do the parking garage, either through the city through the Department of Redevelopment or through the CIB that we have that runs the convention center, and will own that portion of it, at least for some period of time, in order to get that filled as part of a somewhere between $50 and $60 million total project downtown.
We're looking at some other funding sources, and we've got cash on hand and the ability to bond through the Department of Redevelopment. So we're gonna we're working on those logistics of that now, what that financial package would look like.
Hren: What are a couple big projects the city is looking at with those other READI grant funds?
Bennett: We're looking at an athletic facility of some sort, not like Westfield, nothing of that magnitude, but a facility that would have multiple ball fields on it, a new baseball stadium, a Rex stadium that we'd like to have, and bringing private dollars to the table for that big portion of that, and then an outdoor quality segment that would be located on this property.
I've got some smaller ones, like the rehabilitation of the Deming Park pool. Just a variety of things. I feel good about getting what we got out of the $20 million to be shared with multiple counties, and their projects are great, too. It's all about building West Central Indiana.
Hren: I noticed the press conference you attended displaying a naloxone vending machine. It's the nasal spray that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. I believe it's at Union Hospital, it's free. And I assume officials are dismissing the stigma you hear about, such as needle exchanges that officials are aiding in the addiction, and not solving the problem.
READ MORE: Monroe Co. Sheriff installs naloxone vending machine, 20 doses distributed already
Bennett: I've never been supportive of the needle exchange program. That's just me personally, I don't know, I struggle with that one. But this is different. Let me just take one step back, I immediately got reaction from people saying, oh, this is great, could have saved lives that it absolutely will, that's why Union Hospital agreed to do it, they're in the business of saving lives.
But it's sad that we have to have it. And people who overdose of opiates, half the time you don't even know what you're taking. And that's what's sad about the whole epidemic of this. But there is a place now that at least you can go and you can save a life, if you've got a buddy in a car that's done it, he's unconscious, they don't want to call an ambulance, which is sad too. They can go there and get it and you can save somebody.
I would just wish they would be open to systems to help them get off that addiction. And I know it's difficult. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'd rather focus in that area, but you got to cover both sides.
