Bennett says construction of the casino is on schedule to open in spring as workers enclose the building before winter. We also get updates on ARPA funds and city park upgrades.
On this week’s installment of Ask The Mayor, Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett addresses these issues and more at city hall. 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: It's nice to be back in Terre Haute, have plenty of updates to ask about, but before that - have you recovered from all the storms? I know there have been a few big ones the past couple of weeks, and a lot of power outages and cleanup, what's the latest?
Bennett: A week ago Thursday, we had about 80% of the people in Vigo county that were without power some for short periods of time, some for up to four days, or longer in some cases. So it was a bad storm and Duke Energy had to bring a lot of resources in. I think they did a great job. I know people were frustrated, there was no doubt about it, we were getting a lot of phone calls in the office. But you know, it was a mess. We had a lot of lines, poles and transformers that were destroyed.
So if you look at the severity of all that, I think they did a really good job. So now we're in the limb pickup mode. So we still got trees down across sidewalks in some places, none blocking roads, all of our roads have been open now for a week. But we've got debris everywhere. So it's probably going to take us another two to three weeks to get everything picked up.
Hren: I'm going to be heading out past the casino as it's been a few months since I've been out there. What are people going to see if they were to drive by?
Bennett: The exterior is pretty much in place, I haven't checked every inch of it. But they've got the glass on the outside. And it really stands out as you drive by whether you're on I-70 or in town, you're like I think is risen up out of the cornfield, they're still on schedule to open up in late March. I met the new marketing director recently, he was just hired and moved up here. They're continuing to hire people, there's roughly three to 400 people working out there every day to get it built. So it's a it's a beehive of activity. But they should be in a really good spot by the time the cold weather comes and be doing all the interior work and finishing it out.
Hren: A lot of construction jobs right now. But on their website, they're starting to look for dealers to go to a dealer school this fall. So those jobs are already starting.
Bennett: They've already hired some of their upper management or HR people. But now they're beginning to, what last I was told that beginning in August, they would start bringing people on board and start that training in September. So I mean, that's great for our local economy - puts people to work, and it just shows that they're on track to get that open in the spring.
Hren: How about an update on the American Rescue Plan funding allocation? Last month, we talked about meetings that you were having - there's so many individual things, but so much collaboration has to happen?
Bennett: It's a lot, and we're talking about spending a lot of money one time, we wanted to have the biggest bang for the buck. So this week with city council would bring in another appropriation to them to spend some money on our local parks, to spend money to pay for police and fire radios that we purchased in radios for the rest of the department, an ISU childcare related project, and a Terre Haute Humane Society expansion of their facility that will create more kennels for our code enforcement officers. So all of those things are things that we've been talking about, we're ready to move those projects forward. And then soon, we'll file another appropriation probably for the September meeting for some additional projects.
Hren: Anything new on the water park feasibility study?
Bennett: It's still underway, we just had a meeting about that this week to kind of update, they're still working on that - they're going to report to us in August, we've moved it back a couple of months, giving them a little bit more time to do their due diligence. So that'll roll out that'll be a whole story within itself about that feasibility of doing an athletic complex with a water park component. We've got some great information for the public, they've done a lot of research about what makes sense what we can afford.
