Tom Bartelt knows the challenges that come with working the land. He’s lived and worked on his family farm in Dubois County for nearly his entire life.
“I always had a job off the farm, but I would go to work, I'd be at work from seven to four. At four o'clock I'd get off work, I'd hurry home, change clothes, grab a sandwich, hop on a tractor, and work until well after dark,” he said while sitting in his garage.
The farm in Huntingburg has been recognized by the state of Indiana as historically significant. It has won four Hoosier Homestead awards for being owned by the same family for at least 100 years, and three Sesquicentennial awards for 150 years of ownership.
“The first part of the farm was purchased in February of 1851 so it's 175 years old,” he said.
But that farm is at risk of being split by the Mid States Corridor project.
The project, a proposed $1 billion, 54-mile highway connecting I-64 to SR 56 in Haysville, has been discussed since the late 1950s.
The current proposal would put the edge of the project about 200 feet from Bartelt’s front door.
“They had a 2,000-foot-wide corridor, which I mean, it's basically the edge of my yard to some woods that are about a third of a mile away,” he said. “My mother's house is in the middle of that.”
Proponents of the highway said it will enhance connectivity and support economic growth, but local property owners, including Bartelt, say it’s only wanted by a small group of business owners.
“Mike Braun and a few local businessmen want this because it will profit their businesses,” he said. “It's not good for the county, it's not good for the taxpayers of the state. I mean, there's road projects getting canceled all over the state and this is still the governor’s top priority.”
In January, INDOT said funding constraints forced the agency to cancel or postpone more than 300 road and bridge projects over the last 18 months.
The Property Rights Alliance, a non-profit opposed to the project since October of 2024, is confident recent legislative changes will end the project.
“In the last several months, through the help of the Senate, we have made a great deal of inroads in stopping this project,” said Property Rights Alliance president Jason McCoy.
The same law that could bring the NFL’s Chicago Bears to Indiana requires any state project of $250 million or more to be approved by the legislature.
The chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Ryan Mishler, said that requirement covers seven projects in the state, including the Mid States Corridor.
“The reason that we put some of this language in and have it going to the legislature is so we could slow it down because it doesn’t sound like too many people want this,” he said at a meeting of the Property Rights Alliance.
Mishler believes the legislature will end the project,
The Dubois County council also recently voted to withdraw from the Regional Development Authority (RDA).
“That (the RDA) came under Senate Bill 128, Mark Mesmer and Mike Braun pinned that, and that was just kind of a mechanism that allowed for the construction of this road,” McCoy said. “Without it, it'll be very, very difficult to get this road through.”
According to Lochmueller Group, the agency planning the Mid States Corridor, studies supporting the project will continue in the immediate future.
“The Tier Two studies are wholly funded by INDOT Federal Highway,” said Nicole Minton, Lochmueller’s Public Outreach Coordinator. “There is no RDA funding, so the work that we're doing now continues.”
Minton did note that things may change once the current study is completed.
“The work that we're doing right now in Tier Two, Section Two continues. That is work that is not pausing, but we do understand that there will be some things in the future that will have to be considered,” she said.
Minton said the Mid States project has more options for funding compared to some of the paused or cancelled INDOT projects across the state.
“There are more options available to projects like these than there are maybe other types of projects, because of the scale,” she said. “There are tools that are available to try and help with the big price tag that comes with these projects, and we recognize that that project price tag is large,”
Minton said her company’s research found the corridor could save drivers on US 231 about 14-and-a-half minutes of commute time.
For folks like Bartelt, though, that time saved would mean losing land that has been a part of his family for nearly two centuries.
“They say, well, you can just buy more land, there's no land to buy in this county,” he said. “They think, well, you know, farmers can recover from that, but if their factory burns down, they can build a new factory. The land is our factory. If that's taken away from us, we don't have any way to replace it.”
