Evansville officials credit collaboration for regional wins
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Officials in Evansville say the collaborative nature of the communities in southwest Indiana can be attributed to several recent announcements designed to support regional growth.
Last week, Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office announced air service to and from Chicago would return to Evansville Regional Airport this fall. Plus, southwest Indiana was one of six regions to receive the largest grant allocation from the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, or READI 2.0
“We are so proud of the collaborative spirit of our of our region,” said Lloyd Winnecke, CEO of the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership.
The former Evansville mayor spoke about the regional wins with Inside INdiana Business Host Gerry Dick at last week’s Engage Southwest Indiana event.
“I watched our presentation to the IEDC, and I thought, ‘Wow, I’d like to see a better presentation than ours,'” Winnecke said. “[We’re] super excited about what we bring to the table and the thought of spending or investing some of that money, most likely in exciting, transformative riverfront projects, not just in Evansville, but from Mount Vernon to Newburgh, so 50 miles of riverfront revitalization”
The city has been working with Boston-based design firm Sasaki, which has been gathering input from the community and other stakeholders about how best to activate the Ohio River through quality of place projects in order to attract businesses and talent.
Sasaki is slated to present its initial concepts on May 21.
“We’re going to roll out their their concepts, based on what they’ve heard,” Winnecke said. “They’ve gotten input from thousands of residents in this region about what they’d like to see in our downtowns. I’ve seen a few sneak peeks; I will tell you, they are off the charts transformative.”
The return of air service to Chicago is something that Winnecke has been pushing for since the city lost that service in 2022, when he was still mayor. He said the loss of those flights was a huge business issue.
“Before the pandemic, we had seven daily flights on two airlines connecting Evansville and Chicago O’Hare,” he said. “And then the pandemic hit, airlines made a lot of difficult announcements. They offered a lot of early retirement packages for pilots, and all of a sudden we had no flights on no airlines to Chicago. I would tell you that this single issue is probably the one issue I hear about from CEOs more frequently by far than any other issue.”
Ron Romain, executive chairman of Evansville-based United Companies, was among the many business leaders pushing for a return of service to Chicago over the last few years. He echoed Winnecke’s statements about collaboration, noting that it was key to getting the service back.
Romain said now is a great time to be in Evansville.
“I’m an Evansville native, been here my whole life. We’ve had a company headquartered here for 60 years. In all of that period of time, I can’t think of a time that’s more exciting to do business at Evansville,” he said. “There’s good collaboration by all the different organizations that need to be working together. They are working together, and I am just so confident about what I see in the future.”