Moving with momentum: A Q&A with St. Joseph County’s Bill Schalliol
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As Hoosiers take stock of the announcement last month of another electric vehicle battery plant in Kokomo, officials in northern Indiana are taking steps to prepare for a plant of their own in New Carlisle.
The $3 billion General Motors and Samsung SDI plant planned for western St. Joseph County is expected to create 1,700 manufacturing jobs for a 2.5 million-square-foot facility now under construction.
As the region prepares for the new plant, which is expected to come online in late 2027, county officials are proposing an expansion of the New Carlisle Economic Development Area located about 15 miles from South Bend.
County officials will have an open house-style meeting from 5:30 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. Monday at the New Carlisle-Olive Township Public Library to discuss proposed changes with residents before seeking necessary approvals from the St. Joseph County Redevelopment Commission and county council on Tuesday.
Inside INdiana Business talked to Bill Schalliol, the county’s director of economic development, about the proposed changes and updates in EV battery plant construction ahead of next week’s meetings.
Can you share a little background on securing the EV battery plant and what it took to get here?
The final announcement was made in June on the EV plant, and really we had worked since December of 2021 to secure the project. They came [for] their first site visit December 2021.
Originally, it was GM and LG as the Ultium project and we got all the way through the approvals in 2022. And then there was a little divorce, a little separation, and then Samsung was brought into the picture. Samsung obviously has a huge footprint in Kokomo right now with one building, and they just announced the second building, so this now brings three Samsung projects to the state of Indiana. So, certainly a good partner. We’re excited about that and what those relationships look like.
The site was purchased from the property owners back in September. Ground is being broken. They’re doing work right now on the site, doing all the prep work they can and are starting to grade about 250 of the 680 acres that they purchased. It’s been a long time coming.
We started the process with the IEDC [Indiana Economic Development Corp.] back in 2017. We really tried to take a holistic look. We had existing businesses already out there. We had existing utilities. We had some relationships with some of the property owners. We really just spent a couple of years to formalize the process, trying to get land under control, trying to get zoning in place, trying to get some codes updated. So, the three or four years of prep work we did is really starting to pay off.
The GM project — that’s obviously the big announcement. This year, we’ll probably have one right after the first of the year. That’s probably much larger in scale, if possible. So, we’re really excited about things to come. We’ve got a lot of good relationships with the property owners that are out there. So, we’re just trying to work with those that want to stay and those that want to sell and so we’re really excited about what the next couple of years look like.
We’ve got a great relationship with IEDC and the state, and so that’s been a good mix. We’re not doing it on our own. We’re doing it with partners at the state level, and obviously they have a huge reach. So we’re excited about where the next steps go.
Why did St. Joseph County pursue this investment? What will it bring to our area?
We look at the region as a whole and we were forced a couple of years ago, we joke, with regional cities and some of those programs, to look outside the boundaries of the county. Obviously, St. Joe County does well by itself, but it really is part of a larger whole, so we’re working with Elkhart County and Marshall County. How do we all work together?
We lose a lot of workforce to the neighboring communities. We lose about 16,000 people a day to Elkhart County, for example, to work, but they lose a lot to us, too. So, it goes back and forth.
So, obviously, we’ve got to look at what all the pieces look like, whether it’s manufacturing, medical institutions, things like that. And, as we looked at what was missing, the one thing that was really missing was the site for large-format industrial developments. Certainly, there’s some sites in Elkhart that could make that work and maybe some sites in Marshall County, but we already had users like Tek and Kote, Navistar and some other big users that are on 150- to 200-acre sites, so we thought, let’s try to make this work. What’s the market looking for?
What we were seeing was a trend of projects looking for bigger formats. Toyota was looking for 1,000 acres. We had a couple other projects that were looking for 1,000 acres. So, as we started looking at what we had—talking with the railroads, talking with the utilities—we had that opportunity to play in that space, and so we decided that it was good for the region to play in that space, and now that investment is going to pay off.
A lot of work went into attracting GM and now Samsung SDI to the site. Where does your focus shift to following their announcement?
Right now, the next piece of the puzzle is getting all the utilities and the infrastructure in place. With the GM announcement, we think of it as a big puzzle. We know what a big piece of the puzzle now looks like. It looks like the GM site. Now we’ve got to figure out how we get roads that are suitable to work in and out of the site, to move the workforce. Water, sewer, fiber, all those kinds of utility needs. So, we’ve spent a lot of time working with our team to do that and partnering with GM and some of the other players out there to look at those pieces. We’re gonna see a lot of construction on utilities over the next couple of years—upgrading the water system extensions and the sewers. All that stuff’s underground. It’s expensive and it’s great and you’ve got to have it.
Really the biggest piece of the GM project will be in improvements at the intersection of State Road 2 and Larrison. That, for years, has been an underdeveloped intersection with the amount of traffic that already comes through it. Then you throw in 1,900 new employees plus trucks. It really needs to be upgraded, so we’re working with INDOT and a couple of traffic engineering firms to put together a plan for that, and I think there’ll be some announcements soon or what that intersection is going to need to look like, and then we’ll spend the next couple of years building it and getting ready to go.
We’ll try to do things holistically and completely. What we don’t want to do is make an improvement, think, no, it’s not going to work, and then have to come back and redo it again. We’re trying to do it right at the beginning. You’re going to see a lot of those kinds of improvements happening over the next couple of years.
What type of work does GM have underway, and what are their timelines moving forward with the new plant?
They started work in mid-September, clearing the site and grading about 250 of the 680 acres that they purchased. They anticipate being in a position to have foundations and some of the steel starting to go up early spring next year, so you’ll see steel go up all throughout 2024 and then into 2025. Walls will be up in 2025, and really the building will be closed in by the end of that year, and they’ll have people on site working in 2025/2026.
It’s going to be a massive amount of construction in a very short period of time. Substantial completion of the building is December 2027. They anticipate if not a full ramp up of employees, at least a high percentage of their employees will be on site by the end of 2027.
There are proposals to expand the New Carlisle Economic Development Area. For those who aren’t familiar, can you explain what that area is and why it was created?
The foundation of the area goes all the way back to 1987. Really, the New Carlisle Economic Development Area is just a resource tool for us. The term TIF district is used, and it really is just the TIF district itself. So back in ’87, it was created to help pay for water and sewer projects related to I/N Tek and I/N Kote. Over the years, it’s been expanded and modified.
What we’re looking to do now is to modify it and do some minor expansions so that we can open up an area for the GM site for bonding for the project. We have a certain amount of money we have to bond for to pay for the utility improvements and so by reformulating the area and just updating the resource, it allows us the 25 years we need to pay on a bond for the project. It really is just a toolset, and it’s one that all communities use as a way to provide resources for projects.
St. Joseph County is looking to expand the New Carlisle Economic Development Area. What’s being proposed here and why?
We last updated the year in 2016 as part of the St. Joe Energy Center project. We hadn’t done a lot of updating in that area. The last time it had been updated was 2008. So, we just refreshed the area, modified some of the boundaries, and expanded a little bit then to add some area.
What we’re looking to do now is to add six different small expansion areas on the west side of the area and one big area in the east really related to projects that are going to happen. A lot of cases it’s projects where we know that we need to extend water and sewer, or there’s some targeted infrastructure improvements, like intersection improvement at (State Road) 2 and Timothy, for example, and (State Road) 2 and Strawberry and Snowberry.
Just because you’re in the area, that doesn’t have any adverse tax impact. We’re adding all the properties that we’re expanding and all the existing properties onto the acquisition list. So that allows us flexibility if we need to purchase a partial piece of property or full piece of property for an infrastructure improvement project. It just allows for some flexibility with that.
The total amount of parcels will be 309 parcels added to the area. The county, for example, owns 37 of those parcels, so when you really start to parcel out who owns what, it is a fair amount of parcels being added but in comparison to some of the other ones in the area, it’s really not that big an area. We’re just cleaning up the tool a little bit so that we can do what we need to do to pay for our projects.
What other key projects are you looking at across the county right now?
As we’ve seen success on the west side of the county, we’re really looking at the east side of the county. Back 20-plus years ago when the H2—the Hummer 2—project happened at Capitol Avenue and in the McKinley area, a lot of work was being done on Capitol Avenue, and a lot of work was being done around H2 and the H1 facilities. And so what we’re doing is taking a fresh look at that area. We’re looking at the Capitol Avenue corridor. What are the opportunities to extend utilities, in partnership with Mishawaka, up Capital Avenue, and to service them? There’s either potential development areas or just areas underserved with utilities, so there’s a lot of work being considered on the east side.
The biggest announcement we’re excited about is the inn at Potato Creek—the opportunity that’ll provide on the south side of the county for Lakeville, North Liberty and Walkerton, opportunities to bring people to those communities. So we’re looking at some projects, whether it’s fiber utility extensions or pedestrian trails or just some other development projects in those areas to create some energy and activity down there. The three towns in the southern part of the county are fantastic towns to work with, and we’re just excited about what kind of spark—it’ll be bigger than a spark—this will be a real kick to get some development there.
Times are good. We’ve got great partners with Mishawaka and South Bend. They’re doing really dynamic projects in both of their cities. So, we’re excited. As we talk about projects they have in Mishawaka and in South Bend, those projects are within the county boundaries, so everything that happens is good for all of us. We’re just excited to see it all come together.
Anything else?
Things are good. We’ve got a lot of momentum and we’ve got a lot of good relationships with our area partners. The big thing coming up is going to be the READI 2.0 funding and what that money will do for the area. We’ve seen good progress for Regional Cities money and READI 1, so what does the READI 2.0 money do for us?
We’re doing work with Mark Tarner at the choco-dino world and just some of those kinds of projects. So, having those projects move forward and maybe there’s opportunity for READI 2.0 money to really make some major strides, and so I think there’s a lot of good things going on in the community and just we’re excited to be a part of it.