The Interurban Apartments open in Delphi
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The largest private housing investment in Carroll County history is now ready to welcome new residents.
The $12.7 million Interurban Apartments opened with a ribbon cutting event Friday. The Interurban features 68 units and amenities including a pet wash, fitness center and communal spaces.
“A $13 million project in downtown Delphi, a city of 3,000 [people], is transformational,” Jacob Adams, Carroll County Economic Development Inc. Executive Director and CEO, said in an interview with Inside INdiana Business. “Our community gets a great product that everybody can be proud of that is really just a connection or a gateway between our downtown and our city parks and trails.”
Adams says there’s already been interest from new residents who want to move in, and the project will also provide economic mobility for current residents.
Mayor Kamron Yates, who took office last year, tells IIB the project aligns with the city’s goals of planning for the future.
“We always want our high school students to graduate and stay in this area, right? So essentially, that’s 68 units of citizens that we can possibly keep in our city [or] people from outside the city coming into the city of Delphi. Sixty-eight units is a huge historical impact for the city of Delphi,” Yates said. “When you have a small city, you run out of space of where you can put homes.”
Yates credits his predecessor, Anita Werling, for spearheading the project, which broke ground in September 2023. The Interurban is located one block away from Downtown Delphi and was built on the site of a former parking lot.
“It’s a huge asset to the city because we are basically out of housing at this point…it’s not only going to help our housing, it’s also going to help our vibrant downtown,” Yates said. “We’ve got new restaurants coming in…it’s progress moving forward for our city.”
The project is being made possible by a combination of tax increment financing, grants from the state’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, redevelopment tax credits and more.
“We’ve found really, really good partners right here in the Greater Lafayette region [and] in Iron Men Properties. They believed in our community,” Adams said. “It was an underused area along the trails…I guess we threaded all the needles at the same time, and now we have a finished product that’s commercially viable.”
Luke Flowers, director of technology for Iron Men, told Inside INdiana Business last year that the project is by far the company’s most complex in terms of partnerships with local officials and funding sources.
“We hope this project will be a blueprint for what’s possible in other communities like Delphi that really need housing,” Flowers said. “And the path to do it is kind of complicated, but we’re excited to do that and do more in the future.”
The project is named after the former interurban railway built in the 1800s that ran through Delphi.
Adams shares how details in the building are honoring its history.
Adams says Friday’s event is a chance for those involved in the project to take a moment to celebrate.
“Rural communities are thriving. Some aren’t, but ones like ours are doing everything we can, and it takes a team approach to make sure that the community that we love is maintaining and growing,” he said. “This project just highlights the fact that every community has an opportunity to do something special, and this is kind of our next step in the growth of Delphi and Carroll County.”
Inside INdiana Business Managing Editor Alex Brown contributed to this story.