Developer Agrees to Boost Exit 10
Developer Agrees to Boost Exit 10
June 14, 2002 - Noblesville Ledger
By: Joanna Henslehy
NOBLESVILLE – When Rick Arnos, president of Republic Development, took out his pen to sign a document at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting, officials thought the moment was so important they asked to stop the meeting and take a picture of it.
Arnos was signing a memorandum of understanding, a document reaffirming the developer’s commitment to help fund roads and sewers at Exit 10, the Indiana 238/Interstate 69 intersection
“This is the biggest thing that’s happened to this town since the gas well dried up,” Council member Jay McCoskey said.
The 19-page document outlines where roads and sewers will go and details tax abatements and future annexation. It also includes a funding commitment.
If no buildings are built in the area by 2008, Republic agrees to pay 80 percent of the bond payments for the estimated $12.5 million of infrastructure needed to get the area going. In the worst-case scenario, the city would pay 20 percent of the payments, or about $220,000, each year after 2008.
Arnos said he hoped to have tenants in buildings in one year. Construction on sewers and roads could begin this year.
“We may not have to pay much, if at all,” Chris Hamm, the city’s economic developer, said. “The overall effect of this deal is to get infrastructure in place much sooner than we would have otherwise.”
Hamm said roads built through the area will ease traffic problems around Verizon Wireless Music Center in the short term and eventually will connect with an extended 146th Street. A county study has determined where the new road should go; all that’s left now is to do the engineering work and find funding to begin land acquisition, McCoskey said.
Total cost for the 146th Street extension to I-69 is estimated at $19.6 million.
Council also approved Republic’s 280-acre corporate development Tuesday, called Saxony Corporate Campus at Noblesville. The development promises to bring offices, warehouses and corporate headquarters to Noblesville, which should lift the property-tax burden on residents.
The memorandum of understanding is the first step in developing land around Exit 10. Officials are now discussing a pre-annexation agreement, which will detail the developer’s and city’s commitments to the area. Some details from the memorandum of understanding could change, but Arnos promised the 80-20 funding obligation will not. The city hopes to annex the property in the next few months and issue bonds to begin construction later this year.
