Greater Lafayette Magazine: Winter 2024

Purdueʼs Danny Milisavljevic has front row seat to cosmic discoveries

Spectacular

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GREATER LAFAYETTE MAGAZINE

Editor - Carol Bangert

Art Director/Graphic Designer

- Kara Bishop Vice President, Marketing & Communications

- Michelle Brantley

MISSION

Greater Lafayette Magazine captures the spirit and vitality of the people who call Greater Lafayette home and what it means to live, work and thrive here. It tells the region’s success stories, from business expansions, entrepreneurship, leadership and philanthropy to quality of life, arts and cultural events. Our hope is that readers of Greater Lafayette Magazine will become active participants in the world around them and join in our mission to make Greater Lafayette the place where progress, creativity and community come together.

AUDIENCE

Greater Lafayette Magazine serves as the leading quality-of-life and business trade publication for the area. Leveraging our award-winning team of writers and designers, Greater Lafayette Magazine attracts a diverse group of readers who are engaged in the community as consumers, visitors, business leaders, volunteers, residents and future residents of Tippecanoe County. This publication is for anyone that appreciates a good story that not only reveals something new about our community but offers insight and pride for the place we call home.

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Greater Lafayette Magazine is published four times a year (January/April/July/ October), with a print distribution of 4,000, and up to 10,000 online subscribers/views. Distribution channels will include online, mobile, various newsstands, and pass-along venues including restaurants, businesses, organizations, community centers, hotel lobbies and healthcare facilities.

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Little changes can pay big dividends

Much of my week is spent at Sunnyside Intermediate School. I’m a teacher’s aide for Karen Beasley and Sean McDonald, who patiently teach fifth graders myriad subjects, ranging from order of operations and least common denominators to story summaries, themes and verb contractions (question: does anyone really use mightn’t anymore?). It’s chaotic, noisy and challenging. It’s also very messy. So messy that Mr. McDonald decided to do something about it.

Over a two-week period, a group of his fifth graders methodically collected trash from hallways, classrooms and the playground. What they found was both impressive and disconcerting: wet paper towels outside the bathroom; broken pencils and chip bags in the hallway; empty water bottles and candy wrappers on the playground. The students carefully recorded and graphed their findings then met with Principal Matthew Brown to share their results. The introduction to their presentation stated in part:

“We know that taking care of the Earth is important... Our class decided we would do our part by cleaning up the Sunnyside hallways and playground during recess.”

The students’ initiative was met with a promise to look at the number of trash receptacles on the playground and a commitment to keep the hallways and cafeteria cleaner.

The students “did their part.” This makes me happy.

There seems to be a renewed diligence in making the planet we live on a priority, and small steps can pay big dividends. I think it’s fair to say that Greater Lafayette is doing its part to treat our environment and its resources with some respect. For example, the city of Lafayette has been quietly installing solar fields strategically across the city, and it’s paying off (Page 10). It’s not only cutting costs but our carbon footprint as well. That’s a win-win in my book.

The new year is traditionally a time to reflect and to aspire to making the year ahead a good one – for yourself, your family, your relationships. This year, let’s add our planet to that list. Can you do your part? Take it from my young friends at Sunnyside Intermediate School: Yes, you can.

Here’s to a happy and healthy 2024.

Editor, Greater Lafayette Magazine

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ON THE COVER: Purdue assistant professor Danny Milisavljevic shares his excitement about images and data from the James Webb Telescope and their implications for science and humanity.

|page 40

Photo provided by Purdue University

Welcome Note |page 4

From Editor Carol Bangert 40

BUSINESS & PROGRESS:

Looking back on holiday cheer in downtown |page 8

Lafayette solar fields have positive impact |page 10

Bennett's Greenhouses branches out |page 24

Ask the Experts |page 54

16

COMMUNITY & CONNECTIONS:

Fond farewell, new beginnings in West Lafayette |page 16

Purdue women's basketball celebrates 25th anniversary of NCAA championship win |page 28

Centennial Neighborhood bets and wins |page 60

Center of Hope bridges medical, legal needs |page 74

Historic Fowler House writing a new chapter |page 78

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LOOKING BACK...

Downtown Lafayette celebrates the holidays

Greater Lafayette celebrates the holidays big time, and this year was no exception. From McCord Candies’ legendary homemade candy canes and treats to the annual Christmas Parade, local businesses and residents displayed their holiday spirit with color and charm and welcomed friends, family and visitors to join in the holiday fun.

PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE PETKOV

BY BRAD OPPENHEIM PHOTOS PROVIDED

Lafayette project has positive environmental and economic impacts

The City of Lafayette is proactively taking steps in combatting climate change in a variety of ways, including the installation of two additional solar panel fields, building on the city’s legacy of sustainable practices.

Last summer marked the groundbreaking of the third city-owned solar field, which will be constructed at the Lafayette Renew Wastewater Treatment Plant on Wabash Avenue. The ultimate goal is to reduce the plant’s electrical consumption. According to city officials, plans for a fourth solar field installation are also in the works, slated to be placed at the Ross Road Lift Station located near U.S. 52 and Creasy Lane. Both of these projects are expected to be completed in the fall of 2024.

“Lafayette has been discussing a solar array project for quite some time now,” says Lafayette Renew Superintendent Brad Talley. “The utility has looked at several ways to reduce electrical consumption within the treatment plant, and solar seemed to be the next logical step in reducing the plant’s carbon footprint.”

The city has been integrating solar energy into its operations for the past couple of years. The first solar array installed by Lafayette Renew took place at the Pearl River Lift

Station and has been operating since June 2022. According to Talley, harnessing the alternative form of energy has proven to be successful in mitigating electrical costs. Additionally, the city installed solar panels on the roof of the new public safety building located downtown.

“With the solar field on the public safety building and with other sustainable and other mechanical and lighting equipment, the electric bill for the building is half compared to the old police facility at city hall, and the new building is double the

size,” says Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski. “With the improvements of panels, the efficiency is very high and the maintenance is very low.”

At the wastewater treatment plant, the implementation of 1,491 solar panels is set to offset approximately 22 percent of the energy consumption at the plant in an average year. This equates to an annual savings of nearly one million kilowatt hours, and when factoring in the projected utility rates ($0.1088/kWh), savings come out to just under $107,000 in year one of the guarantee.

Plans call for 410 solar panels to be installed at the Ross Road Lift Station, which will offset roughly 3 percent of the energy used there each year. This translates to an annual savings of more than 267,000 kilowatt hours at the projected utility rates ($0.1419/kWh), coming out to nearly $38,000 in year one of the guarantee.

“Solar energy is clean, renewable and reliable, unlike many other forms of energy,” says Talley. “Using a form of energy such as solar can have tremendous environmental and economic impacts on a community, as we are already starting to see.”

Along with helping cut energy costs, Roswarski says these initiatives also help protect and conserve the community’s natural resources. “The city wants to do its part towards addressing climate change.”

Both of these installations are projected to produce substantial annual savings through balancing peak and base electrical demand. Over the course of two decades, the solar arrays at both facilities are expected to result in a combined $6.9 million in energy savings, based on increasing billing rates of nine percent

annually.

“From a taxpayerʼs perspective, the return on investment is very good,” Roswarski says.

As for financing the infrastructure, the guaranteed maximum price for both installations comes with a $3.9 million price tag. According to Talley, this will be paid for with a combination of the treatment plant’s capital asset funds and rebates from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that are provided by the federal government.

The city expects a minimum of a 30 percent rebate, with a high chance of receiving a 40 percent rebate, covering a significant portion of the projects. If a 40 percent rebate were to be granted, the city would be responsible for just over $2.3 million in construction costs with an estimated payback period of less than nine years. Without any rebates, the estimated payback period would be approximately 14 years.

“Our actions at Lafayette Renew and the City of Lafayette in adopting renewable energy will hopefully serve as an example for others in

our community to consider the same,” Talley says.

These actions come at a time when Greater Lafayette as a whole is putting an emphasis on addressing climate change. The Greater Lafayette Climate Action Plan, which was adopted in early 2023, highlights the collaborative efforts Lafayette, West Lafayette and Tippecanoe County are taking in working towards creating a climate-resilient community, a reduced carbon footprint, and an equitable quality of life for residents. In addition to keeping electrical costs lower, these projects will benefit the community for years to come by reducing the region’s carbon footprint as a whole.

Talley says recent online search trends have proven that climate change is top of mind for Greater Lafayette residents.

“From discussions we have had as part of the Greater Lafayette Climate Action Plan process, in 2022, Greater Lafayette residents searched for the term “climate change” on Google more than any other community in the United States,” Talley says.

These data were published as part of Google’s year-end report.

The climate action plan includes a snapshot of Greater Lafayette’s greenhouse gas emission profile, proving that most of the greenhouse gases come from energy usage in the built environment, which includes residential, commercial and industrial buildings. The solar arrays support the city’s overall carbon emission reduction goals as put forth by the plan.

“Solar has been discussed with local leaders as part of the Greater Lafayette Climate Action Plan,” Talley says. “Solar energy was a major theme of the plan due to its numerous benefits and applicability to our community. The plan not only supports solar adoption on the commercial and industrial level, but also on the residential level.”

As detailed in the report, the strategy to address climate change involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Greater Lafayette by 58 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050.

“By producing and using ener-

gy from the sun for our electrical needs at the wastewater treatment plant and Ross Road Lift Station, we are making a commitment to improve the environmental health in our community for generations to come,” says Talley.

Roswarski says cities across the country have been challenged to convert to clean energy and it’s important that Lafayette leads by example.

“I feel that Greater Lafayette is doing a very good job in investing in renewable energy, sustainability, and public transportation, which will help us achieve our goals in the climate action plan,” Roswarski says.

“Lafayette looks forward to being a leader in renewable energy from this point forward,” says Talley. ★ To learn more about the additional

initiativesGreaterLafayetteisundertakingtoaddress climatechange,visitgreaterlafayetteind.com/climate-action-plan/.There,youcanreceivefurtherinformationand learnhowtobecomeinvolvedyourself.

BY KAT BRAZ PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE PETKOV AND PROVIDED

Looking forward, looking back

John Dennis reflects on his four terms in office as Erin Easter envisions the future for West Lafayette

► JOHN DENNIS, WEST LAFAYETTE MAYOR 2007-2023

First elected as mayor of West Lafayette in 2007, Dennis came to the role with 23 years of experience serving in the Lafayette Police Department, where he retired as deputy chief, the highest-ranking merit position on the force. At the time of his election, he was the first Republican mayor of the city in 28 years. In June 2022, Dennis announced he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and would not seek re-election to a fifth term.

► Describe your tenure as mayor in one word. Surprising.

► What do you love about being mayor?

The feeling of gratification I get from helping the people I’m able to help.

► What do you think people misunderstand about the role of the mayor?

That we can solve everything.

John Dennis began his tenure as West Lafayette mayor in 2007.

► Have there been some things that you weren’t able to solve that you wish you could?

Definitely. When I started my first term, the city was very politically divided. There was a clear line between the Republicans and the Democrats, and that’s something I’ve never understood. I don’t understand why political affiliation determines somebody’s conduct, leadership style or belief system. For me, political divisiveness is primarily based on party affiliation and I think the world would be a much better place if we got rid of that. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but it was one of the biggest challenges I had to overcome in my role as mayor. When you’re in a leadership role — not a legislative role but a leadership role — you can’t be loyal to a particular party because you must serve everybody. All citizens deserve the best quality service that local government can provide. And that was the drumbeat that I followed for the past 16 years.

► Your first term followed Democrat Jan Mills’ one term in office. Prior to that, Democrat Sonya Margerum — the city’s first woman mayor — had served a record 24 years. Did it feel like big shoes to fill?

It’s funny, because I grew up playing football with Sonya’s son, Larry. Sonya was a football mom. We would go to the Margerum house for pregame dinners and things so I’d known Sonya since I was a little kid.

As mayor, she developed relationships and built an understanding that there’s more to local government than just making sure streets are plowed and police cars have gas. We were able to take West Lafayette to the next level because Sonya made people aware of the city’s potential.

► As you reflect on your four terms in office, what are some of the accomplishments you’re most proud of?

No. 1 is annexing the university and making West Lafayette legitimately the home of Purdue. I’m also proud of developing a downtown and business environment. We’ve maintained the quality of our schools — which are second to none in the country — but now we can also boast about a thriving business community. Economic development has been a huge priority. Our emergency services have evolved exponentially from where we started. Our police and fire department truly understand the need and meaning of public service, that solving a problem doesn’t necessarily require somebody being punished. We’ve opened the doors to all kinds of social services to ensure our citizens get the help they need. That’s something I’m proud of, but I can’t take the credit. The chiefs I’ve hired have done an amazing job transitioning us from the old school “shut up or you’re going to jail” philosophy to one where when we say we’re here to help, we sincerely mean it.

► If a 2003 Purdue or West Lafayette High School grad returned to town, what would you show them first?

My cool Batman tattoo? But seriously, the State Street corridor. We went from a block of buildings in a line to a revamped corridor with wider sidewalks, bicycle racks, public art and landscaping that stretches from the Wabash River up the hill through Purdue’s campus. It was a huge $120 million project completed in partnership with Purdue that transformed State Street into a vibrant, attractive entry point to the city.

► How did your longtime friendship with Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski — whom you served with in LPD — influence your tenure as mayor?

I love Tony like a brother. We’ve been in the same squad car together. When you’ve served together in the police force, you share so many experiences — some very cool things happen and some very horrible things happen. That builds a bond between two men, a collegial brotherhood of mutual love and respect, that is unlike anything else. When people ask me what I’m going to miss in retirement, one of those top things is Tony. We both have different takes on life and different courses of growth in life that we can share with each other and that makes us better people and better mayors.

► In June 2022, you made the decision to go public with your diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Why was it important to you to be transparent with the people of West Lafayette?

If you’re a public figure, elected by the group you serve, and you have pledged your duty, your honor, your faith, your community and your citizenry, I think it’s important that if something as life-altering as Alzheimer’s happens, that you are transparent about it. I’ve been very fortunate to have the jobs I’ve had, being on call and being responsible for a number of people. I’ve taken those responsibilities seriously, but that means I haven’t always been the most present husband or father. With my diagnosis, the clock is ticking. I know my life is going to get smaller, not bigger, and I don’t have time to put things off anymore. It’s important that I spend time with my family and do the things we’ve been wanting to do together.

► As you vacate the office, is there anything you wish you’d been able to accomplish that’s left undone?

I really want to see a revitalization of Levee Plaza. We’ve been working with the property owners and business owners there on plans to develop a downtown grid. There is great potential for the right development, but it’s not going to happen on my watch. Another thing we haven’t done enough of is empowering our citizenry regardless of gender, orientation, race, creed, you name it. We have one of the most diverse populations not just in Indiana, but in the country, and we’re not celebrating the diversity of our community as much as we should. Sometimes the limitations of local government make it difficult, whether it’s codified or some sort of unknown social code. I think we’ve left out a few opportunities to be more inclusive.

► What do you love about West Lafayette?

My family moved here when I was a small child. This is not just a place I’ve lived, it’s a place where I’ve grown. I have a deeply rooted emotional relationship to this place. I feel strongly about making sure that good things happen to this community. We have so much going on any given day. We’re more of a rooftop community than a smokestack community. That sort of intimacy with our population and that understanding of how to properly grow really makes us unique compared to other cities of our size. I think that’s a big reason why we’re often so favorably ranked among national groups and studies. West Lafayette is a city with a soul, not just a checking account.

► What advice do you have for incoming Mayor Erin Easter?

Make sure your leadership is 50 percent brains and 50 percent heart. When you’re facing a tough decision and you can’t make up your mind, think with your heart. There will be a lot of challenges personally, and being a high visibility public official, you have to put your family first.

► You’ve been a public servant in this community for more than 40 years. How do you hope to be remembered?

I don’t even know that I will be, to be honest. When you’ve been doing this sort of stuff for so long, it’s hard to think of it as being any type of legacy. But I was raised to be nice. So I would hope that people would think of me as a nice guy who always put people over process or politics.

► ERIN EASTER, MAYOR OF WEST LAFAYETTE

Running unopposed and endorsed by outgoing Mayor John Dennis, Easter began her first fouryear term as mayor in January. A graduate of Lafayette Jefferson High School and Purdue University, she lives in the New Chauncey neighborhood with her family. She’s worked for the city of West Lafayette since 2018, most recently as director of development.

► Describe your vision for West Lafayette in one word. Progressive.

► Indiana’s been battling brain drain for decades. As a graduate of Purdue University, what motivated your choice to stay in Greater Lafayette?

When I was working in eastern Ohio for the Obama campaign in 2008, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of really incredible people. But I also saw what happens when governments aren’t working well together. In the Greater Lafayette community, we have two cities, a county, a Big Ten university and the largest community college in the state — you have to be able to work together. There is something different about the way people do things here. They are always working together to solve problems and that struck me as profoundly different than lots of other levels of government.

► What motivated you to run for mayor?

I’ve spent my entire career in positions focused on quality of life and quality of place issues and as mayor, you have the opportunity to implement betterment ideas that create places where people want to live. I also knew I would have great partners throughout the community.

► Feeling any pressure coming into office as a Democrat following a four-term Republican?

If you look at how John Dennis has governed and led the city of West Lafayette, it hasn’t been overly partisan. When it comes to local politics, it’s difficult to divide into parties because we’re all dealing with the same

West Lafayette Mayor Erin Easter started her term on January 1. (Photo above by Dave Bangert)

issues. We’re all looking to make decisions in the best interest of our community. You are responsible to the people stopping you in the grocery store to share their opinions on an issue. It’s one reason why local government is great; it’s the place where you can have the most profound impact on your community.

► You described your vision for West Lafayette as progressive. Some readers might equate that with liberal, so expand on what you mean by that.

I’ve been a Democrat my whole life, so there are certain values that I hold near and dear that align with that. But by “progressive,” I mean that I want West Lafayette to continue to grow responsibly and in a way that feels supportive of our community. I want us to look for new and creative ways to be innovative with the way we provide services to our citizens. Even if it’s something as simple as evaluating our trash and recycling program, we’re recognizing that our community is growing and we have some interesting infrastructure needs that we need to solve.

► What’s your response to people who are concerned that the growth in West Lafayette is moving too fast?

If you look around, we have many buildings that are only 35 feet tall because that’s the tallest you can build with traditional zoning mechanisms. Those buildings have served great purposes over the years and lots of former students have fond memories of them. But as we look at changes in our community, such as the high-rise apartments near campus, those new buildings are safer for students to live in because they have modern fire suppression technology. They also offer the amenities today’s students are looking for. Higher occupancy apartments help us to use our land wisely. Near campus neighborhoods are popular because they are walkable. There are a lot of people who want to live in an urban environment. We can’t just continue to expand in every direction. We must focus on urban infill.

► What are some key things you’d like to accomplish in your first term?

Wabash River Enhancement Corp. has done an incredible job for many years working with our partners upstream to clean up the Wabash River, and the opportunity to recreate on that body of water and utilize it as an asset is important. Adjacent to the river, we have an opportunity to reimagine the Levee Plaza by creating a walkable, dense urban downtown area.

Another issue to address is housing. It’s a complex issue further exacerbated by the student population which moves quickly through our community. It also impacts the ancillary business community and the university as they recruit faculty and staff looking to move here. We need to recognize that there are lots of scales of earning and we need to be prepared to meet people where they are with robust neighborhoods that truly reflect the entire community.

The city has already begun working on improving access to early childhood education. We’re investing in programs that are sliding scale, affordable and offer different options for early childhood education. Lack of childcare can be a barrier to parents wanting to enter the workforce, and children enrolled in early childhood education programs are better prepared to enter kindergarten.

► How will your experience as a city employee benefit you during your transition to the role of mayor?

Working in the public sector is very different than most people think. It is, without question, more challenging than I would have anticipated. Because we are responsible to taxpayers, there are policies and timetables that ensure a deliberate and thoughtful process. It’s a huge adjustment when you’re coming from the private sector or the nonprofit sector to local government. My experience working for the city means I understand the nuances of how public work happens. It’s truly wonderful, but it is far more complex than I think most people give it credit for.

► What sets you apart from Mayor Dennis?

Obviously Mayor Dennis’ time on the police force gave him a very specific perspective on public safety work. My experience working with small businesses and then quality of life issues gives me a different perspective. In those roles, you hear from some voices who may not be traditionally represented in the business community, such as the employees of those organizations. You learn pretty quickly about the everyday things that bring people fulfillment in their lives.

► If someone was considering a move to West Lafayette, what would be your pitch to get them here?

First, I’d want to know what kind of life they want to live. If they are looking for an urban city where they never have to drive a car, West Lafayette may not be the best fit for them. The reality is, not every person we could possibly attract here is going to find it the best fit for what they want in their life. But for those looking for a safe and stable community with access to an incredible university and a really intellectual business community that’s researching solutions to address some of the world’s most pressing needs, a community that has great recreation options and high-quality education from top to bottom, they could be very happy here.

► What are the biggest challenges facing West Lafayette right now?

We need to come up with some policies regarding housing. We have tremendous growth within the Tippecanoe County School Corp. and consistent enrollment in West Lafayette Community School Corp. A lot of that is based on the boundaries of the school districts, which are difficult to change. We have very limited housing in West Lafayette and many families are outbid when looking for places to live full-time so their children can attend the schools of their choosing. We have to be very thoughtful about what we’re doing with every piece of land within city limits.

► What are the biggest opportunities?

We have so much potential on all fronts with continued business growth, both small business and big industry. Our restaurant and retail amenities are currently a bit limited. For our population to continue to grow, we must find ways to offer the shopping amenities, services and dining options that create a sense of place within West Lafayette.

► What are you most excited about?

I’m really excited to get started on a strategic plan. The city has a strategic plan that we’ve been working from for a number of years, but it’s always a good practice to recognize what we’ve achieved and explore how our priorities may have shifted.

► West Lafayette’s first woman mayor, Sonya Margerum, had a 24-year run as mayor. Any aspirations to tie or beat that record?

We’ll take every term as it comes. ★

BY KAT BRAZ PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE PETKOV AND PROVIDED

The 145-year-old family business now offers indoor and outdoor venues for weddings, workshops and community gatherings

hen Sara Abrams and Taka Sakamoto started planning their July 2019 wedding, they envisioned an intimate garden affair with family and friends surrounded by lush greenery and flowers — lots of flowers. What better place to host their nuptials than Bennett’s Greenhouses, the Lafayette plant nursery and garden center that’s been in Sara’s family since it opened in 1878.

Theirs was the second wedding held at Bennett’s, a favorite destination for local gardeners. Sara, whose last name is now Sakamoto, fondly recalled her cousin Julie Ruff’s wedding. Ruff married Jacob Hedgecough in October 2014, and during their reception, the couple danced under string lights hung across the greenhouse.

“Julie’s wedding was the beginning of, ‘Oh! We could turn this into an event venue,’ ” says Sakamoto, who moved back to Greater Lafayette in August and joined the staff at Bennett’s as its first event coordinator. “I grew up on the property and it’s long been a passion of mine to help our family business grow and diversify by hosting more events — not only weddings, but also workshops, classes and outreach events. We want to create a lasting community connection.”

The outdoor garden space, with a rustic deck and pergola backdropped by a shimmering pond and fountain, can accommodate

The Bennett's Greenhouses location is perfect for large gatherings.

300-plus guests and is available April through October. The enchanting indoor glass greenhouse with temperature control can accommodate up to 200 people and is available June through February. A new building under construction and planned to open in 2024 will provide dressing suites for the bridal party and prep space for caterers. Wedding packages start at $2,900 and include a $900 flower allowance.

The Bennett’s team works with each couple to ensure the décor reflects their style and embraces the season. That could be beds of bright summer blooms and a pergola draped in billowing sheer fabric or cheery potted sunflowers with sprigs

of greenery adorning the pergola.

“Because we have a floral department, flowers are included in our package price, which is something rather unique to our venue,” Sakamoto says. “For couples who don’t want fresh cut flowers and would prefer to select a tree or shrub to plant at their home, that’s another option we offer.”

Bennett’s has an open vendor policy so couples can work with whatever service providers they choose. Sakamoto is happy to share a recommended vendor list, too. The location on the corner of McCarty and Creasy lanes provides out-oftown guests with easy access to dining and hotel accommodations.

“We have so many customers who

shop at Bennett’s and tell us, ‘I had no idea this space was here,’ ” Sakamoto says. “We want to get the word out that we’ve created an elegant garden space smack dab in the city of Lafayette. At Bennett’s, you can have a beautiful outdoor ceremony, surrounded by nature in a convenient location at an affordable price.”

Both venues are available to rent for private or community events, in addition to weddings. “We can tailor our event spaces to whatever is needed,” Sakamoto says. “Our family business has long been committed to community engagement. Offering these event spaces is one more way Bennett’s can bring people together.” ★

Sara Sakamoto (second from left) with family and staff at Bennett's.

Plan your event

Contact Sara Sakamoto, event coordinator at Bennett’s Greenhouses, at 765-418-7711 or events@bennettsgreenhouse.com

Take a workshop

Since returning to Greater Lafayette last summer, Sakamoto’s been planning workshops and community events, too. Among them, pumpkin painting and games for Halloween and a November holiday open house with crafts and cocoa. Bennett’s also regularly schedules workshops. Previous topics have included floral arranging, making evergreen porch pots, crafting autumn wreaths, the art of zentangles and terrarium design. Sakamoto hopes to hold future workshops on candle making and host yoga classes over the summer.

To find out about upcoming workshops and events, follow Bennett’s on Facebook and Instagram @BennettsGreenhouse.

Small business recognition

In October 2023, Greater Lafayette Commerce named Bennett’s Greenhouses as the Small Business of the Month. The award is designed to recognize the dedication, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit displayed by Greater Lafayette small businesses.

BY KATHY MATTER PHOTOS PROVIDED BY PURDUE ATHLETICS

A SEASON TO CELEBRATE

25 years ago, the Purdue women’s basketball team captured the NCAA national championship

“The people we looked up to, our coaches, had a chemistry. They displayed love and care and respect for each other. I honestly believe the chemistry and love of our staff trickled down to Steph and Kari, then trickled all the way down to the freshman class.”

- Kelly Komara

There were just over 4 minutes left in a basketball game that would change lives and embellish sports history at Purdue University forever when the team’s star player crumbled to the court with a look of agony on her face that made every Boilermaker’s heart skip a beat.

Sephanie White, playing in the 1999 Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship in San Jose, California, was the one on the floor writhing in pain. Getting to that moment was a dream she and Ukari Figgs had worked tirelessly to fulfill ever since committing to stay at Purdue after a nasty coaching debacle their freshman year.

Ahead by only five, 47-42, following a halftime deficit in a tense, low scoring game against the Duke Blue Devils, the moment of decision had come.

Kelly Komara, the freshman guard on that team who recently returned to be assistant coach of the Boilermaker basketball squad, was the player Coach Carolyn Peck called on to go in for White, who had earned National Player of the Year accolades.

“It was like nooo this can’t be happening. My heart went into my stomach seeing Steph in such pain. Then Coach Peck subbed me into the biggest game of my life,” Komara recalls.

It wasn’t that movie moment where Komara saved the day. She and the rest of the starters backed up Figgs, “who like went into a different body and became this all encompassing basketball player,” Komara says. “ We relied on Kari and she was built for that moment.”

Quoted after the game, Figgs, who would become tournament MVP, said “that (ankle injury) just fired me up. ‘I just wanted to go out and win it for Steph and myself and the rest of the team, but just more for her at the time.’ ”

From there the Boilermakers went on a 13-0 run to capture college basketball’s biggest prize. “We were a great team, and that moment proved we were a great team,” Komara says.

All during the 2023-24 season the current squad wears a special patch on their uniforms commemorating the 25th anniversary of that win.

Stephanie White, Coach Carolyn Peck and Ukari Figgs

Camille Cooper, a 6-foot 4-inch sophomore and starter on the championship team, vividly recalls the moments after the win. She scored 13 points in the game, effectively neutralizing 6-foot 6-inch All-American senior Michele VanGorp, who led the Blue Devils with 15 points.

“I will never forget the moment when the buzzer sounded and signaled the end of the game. The lights seemed brighter and the crowd was louder, I saw Katie Douglas throw the ball up to the rafters, and I raised my hands, looked up and said, ‘Thank you, God’.”

Ironically, Katie Douglas and her roommate Komara had practiced for that moment in their Owen Hall dorm room all season long. “I told Katie you throw the ball up and I’ll run around. Literally, we talked about this moment.That’s kind of how we were. It wasn’t far-fetched.”

Danielle Bird Cardinal spent a lot of her time that championship year on the bench, but the team fed off her endless enthusiasm. “When we won, it was very surreal, almost like it wasn’t happening to me,” she recalls. “I felt and still feel so incredibly blessed to be part of such greatness.

“You can never take that title away from us or the notoriety it brings. It’s amazing the people who remember the championship and how much joy it gave to so many people. It connects us as a team forever and it is just such a special moment in Purdue University history.”

Coach Peck cuts down the net after the NCAA victory.

This page: Photos from the November 2023 celebration and reunion of the NCAA Championship team.

The 1999 national championship — its 25th anniversary is being honored this season — didn’t just happen. It wasn’t some kind of fluke. It was the fulfillment of a dream. After the win, White would be quoted as saying, “This is why we stayed.”

White was Miss Indiana Basketball before coming to Purdue; Figgs was Miss Kentucky Basketball. The two instantly forged a fast friendship and a goal — to win a national championship. That seemed almost ludicrous in the wake of the coaching turmoil and subsequent departure of many of their teammates at the end of their freshman year in 1996. White and Figgs made the decision to stay. Starting their sophomore year, Purdue was projected to finish a lowly eighth in the Big Ten.

Eighth wasn’t what White, Figgs and Jannon Roland (the only other player who stayed) had in mind. With the nurturing influence of new coach Nell Fortner, they fought and fought and ended the Big Ten regular season with a chance to win it all in front of a hostile, sell-out crowd at 17th ranked Illinois. Final score: 80-75 with the Boilers on top. The one-word headline in gigantic type the next day in the Lafayette Journal & Courier screamed “UNBELIEVABLE!”

Fortner stayed just one year, opening the door to Carolyn Peck. In her new office Coach Peck found an empty picture frame and was informed that it was reserved for Purdue’s first national championship team.

As the final buzzer sounded on the national championship win, Peck told the press: “I thought about my two senior captains. I thought about their fortitude and toughness. I thought about the first time I sat with them in my office and they said, ‘Carolyn, we can do this.’ ”

Putting a picture in that frame truly was a goal, Pam Stackhouse, assistant coach of the championship team, recalls, “a goal set at the end of the 1997-98 season led by Steph and Ukari. We ended the 1998 season losing by five points in the Elite Eight game that would have sent us to the 1998 Final Four. We felt we had a special group of players returning and were in a position to make another run deep into the NCAA Tournament.

“The drive and leadership behind that team

came from the locker room. When you have 100 percent buy-in from players, it makes coaching easier. The team was full of self-starters who knew what it would take to achieve the Final Four and National Championship goals.”

The magic started happening in the 1998-99 season opener against Tennessee when self-described “fearless freshman” Komara entered the game and immediately popped in a big three-pointer in her first shot attempt on the Mackey Arena floor. It proved she was definitely the “goods” for Peck’s unique four guard offense. Purdue won that season opener, knocking off a titan Tennessee program that was ranked No. 1 going in, was a three-time defending national champion and winner of 46 games in a row.

Losing to Stanford in the very next game humbled the team. But from then on Purdue never lost a game, sweeping the Big Ten to become No. 1 in the nation before the tournaments began.

“It was a much different time back then,” Komara says, without all the hype that happens today.

“I have to credit our coaching staff, and Steph and Kari. They did a good job of keeping us in the moment. We didn’t have social media pumping you up. We didn’t have all the distractions. We were just 15-20 individuals locked in every day.”

“The people we looked up to, our coaches, had a chemistry. They displayed love and care and respect for each other. I honestly believe the chemistry and love of our staff trickled down to Steph and Kari, then trickled all the way down to the freshman class.”

Komara’s return to Purdue brings her full circle, back to a gym, a program and a community she loved as a student. “I always knew I would find my way back here,” she says. She also always knew she would be a coach, following in her dad’s footsteps.

With head coach Katie Gearlds, who also enjoyed a storied playing career at Purdue, Komara hopes to bring back the magic they both experienced as Boilers. Purdue’s once-elite program has experienced a tumble in recent years. “Our goal is to get a little bit better each year. Last year we made it into the extended 68 team tournament field. This year we want to be in the 64,” Komara says.

Reflecting on the fact that there were nine players from Indiana on the national championship roster, Komara says, “Our biggest goal is to win the state of Indiana, to get the best players to stay home and go to Purdue.”

By winning the state “we can get enough talent to shake things up and put us back on the map.”

Komara is not the only member of the 1999 team to stay with basketball. Katie Douglas enjoyed a storied career in the WNBA. Stephanie White coaches the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA. Danielle Bird Cardinal is a high school girls varsity basketball coach. (In addition, Ukari Figgs is a production engineer for Toyota, and Camille Cooper is an attorney.)

The recent reunion of players from the 1999 squad prompted Danielle Bird Cardinal to do some introspective thinking. “To say (that team) was a special group does not do it justice. What they have accomplished in life, the successful people they are today does not surprise me. The reason is that all the characteristics needed to succeed on the basketball court are the same characteristics they live out daily.

Former assistant coach, Pam Stackhouse, reflects by saying, “The members of this team have gone on to become successful business women, lawyers, engineers and transformative leaders in their work. In April 1999, in an arena in San Jose, California, the same characteristics that helped the members of this program be successful in their professional lives, family lives and personal lives 25 years later, were on display for the nation to see.

“As much as the championship meant to me all those years ago, I feel even more pride in having the opportunity to watch them grow into the successful women they are today.” ★

Members of the NCAA Championship team with trophies they received.

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Galaxies

everywhere

Purdueʼs Danny Milisavljevic hopes Webb telescopeʼs discoveries reveal our connection with the universe.

BY KEN THOMPSON | PHOTOS BY CHRISTINE PETKOV AND PROVIDED

We are part of a great, vast cosmos. It’s incredible to think we provide a way for the universe to have a consciousness. For a way for the universe to know itself.

Credit Purdue University, Rebecca Robiños

Dr. Danny Milisavljevic is a Sherlock Holmes in the field of physics and astronomy.

The Purdue University associate professor is always seeking “motivated and enthusiastic” students to join his team of “supernova sleuths” investigating the catastrophic deaths of massive stars.

“I’m trying to understand the fundamental process that makes life in the universe possible,” the Canada native says.

After earning his undergraduate degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Milisavljevic began his career as a self-described “professional” astrophysicist at Harvard University in 2011. He joined the staff at Purdue in 2017.

Recently featured on the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes,” Milisavljevic was described as “starstruck” by correspondent Scott Pelley from the images obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope. Launched into space on Christmas Day 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope uses high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments to view objects too old, distant or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope.

The photos sent back to Earth and released to the public this past July were a highlight of Milisavljevic’s lifelong obsession with what lies beyond Earth’s atmosphere. He recently sat down with writer Ken Thompson to discuss the impact of the Webb Space Telescope and how it relates to his research.

Image of exploded star, Cassiopeia A, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit D. Milisavljevic, T. Temim, I. De Looze, J. Schmidt, NASA

Photo by Christine Petkov

Q: For my generation, the race to the moon sparked so much interest. When did you become fascinated by what’s out there beyond Earth?

A: I trace it back to when I was given a project in Grade 2. It was on the solar system. I spent time learning about each planet. This was back in the day when you would go to the library and go to the stacks and get out the encyclopedias. I remember spending time for each planet. I had a title page and I still remember the motion of coloring in each planet. I felt a connection to the planet. Then I wrote a description about each, all the way through to Pluto when it was still a planet.

Over the years, the fascination of what’s out there beyond Earth has stuck with me. It’s always been a part of my life in one way or another.

Q: How did you prepare yourself for your life’s work?

A: I kind of have a meandering path. I always had some association with astronomy clubs growing up. I have a lot of thanks for my high school teachers getting me involved in that. They took me to a local astronomy club, where I got to look through telescopes. When I went to college I continued that interest. I actually got summer research opportunities. One of those geeks led to us finding new moons around Uranus and Neptune. I got to name one of the moons.

Q: What was it?

A: Ferdinand (laughs). I can tell you a whole story behind that. I had a short amount of time to come up with a name. In theory, you can name it anything you want. But the names in this particular orbit around Uranus were named after Shakespearean characters from the play “The Tempest.” So I go to the bookstore. They didn’t have any copies of “The Tempest,” so I go to the library and I got the Cliff’s Notes. I got the BBC stage production, the original one, and when I saw Ferdinand – he’s the prince who falls in love at first sight – when I looked at the etymology of Ferdinand, it means “bold adventurer, ready for travels.” I thought that’s perfect.

After my undergrad, I thought I was going to be a philosopher. So I did a master’s at the London School of Economics in philosophy science. But then, after going to a couple of workshops, I saw a bunch of old people arguing past each other without any constructive movement forward in the field. So then I went to graduate school when I moved to the U.S. at Dartmouth College. A professor took me to a professional observatory (with) a big telescope. I’ll never forget the first time an exposure came out, it was like the first time I looked through a microscope. I remember preparing a slide, it was a bee’s wing. I looked at it and I saw all this detail I hadn’t seen before. It was like the microscope was pointed up at the sky. All this structure and things happening I didn’t know was there. I was hooked. That’s when I knew I wanted to make it a career afterward.

Danny Milisavljevic and students from his class visit the observatory he is building.

Q: The James Webb Space Telescope has had a phenomenal impact on not just your field of study but so many others. How did you first gain knowledge of what was going on?

A: The design and initial discussions go back decades. I was first kind of brought into the loop around 2015. At that point it had already been delayed but was now a couple years out at that point from launch. There were workshops and talks to go to, to learn about the capabilities. People would get together to talk about projects that would benefit from (the telescope). My own team really started to get together around 2017 after we had a meeting at Princeton University. We spent two years developing a project for Webb. Then there was a delay, then another delay and the project in a sense got more refined, better developed. Our scientific priorities were better understood so that when we submitted it, it was compelling enough that it was selected to be among the first targets for James Webb.

Q: I remember when I first saw pictures sent back by the James Webb Space Telescope, to a lay person like myself, I was amazed. What were you experiencing emotionally and intellectually when you first saw those photographs?

A: It would be a lot of the same as you. Amazed. Delighted that it was working after all this time and money that had been invested. The payoff for everybody involved was enormous. Two memories come to me. One is when I first saw any image. I had no special privilege like other people. I wasn’t part of the James Webb team so I was only getting data as they were feeding it out to the public. One of the first images was a calibration image and that’s just, “Hey, things are working.” It was pointed at a bright star, which would be boring, but in the background there were galaxies everywhere!

In that “60 Minutes” segment, Matt Mountain said it so perfectly. We’re familiar with stars being everywhere in the night sky relative to Earth but amongst the cosmos in the universe there are galaxies everywhere. But because so many of them are faint and far away, emitting in not optical – what we see – but the infrared light toward longer wavelengths needed the capabilities of Webb to be able to see them. Even though we are looking at a bright, boring object the sky around it is vibrant because there are galaxies everywhere. That was stupendous. If I had been given a homework assignment of how many galaxies would you estimate being in the field of view of any Webb image, I could work out a number, but there’s a different kind of satisfaction, a different kind of excitement when it actually happens. Seeing is believing.

The next thing, of course, was when they released the first real images. That was in July. It went to the White House for the first night and then the next day they released a series of images. That was also amazing. This shows the full power of imaging in different wavelengths, putting it together, making not just beautiful images but powerful science you can do. You are really getting a sense this telescope is revolutionary in its ability to study the universe.

My own program, that’s when I went bonkers. Here’s an astronomical object, this exploded star, the remnants of it we call Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short. I’ve been looking at this for basically 20 years since my Ph.D.

Danny Milisavljevic has been using VR headsets to immerse his Purdue University students in the study of supernovas. Credit Purdue University

Simulation of James Webb Space Telescope launch into space

James Webb Space Telescope preparing for launch. Credit AFP.

Danny Milisavljevic being interviewed for Purdue podcast Credit Purdue University, Rebecca Robiños

thesis, and now I’ve seen it in a whole new way, opening up all these new opportunities of investigation. It really is mind blowing.

Q: I’m assuming you had hopes or expectations of what you would see from the Webb telescope? Were those hopes/expectations met?

A: Exceeded, I would definitely say. With any new facility like this, you can expect the unexpected. That’s what happened for us. There’s a familiar, kind of circular shape to the exploded star debris. In the middle of it, not seen in the optical, hardly noticeable in any previous image or wavelength was this bright emission. We call it ‘The Green Monster’ because when we made it a color image it just jumped out. It had this kind of streak to it and it was scary.

One of the main goals of our program was to see inside the exploded star as well as possible. To make the science as understandable as possible, the gas we see in the optical light is very hot. The shock has excited it. The stuff in the inside, closest to where that original explosion took place – remember what we are looking at was once a star – the debris is expanding in various directions. It gets excited by shocks and gets really hot. What we’re really interested in is what happened right at that location of the star. The gas there is very cool; it hasn’t been excited by the shock. To be sensitive to those very cool gasses you need to look at longer temperatures. It’s very similar to night vision goggles. You can see people at night, it’s not optical light, but you can see their heat signature. But it’s toward longer wavelengths, the infrared. That’s why Webb was able to see it unlike previous telescopes. To answer your question, we expected the unexpected.

I’ll just say one more thing: the sharpness of the images is amazing. Spectacular. Like it’s high definition. It’s hardly comparable to what we were able to do previously at these wavelengths. I remember the first time I got my pair of glasses and the world looked different. You can see colors differently. In some instances, what Webb was showing us … in hindsight once we saw it in Webb you could see something like that in the previous data, even Hubble. But only the benefit of having a sharp image do you know what it was as a result.

Q: Obviously, we’re going to keep learning more as the images come in. But what else have we learned that will be important for further research?

A: Part of what motivates me to do this research is understanding our origins. The universe started with a lot of hydrogen, helium and some other trace elements. But it’s only through massive stars, stars that are even bigger than the sun — 10 times bigger – they go through this evolution that ends with a dramatic explosion that produces all the raw materials needed for life. The oxygen we breathe, calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, etc. Part of it also is how much stuff each stellar explosion produces, how much is released into the interstellar environment. So our research is being able to better understand that process. What’s new with Webb? Webb is allowing us to access the physics of what happened closest to the explosion unlike before. There are many efforts using the world’s fastest computers to simulate what an explosion looks like. It’s so complicated that there are many variables, like knobs

Danny Milisavljevic and students from his class attending the IMAX documentary on the James Webb Space Telescope

they can turn, to make things happen. Our observations provide crucial tests. This is the structure you should try to reproduce. They didn’t have that information before. In a sense, our observations are making it possible for scientists to recreate these explosions in computers.

Q: It’s fascinating to hear all of this.

A: It’s fun (laughs)! I really enjoy my work. I think I have one of the best jobs in the universe. I like to think sometimes I’m a reporter for the universe. Sometimes I get to see things other people haven’t seen, and it’s my job as an astronomer to help convey that message. So I’m actually grateful for opportunities like this to help share this for a wider audience.

Q: You are on the campus where men such as Gus Grissom, Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan and Jerry Ross laid the groundwork for their careers. Do you feel like you are continuing Purdue’s tradition of discovery?

A: Oh gosh, I wouldn’t put my name up against people like that. It would be nice to think my work is contributing to the overall effort of the next giant leaps. Making breakthrough discoveries of moving into uncharted frontiers and space exploration, that really motivates me in my research.

Q: What are you hoping that we as a society learn about what’s out

forest. I hope the work that I do can provide those kinds of experiences on grander scales. Not limited to just walking here on Earth but to be able to visit at least virtually distant worlds. Locations elsewhere in our galaxy or ultimately out into the distant cosmos. To provide enough of the context. A tree is relatable. We see them all the time. We don’t always see them so big or so many of them. The same with these kind of astronomical images. They can be a little bit hard to understand about context but I hope to be able to provide the background information, the scientific setting as it were, to provide them with what’s needed to have this connection with the universe that’s indescribable. That helps us formulate a little bit of meaning for it all. We are part of a great, vast cosmos. It’s incredible to think we provide a way for the universe to have a consciousness. For a way for the universe to know itself. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of cold gasses and exploding stars. I hope observations with the James Webb Telescope are a catalyst for people to have these connections.

Q: The topic of UFOs and what does our government know has become a hot topic again. Are we being conceited to think we are the only life in the universe?

A: Conceited is not the word I would use. If you ask me to put money on it, I would stake a non-negligible amount favoring somewhere in the universe there’s going to be life. The thing is, I’m sure nobody would be able to cash in on that bet. I don’t know how soon it’s going to be that we’ll find life. Given that we have so much rich life on this one planet, among all the stars in their own galaxies, among all the galaxies in the universe it seems like life should be able to pop up somewhere else. But intelligent life seems to be very hard, not impossible but very hard. Given the rarity and the vast distances of the universe it’s unlikely where we’re going to have “Star Trek,” where we’re communicating with it. I read a biography of Carl Sagan, who was very interested in this ques-

Images from the live launch party for the James Webb Space Telescope

tion. He had such a sadness when they first pointed the radio telescope looking for great communications from intelligent beings in the nearest galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy. Nothing. There’s a whole other galaxy with all these stars and no clear signs of intelligent life. It will be very hard to be able to do so.

Q: What do you like about being at Purdue and living in Greater Lafayette?

A: I love it here! It’s been so good to me. I moved here from Harvard University. Here at Purdue I’ve had much more of a sense of community amongst the entire campus. I’ve had much more of a sense of community from Greater Lafayette. The day we moved in, our neighbors came by to say hello, introduced themselves. We ended up doing more things here than we ever did in the Boston area because we don’t have to worry about traffic. The cost of living is much lower. My wife, who moved her business here, has also felt the same way. The small business community here is very tight, very supportive. A new business opens up and all the other small businesses go to support and purchase from each other. There was that real feeling of community here on campus and in the Greater Lafayette area that immediately reverberated with me.

Purdue just has been very good about enabling research for me. They’ve provided opportunities to build up my research portfolio, provided me computing access. This whole other side thing I do with virtual reality, to recreate the stellar debris fields in three-dimensional reconstructions that you put on a headset. We can take virtual trips. All this, there’s no other institution that can reproduce this.

Q: You mentioned your wife’s wildly popular business French Knot, which sells wool apparel and gift items. What do you do for relaxation?

A: Number one is our dog, Wilbur. I spend a lot of time with him, taking him for walks. We’ll go explore certain places, go for hikes. I like reading. I like collecting old books. Sorry to say I’m boring, but a lot of them are older astronomy text books. Von’s is a great bookstore. The basement of Von’s is the best! Whether it’s a hobby or a necessity of life, projects around the house. We like repurposing furniture. My wife likes antiques, so sometimes they need a little work. ★

Photo by Christin Petkov

Danny Milisavljevic at the Neil Armstrong statue on Purdue's campus.

Ask The Experts:

Do you have questions regarding business challenges you are facing?

The Greater Lafayette Commerce Ask the Experts program is perfect for you. Greater Lafayette Commerce is teaming with experienced professionals who have the skills you’re looking for to help you overcome challenges and provide you with perspective and direction.

Ask the Experts provides small business owners with the information they need while also facilitating the development of lasting professional relationships.

George M. Taulia

George Taulia is the business development manager at Capstone Alliance, one of the nation’s top group purchasing organizations. Taulia holds a BS in psychology from Central Michigan University and MBA with a healthcare administration focus from the University of Southern Indiana. After 10 years of military service, Taulia has spent more than 20 years in business development for healthcare, hospitality and purchased services companies. He has developed growth initiatives for suppliers through group purchasing as a contract and development administrator, consistently driving savings and value. Taulia and his wife are proud local business owners and members of the Greater Lafayette Commerce. For more information on how you and your business can leverage the value and savings of group purchasing through Capstone Alliance, contact Taulia at gtaulia@capstonehealthalliance.com.

QUESTION: What is group purchasing and how can my business benefit from it?

A group purchasing organization (GPO) is an organization that leverages the collective purchasing power of a group of businesses to negotiate and obtain discounts from thousands of suppliers. Businesses become members of this collaborative at no cost to their organizations. Because of the collective purchasing power, GPO contracting agents can negotiate deep discounts, favorable terms and priority service from vendors, which allows businesses to confidently work with these suppliers, knowing they have saved their company time and money. On average, a business that utilizes GPO contracts can expect to save 10% to 40% on the goods and services they already use.

For business and industry members, a group purchasing organization can connect them with savings opportunities from thousands of vendors across hundreds of categories. Categories include, but are not limited to, office supplies, information technology, furniture, payroll and employee services, freight, construction supplies, cleaning services and supplies, service awards, shredding, and other services to help businesses run smoothly. Businesses of any size can benefit from these opportunities. Oftentimes a business is already working with a supplier that is under contract with the GPO, and by merely identifying this the GPO administrator can plug in the savings. However, the value of a GPO goes well beyond the savings. A group purchasing organization serves as a sourcing consultant, an educator, drives communication between members, and acts as a change agent.

GPOs also hold a truly significant role with healthcare organizations where strategic sourcing is most critical. A group purchasing organization works collaboratively with the healthcare supply chain to access goods and services that allow them to improve, enhance, and save lives. Healthcare organizations can access the same contracts that the GPO negotiated for business and industry, plus specific contracts and relationships for medical/surgical supplies, diagnostic equipment, exam room equipment, specialized instruments, imaging, laboratory equipment and supplies, pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment and anything else that would be used in a hospital or non-hospital healthcare facility. Additionally, the team behind the group purchasing organization serves as subject matter experts in strategic sourcing and negotiates savings across the vast array of supplier/vendor relationships. Through the GPO relationship, healthcare members reside on the cutting edge of the healthcare environment, trends, compliance and legislation. This critical symbiotic relationship results in more than $55 billion in healthcare savings annually.

Capstone Alliance is a leader in group purchasing and a member of Greater Lafayette Commerce. Capstone Members can leverage thousands of contracts, across hundreds of categories, with a wide array of local, regional and national vendors, many of which you know and use currently. Any business can join, membership is free, there is no minimum spend, and you always maintain your ability to choose the best options for your business.

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BY DAVE BANGERT PHOTOS PROVIDED

Centennial Neighborhood’s big bet on itself

Residents in one of Lafayette’s oldest neighborhoods were so committed to preserving and rebuilding Centennial that they were willing to stake their personal savings on it. The bet keeps paying off.

There were no guarantees that night in August 2010, when 10 neighbors and business owners, checkbooks in hand, gathered in stuffed, antique chairs in the living room of Phyllis and Michael Hunt’s home and pondered a partnership with Lafayette city leaders.

But they understood the stakes: After poking and prodding city hall – and anyone else who would listen – for years to do something with a vacant, industrial block in the heart of their neighborhood, they were being asked to put their money where their mouths were about how much they really loved where they lived.

Those in the room had fought – some for decades and all with mixed results – to preserve housing stock and the historic feel in the Centennial Neighborhood. The neighborhood had been tenuous enough amid demolitions, century-old homes chopped into multiple apartments and the advance of big box apartment complexes to earn a spot on a local preservation group’s most endangered list in the late-ʼ90s.

A core of Centennial residents had been trying to rewrite a narrative for some of the city’s oldest blocks north of downtown Lafayette in a way that would draw a new generation to buy, restore and live there. They pitched historic preservation as an economic driver and neighborhood stabilizer.

In their sights now, right out the front window at the Hunts’ 19th century Greek Revival home: The remnant metal industrial warehouses, surrounded by chain link fences topped with barbed wire, left when Midwest Rentals had moved to the south side of Lafayette after six decades in Centennial Neighborhood.

In the Hunts’ front room, neighbors had drawings dry mounted – the edges creased and corners bent from years of toting around – of owner-occupied townhomes they thought would fit the surrounding architecture of a neighborhood first platted in the 1820s. They had dreams of new neighbors finding Centennial Neighborhood in similar ways they had. They had a newly formed Centennial Neighborhood Investment Group LLC that bound them as partners, beyond the dues and volunteer duties of a neighborhood association, in a vision for their neighborhood.

And now they had a proposal from the mayor’s office that put them on the spot.

The city’s redevelopment commission, along with

the nonprofit Lafayette Urban Enterprise Association, would go in on the vacant Midwest Rentals property at 506 Brown St. and help find a developer – if neighbors and their investment group were willing to come up with one-third of the $380,000plus asking price.

The math? “That wasn’t hard to figure out,” Michael Hunt remembers.

As for coming up with $128,000 – or an average of $12,800 per neighbor/investor – that night? And for the prospect of breaking even, at least in straight cash terms, as the best possible outcome?

“It was a little bit of a gut check,” said Bill Bray, a doctor who moved to Centennial Neighborhood from Germany in 2006 after a career in the U.S. Air Force. “And a leap of faith.”

Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said it was no sure bet, either, for the city or for the Lafayette Urban Enterprise Association, an independent nonprofit created in 1993 to encourage revitalization in neighborhoods closest to downtown Lafayette and had been working with the neighborhood to help achieve their vision.

The city had been contemplating new ways to spur business and residential development in its downtown – a plan that eventually, a decade later, would lead to tens of millions of dollars of private investment pouring into hundreds of new residential units and retail space. That meant paying attention to the neighborhoods that butted up against downtown for a comprehensive approach.

For Centennial, Roswarski said, it was hard to envision doing anything in the neighborhood with the future of the Midwest Rentals property up in the air.

“But let’s face it, that was a risk, once you consider the money we were going to have to put in, any cleanup of the site and finding a developer after all that,” Roswarski said.

“We were just starting to show people that revitalization could be done. So, we were still in the convincing stage,” Roswarski said. “Without Centennial neighbors putting up their own money, showing they believed in it first, not knowing they were going to get it back, I’m not sure how far we’re going to get.”

In the Hunts’ front room, at the corner of Fifth and Cincinnati streets, neighbors pledged what they could. Then they went person to person again to see how much more they were willing to dig into pockets and bank accounts.

“We literally went around the room raising the ante,” said Ken McCammon, who moved to the neighborhood in 2005 to be closer to places where he liked to eat and hang out in downtown. “It was one of those take-a-deep-breath moments.”

Phyllis Hunt, the longtime president of the Historic Centennial Neighborhood Association who died in September 2022, had said she and Michael warned everyone: Don’t put in what you can’t live without.

Still, the bidding went around the circle, upping that ante for those who could.

“I’m fairly sure no one there was convinced this wasn’t a good idea,” said Steve Belter, a founder of Wintek Corp., a high-tech solutions company based in Centennial, and a member of the investment group. “This was an investment in what the neighborhood around us could be, not necessarily a portfolio.”

“I think,” Bray said, “those of us living there just kind of had a feeling that if you build it, they will come.”

Still, Belter recalled: “There were comments, and not in jest: ‘This sure as hell better work out, because that’s my retirement.’”

As the money in the pot grew, Michael Hunt thought about the times the neighborhood’s ideas for a Centennial rebirth were met with: “Well, you know you can’t do that – it’s not reasonable.”

“I knew that if we didn’t bet on ourselves, we couldn’t expect anyone else to,” Michael Hunt said. “And here we were. Doing it.”

Three laps around the room later, one-third of the asking price was in hand. The next morning, the Hunts and other CNIG investors took a check to Lafayette City Hall.

Within seven years of that night of nervous bidding, the Centennial Townhomes would be built and filled, the owners of a dozen new homes moved in. Other projects, spurred in part by neighbors’ investments, followed.

And a model for persistent redevelopment in one of Lafayette’s oldest sections was in play.

New PlaN For aN old Neighborhood

The vacant Midwest Rentals property was, as Dennis Carson, Lafayette’s economic development director, called it, “the huge elephant in the room” for the neighborhood. And even for the city’s ideas

about a larger downtown plan.

But the scene of neighborhood investors pooling five-figure checks followed episodes spanning two decades marked by strategic moves, battles that played out on front pages and some unlikely alliances, all positioning Centennial Neighborhood for that night.

The Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission lists Centennial as the city’s oldest urban neighborhood, one of a handful that touch parts of Lafayette’s downtown. Initially platted between the city’s founding in 1825 and 1866, bound by Ferry and Union streets and North Ninth Street and the Wabash River, Centennial from its earliest days featured a diverse collection of housing: “imposing residences of wealthy and prominent citizens, comfortable middle-class housing and humble dwellings of the working class,” noted by a 2012 APC report. The Wells Memorial Public Library, the city’s first library and now home of the Tippecanoe Arts Federation, is in Centennial.

The APC also listed Centennial as “a neighborhood of transitions,” a bridge between the commerce of the central business district to the south and primarily residential areas to the north and east, industrial uses closer to the river in the city’s first century and a scattering of churches, government offices and social service agencies throughout.

Centennial’s historic architecture “served as a core component of its identity” and “served as the primary catalyst for the neighborhood’s past revitalization effort,” APC planners wrote in 2012. More than 30 structures had been recognized with plaques by the Wabash Valley Trust for Historic Preservation, a Lafayette-based nonprofit group, since a budding, though sporadic, trend of rehabilitating neglected historic buildings emerged in the early 1980s.

The neighborhood plan APC assembled for Centennial pointed to 1993 and a revitalized Historic Centennial Neighborhood Association as “instrumental”: “These citizens are united in their desire to ward off threats to their neighborhood and their quality of life and have a shared goal to create opportunities for positive future growth and development.” (The historic bent of the neighborhood association was front and center in its logo, featuring the cupula of Centennial School, among

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Lafayette’s earliest grade schools, open from 1876 to 1971.)

The 1993 timeframe coincided with the Hunts’ purchase and renovation of their two-story home at Fifth and Cincinnati streets. Michael Hunt, a Purdue forestry professor, called gutting and rehabbing the house that dated to 1846 “my midlife crisis.”

“Some people, they get a Jaguar convertible,” he said. “Me, I was fool enough to take on this place. But I loved it. It also was a start, like dropping a rock in a pond and watching that ripple.”

In this case, the ripple he was hoping for was similar investment in the neighborhood by homeowners willing to take on housing stock that either had been divvied into multiple units – as evidenced by four, five and six mailboxes on a single porch –or too often had been left to rot, marking time until a developer came along willing to buy it as-is, tear down and put up apartments.

Centennial had others who had renovated older structures and had labored to encourage more of the same in the neighborhood, as the Area Plan

Commission reports pointed out. In 1983, the 16 square blocks of Centennial Neighborhood were added to the National Register of Historic Places. The federal designation provided no special protections or building restrictions. But it offered some prestige, a selling point and a point of pride for the homes and church buildings in the neighborhood.

But Michael Hunt said that when their home was done, he and Phyllis had two homeowner neighbors in a three-block radius. U.S. Census records compiled by the Area Plan Commission showed owner-occupied units in the census blocks that included Centennial Neighborhood were at 7 percent in 1990. By 2010, county assessor figures put owner-occupancy in Centennial residences at roughly 30 percent, according to APC reports.

Even then, there wasn’t, Hunt said, a critical mass of owner-occupied homes to stabilize the neighborhood and make Centennial a destination for buyers looking to live there rather than landlords.

When they moved to Centennial, Phyllis and Michael Hunt were fresh from rallying help in a

Above and top, right: The exterior of a house on Brown Street that John Teibel and CNIG teamed up to renovate

protracted fight with Purdue University officials who’d announced plans to tear down a century-old Entomology Hall in favor of something newer on the south campus at the West Lafayette school. Under pressure from preservationists, Purdue eventually backed away from that idea and renovated Entomology Hall, renaming it Pfendler Hall, instead.

“They told us that couldn’t be done, taking on Purdue when Purdue wanted to do something,” Michael Hunt said. “‘You can’t do that.’ Don’t tell us that. We did that. So, we had the same ideas about this neighborhood. We can’t do that? Watch us.”

Phyllis Hunt later would take on leading the neighborhood association. Michael Hunt walked Centennial’s blocks almost daily with a five-gallon bucket and trash picker, cleaning cigarette packs and fast food wrappers from curbs while recruiting property owners for social events as well as looming rezoning battles with developers.

“What Michael was interested in doing, we believed in,” Paul Dixon said. Paul and Barbara Dixon, both professors at Purdue, moved to Centennial across the street from the Hunts in 1998, drawn by

Michael and Phyllis Hunt

The Centennial Town Homes are built on the site of Saints Mary and Martha Church, which is commemorated in this marker.

a 19th century home close to downtown.

“We probably weren’t as gung-ho about it as Michael was,” Paul Dixon said. “I’m not sure anyone’s as gung-ho as Michael. But you needed that sort of gung-ho thing going on. Because what Michael was talking about doing, everyone understood, it never was going to be easy.”

Pressures MouNt For CeNteNNial

And it wasn’t, given a string of setbacks that followed for the neighborhood.

In 1994, a year after the Lafayette City Council cleared the way to establish historic districts in the city, the Historic Centennial Neighborhood Association pressed the city to designate the blocks bound by Fourth, Union, Ninth and Ferry streets, covering more than 200 properties. At that point, Centennial would have been the first historic district outside downtown Lafayette. The district would have required property owners to submit proposed renovations or demolitions – anything making conspicuous changes to exteriors – to the Lafayette Historic Preservation Commission before starting work.

The Lafayette City Council gave initial approval before rejecting it under a wave of protest from property owners, mostly landlords and businesses, who bristled at the proposed government oversight and what they called lost property rights and perceived lost property value. (“I don’t need their preservation,” Jim Schafer, a founding member of Midwest Rentals, told the Lafayette Journal & Courier at the time, saying he feared a district would crimp his company’s ability to expand. “I don’t want their preservation.”)

Preservationists and Centennial homeowners argued during a series of public hearings that the matter wasn’t a question of property rights but was about absentee landlords who wanted to invest the bare minimum in the structures they owned.

Those points weren’t enough to protect the neighborhood with historic district status. The city council voted 6-2 against the proposal.

And neighbors watched more homes come down.

From 1983, when Centennial was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, to 1996, 33 of the 216 buildings in the neighborhood district – dating from 1880 to 1940 – had been razed, according to neighborhood and city counts reported

in the Journal & Courier. Of those, 24 were houses, making way for a mix of parking lots, business storage, a playground and ramps for Harrison Bridge during Lafayette’s railroad relocation project.

And of those 33 properties, 10 were replaced by apartment buildings, spurred in large part by the proximity to Purdue.

Part of the incentive to develop apartments in Centennial, Hunt was convinced, had to do with Purdue’s proximity – less than a mile to the edge of campus, across the Harrison Bridge – and the university’s policy on parking permits. Students living in West Lafayette couldn’t get permits. Those living east of the Wabash River could.

“That was our biggest threat, the neighborhood being taken over by big boxes, essentially dormitories for kids from the university,” Michael Hunt said. “Getting a ‘C’ parking permit, it doesn’t sound like a big deal. But it was. And once those apartments came, we knew we’d never get that part of the neighborhood back.”

a tiPPiNg PoiNt For CeNteNNial's Fight

By 1997, the Wabash Valley Trust for Historic Preservation named Centennial Neighborhood to its annual most-endangered properties list. Generally, the Wabash Valley Trust’s list rounded up individual addresses.

That same year came a fight that proved to be a tipping point for the neighborhood.

The Historic Centennial Neighborhood Association joined the Wabash Valley Trust to fight the pending demolition of an abandoned Monon Railroad office building at Fifth and Salem streets, just north of Centennial’s boundaries. The Monon Railroad office, a two-story brick building that went up in 1878, had been vacant for more than 25 years near the base of Harrison Bridge. The Wabash Valley Trust had unsuccessfully tried to buy the property, hoping to lure someone for a historic reuse, since the late-‘80s, when railroad tracks still went down the center of Fifth Street, according to Journal & Courier reports. The Trust was denied then. And the new developer declined to sell the property after the Trust pledged to raise $400,000 to buy it. Now, with Fifth Street tracks gone since 1994 as part of Lafayette’s railroad relocation project, the office building’s property was slated for a 31-unit apartment complex.

The fight over the Monon building, Hunt said, was emblematic in a couple of ways. First, it involved a structure more than a century old targeted for demolition to make way for more apartments. Second, Centennial Neighborhood came out on the losing side.

The office building came down, its owner convincing the city the structure was beyond repair. The apartment complex went up the following year.

“We’d had it,” Hunt said.

a Foe turNs ally

That’s about the time attorney Joe Bumbleburg’s phone rang at Ball Eggleston, a law firm in Lafayette.

“Michael was on the other end,” Bumbleburg said. “He said, ‘Bumbleburg, I’m sick and tired of fighting you. What’s it going to take to get you on my side?’”

Bumbleburg, who’d argued the case for the Monon office building demolition, was one of a small handful of Lafayette attorneys who handled the majority of rezoning and other public land-use plans in Lafayette and West Lafayette. That included several for apartment buildings in the most recent decade in and around Centennial Neighborhood.

Bumbleburg said he knew where he stood with Hunt and others in Centennial. During the Monon building debate, Bumbleburg had mentioned to city officials that the developer had found a doll in the vacant building, implying that children might have been playing in it. Bumbleburg said it was icing on the cake of his argument. But he knew Hunt thought that was a cheap tactic, earning a few icy meetings between the two during gatherings at mutual friends’ homes over time. (“Joe and that damn doll,” Hunt groused, nearly 25 years later.)

The question now was, Hunt said: If Centennial could get a grant from the Lafayette Urban Enterprise Association, would Bumbleburg be willing to move from adversary to counsel and represent the neighborhood as it navigated a comprehensive review of zoning in the neighborhood?

“They wanted to protect themselves – and I got that,” Bumbleburg said.

“They were looking at the whole neighborhood, but it was clear they saw what could happen at the Midwest Rental site someday,” Bumbleburg said.

“Because somebody would come along, clean that half-a-city-block down and put a big, brick box there for student housing. They’d seen it before. And they thought that was something akin to mortal sin.”

Hunt said: “That’s exactly what we were up to. Joe had made me madder than all get-out. But he was the guy who knew how it all worked. If you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em.”

Carson, Lafayette’s economic development director, was head of the Lafayette Urban Enterprise Association at the time.

“To our surprise, Joe took this on,” Carson said, “It was a big deal – an inflection point for Centennial.”

Working through the Area Plan Commission, the new zoning, followed by a land use plan that recommended future development goals, discouraged high-density apartment complexes that would chomp sections of Centennial’s historic accents, along with its hopes for more owner-occupied investments.

“We cleaned things up, so that if anyone wanted to build a big, brick box there, they were going to have to have that endless political fight in front of the city council,” Bumbleburg said. “And who wants that?”

Hunt described the effort as similar to the one that failed on a historic district. “Not for the faint of heart,” he said.

But after nearly two years of work and public hearings, the Lafayette City Council signed off on the Centennial Neighborhood zoning and land use plan in 1999.

“I think that developers and other people started looking at things differently,” Carson said. “We had kind of put them on notice that they’re not going to come into this neighborhood and do these tear downs and put up these student apartments anymore.”

a say iN what CaMe Next

That theory would be put to the test soon enough.

In 2007, Midwest Rentals left Centennial Neighborhood for an expanded retail location on Old U.S. 231 South, about three miles south. Midwest Rentals had been on North Fifth Street, a half-city block between Brown and Cincinnati streets, for 53

years. It was built on ground first home to Saints Mary & Martha Church, constructed between 1844 and 1846 as Lafayette’s first Catholic Church and later used as a parish hall, an assembly hall and eventually as a machine shop, welding company and an auto repair business, according to a history compiled by former Journal & Courier reporter Kevin Cullen.

“What it was going to be, we didn’t know,” Michael Hunt said. “We weren’t about to sit around and wait to find out.”

He said he started going door-to-door among Historic Centennial Neighborhood Association members to gauge the prospects of neighbors raising the money for a down payment to buy the property – if for no other reason than to have a say in what came next for such a big property.

Hunt preached coming together around a mantra: Create appropriate owner-occupied, urban housing designed to complement the surrounding historic architecture.

Centennial had a fairly fresh case study in the demand for architecturally sensitive, owner-occupied homes in the neighborhood that didn’t require the sort of sweat equity and rehab money needed to take on a 19th century home.

After the city tore out the Fifth Street tracks after the last train in 1994, Hunt and others had pitched

an idea for owner-occupied housing on vacant properties and commercial lots along two blocks of Fifth Street, including some used for storage by Midwest Rentals.

“Once again,” Michael Hunt said, “we heard, ‘Be practical, you can’t do that.’ But see what happened next?”

Lafayette Neighborhood Housing Services, a community nonprofit agency, bought into the notion in 1998. With the Lafayette Redevelopment Commission, Lafayette Neighborhood Housing Services used a mix of local, federal and private money to recruit a developer to build eight, twounit brownstones – two-story, owner-occupied townhomes over one-bedroom garden apartments below, built to complement the brick homes that bookended them – and six single-family row houses down the street.

When finished in October 2000, and finally fully sold a few years later, the projects added 14 new homeowners and eight rental units to Centennial’s mix.

McCammon, who bought one of the Fifth Street Brownstones and later helped found the Mosey Down Main Street festivals in downtown Lafayette, lived directly across from the now vacant Midwest Rentals site.

“I had a beautiful view of a 20-foot-tall metal

Midwest Rentals moved from the neighborhood after nearly six decades in that location.

wall,” McCammon said. “Michael came up with the concept of working together as a group to try to purchase and rebuild the site. It was ‘out there,’ but after a lot of conversation, several of us decided to try it.”

'we Need helP'

By 2008, 10 homeowners and neighborhood business owners created what they dubbed Centennial Neighborhood Investment Group. They pronounced it “snig.” No one was completely in their comfort zone.

“To one extent or another, we were of the mind that this should work – with the emphasis on the word ‘should,’” Belter said. “None of us were real estate developers at that point. We just knew we liked the area, liked being there, and thought we weren’t really alone on that. That should work, right?”

Michael Hunt said early efforts proved daunting. He said that with CNIG’s backing, the investment group was in position to get a bank loan to buy the property. But the initial appraisals and asking price swung between $700,000 and nearly $1 million. Hunt said that even if the price had come down, he believes, in retrospect, that CNIG likely would have been in over its head trying to carry a mortgage and find and hold onto a capable developer willing to build owner-occupied homes that looked something like the renderings the neighborhood group had drawn and had shown to anyone who would look at them.

“I think it would have been disastrous, looking back now,” Hunt said. “We needed help, as we soon realized.”

Bumbleburg said he knew that, too.

“Most neighborhoods don’t have 10 cents to put together, let alone have the drive to stick with it and do what they had in mind,” Bumbleburg said.

“Centennial didn’t have that problem,” Bumbleburg said. “But I knew others had to be interested in what was going to happen to that property. How about thinking about a partnership? You knew the city had to be interested. I told Michael, ‘Go find out how much.’”

Carson said the city was sympathetic to what Centennial wanted to do. He said the city had similar notions about that block. But the price, at the time, wasn’t something the city was ready to take on.

“It didn’t make sense for us,” Carson said. “So, the property sat there for a few years.”

In the background, another deal was in the works.

Jim Andrew, owner of Henry Poor Lumber and a former Lafayette board of works member under then-Mayor Dave Heath, was looking to get out of property just west of West Lafayette after closing a store there. He said the rental side of the building supply business had been good at the Klondike Road location. So, he said he approached Midwest Rentals about a deal that would include swapping commercial sites: Henry Poor’s West Lafayette property for Midwest Rentals’ land in Centennial Neighborhood and acreage on Sycamore Street, along the Wabash River near the downtown bridges into Lafayette.

Andrew called the deal, struck in spring 2010, “all about survival” – for his business, for Midwest wanting to expand into a new market and for the various interests in the properties Midwest controlled. But he’d supported slow-rolling community efforts to develop trails and more along the Wabash River corridor. The swap allowed Midwest Rentals to move its port-a-pot storage from near the downtown bridge in Lafayette to Klondike Road in West Lafayette. And eventually, Andrew said he was lining up to sell the land for public use, as the Wabash River Enhancement Corp. collected pieces for future riverfront development.

“The fact that the city and neighborhood were interested in the Midwest Rentals property there,” Andrew said, “well, that just worked out pretty much the same way, too.”

'tiMe For us to Put uP or shut uP'

With a chance to pick up the Midwest Rentals property at roughly half the initial asking price, Roswarski and Carson went back to the Centennial Neighborhood Investment Group.

Roswarski said he agreed with CNIG that owner-occupied homes, rather than more apartments, would help stabilize the neighborhood and by getting people who wanted to be there long-term to move there.

The proposal: The city and the Lafayette Urban Enterprise Association each would put in one-third of the purchase price if the Centennial neighbors would pick up the other third. The city would cover

demolition and any industrial cleanup necessary. And Carson’s economic development department would recruit a suitable developer.

The catch: The best the Centennial Neighborhood Investment Group could do on the deal was break even on its $128,000 investment.

“That’s the moment we’d been waiting for,” Michael Hunt said. “I had no idea the mayor would come up with the money the way he did. When he said, ‘Would you be partners?’ it took me a nano-second to say yes. Time for us to put up or shut up, as they say. And I can tell you, we weren’t done talking. So, we called a meeting.”

That was the night at the Hunts’ front room, when CNIG members kept going around the room, adding to the pot until they had the cash for the city’s offer.

“The night was both exhilarating and terrifying,” said Barbara Dixon, whose home looked over the back side of warehouses that once stored tents for wedding receptions and heavy equipment for rent.

“It was a lot of money for us – but I also knew that we were investing in the neighborhood, and that was important to us,” she said. “It was definitely an emotional investment and not a logical one. … That said, I had enormous confidence in the mayor and in Dennis Carson that they would do their best to be fair to all parties.”

The three partners closed the deal for the Midwest Rentals property in late 2011. Before the city started demolition in 2013, the Centennial neighbors held

a party in the parking lot, in the shade of vacant warehouses for a band, beer and a toast.

“To good things to come,” Michael Hunt said. “Things were coming together.”

a City bloCk reMade

In 2014, the city sold the property to Lafayette developer John Teibel. And the 10 who chipped into to the Centennial Neighborhood Investment Group had their money paid back in full.

The question was: Would their assumption about the neighborhood – that there was a ready market of people looking to buy homes in a neighborhood like Centennial – come true?

Teibel, who had developed townhouses in Catherwood Gardens about a mile away in West Lafayette, had read about the Centennial partnership in the Journal & Courier. His first home in Lafayette had been on Fifth Street – “When the trains still ran down the middle of the street,” he said.

“Call me nostalgic,” Teibel said. “But I guess my heart is still there.”

Teibel said he sensed what was happening in downtown and what that was doing within a budding trend for downsizing to explore nearby, older neighborhoods. The neighbors’ investment didn’t hurt, either, he said.

“It was a huge factor,” Teibel said. “When you have neighbors that walk the talk of improving

Best corner office in town.

the neighborhood, then you know you have a solid foundation to start from.”

Teibel proposed building 14 attached townhomes in three phases over the next four years. The brick exterior took on the look of dog-eared architectural drawings Hunt had carried around for years. He designed spaces with roughly 1,500 square feet, two bedrooms and 2½ baths, with small backyards, walk-up front stoops and private garages. Prices were in the $175,000 range, just slightly above the average existing home price of $164,000 listed in Tippecanoe County in 2015, according to National Association of Realtors data.

“John got what we were after for that project pretty quickly,” Carson said.

The first townhome sold to Kay Conner and her husband, Dick Walton, in September 2015. They’d lived on rural acreage near West Lafayette for 25 years and were getting tired of the upkeep of the large property, Conner said. They’d been looking for a place near downtown Lafayette when they read newspaper articles about Centennial neighborhood’s Midwest Rentals saga. Conner and Walton asked Teibel if they could double up and turn two units into one. (Teibel’s response was that they could take four if they wanted. They settled for two.)

“It’s a perfect retirement home,” Conner said. Within three years, and with no curbside for sale signs or advertising, that last townhome – another double unit, making it the 12th of what originally had been 14 – finished in 2017. That was a year ahead of schedule.

Mike Herzog and Kathie Rogers had been living in one of the Fifth Street rowhouses, where Rogers, who works at Purdue, had moved in the early 2000s. Herzog, a life coach and a writer, was planning to move from Austin, Texas, to Lafayette when the couple married in 2017. Herzog said they wanted to stay in Centennial Neighborhood.

“We looked at some historic homes, but that really wasn’t our lifestyle,” Herzog said. “We weren’t so much into home maintenance, where you have these basements that are terrifying and none of them have garages. Being around downtown, where we could walk everywhere to go out to eat or to work from coffeehouses like Star City in the morning, was ideal. But it just wasn’t going to work out.”

He said they were resigned to looking for homes closer to campus in West Lafayette. Herzog said he and Rogers told their situation to Hunt, saying they wished they could find something like the new townhomes going up across the street. Hunt intro-

Developer John Teibel discusses work to remodel one of the Brown Street homes.

duced them to Teibel, who said a prospective buyer had just backed out of the last unit, then under construction.

“He showed us a floor plan, but we basically said, ‘We’ll take it, we don’t even need to see it,’” Herzog said. “Best decision we could have made.”

'what Next' For a New Model

That final townhome sale capped a decade-long episode, starting when Midwest Rentals moved from Centennial Neighborhood.

“They said it couldn’t be done,” Michael Hunt said. “But we knew it could be done. And we did it. And then we looked at each other and asked: What next?”

The Centennial Neighborhood Investment Group kept intact, even as it shuffled a few members in and out and the group dipped to eight. But neighbors pledged to keep some of the money they’d put up for the Midwest Rentals property – and keep an eye out for other investment opportunities in the neighborhood.

“The fact that 12 units sold within a few months with zero advertising told us we had a winning concept,” McCammon said. “When some of those first units that were purchased resold for $20,000 to $30,000 more, we were hooked.”

In 2018, the city and CNIG used a similar formula to buy a home at 649 N. Seventh St. for $70,000. The house had been cut into four apartments and, as Hunt said, “the kindest thing to say was it had seen better days.” They hired Teibel to convert it into a single-family home. A year later, the house went for $215,000, according to county assessor records, with a restrictive covenant that required it to remain owner-occupied.

“It turned out to be a great house with a little TLC,” Teibel said. “And it served as a model for rehabbing an existing structure as a neighborhood effort.”

In April 2021, CNIG put up $25,000 and the Lafayette Urban Enterprise Association added $75,000 to help Teibel buy and rehab three properties that Bray had acquired in the past decade spanning the corner of North Ninth and Brown streets. Teibel said the plan over the next year was to rework the houses by opening floorplans and updating kitchen and baths – “bring back the properties to a condition that people want today” –

and build two new homes on empty lots to fit the surrounding, 19th century architecture.

Teibel said the three existing homes have been converted from multi-family rentals to owner-occupied homes. A fourth owner-occupied home was built in 2023 near the corner, facing North Ninth Street.

“The market value of the block should be doubled with the capital and labor investment made,” Teibel said.

With the closing on those properties, CNIG members recouped their $25,000, plus an extra $5,000. Hunt said the group is looking for a fourth project.

“When we started, we were really in unchartered territory and didn’t know if the investment would be recouped,” Teibel said. “We took a risk, and it worked out.”

Roswarski said the projects, started with the Midwest Rentals property, turned into a catalyst he’d hoped for, as private development picks up in Centennial, downtown and other nearby neighborhoods.

“It wound up worth that risk,” Roswarski said. “I think it’s a model for how if you’re willing to cooperate, and people are all trying to do the right thing for the right reasons, you can get what for a long time people said would never be done. And it proves that you can actually build a model that’s also not just one and done.”

Michael Hunt said the neighbors did it because they believed in Centennial, feeling in their gut that staking those investments would pay off with new neighbors, stronger blocks and better property values, to boot.

“We did it, even though so many people told us, ‘Quit being unreasonable, now,’” Hunt said. “We weren’t being unreasonable. We were out to save our neighborhood. And you know what? We did. And so can others.” ★

Bangert publishes

Based in Lafayette, an independent reporting project. Learn more at basedinlafayette.com

BY GREG LINDBERG PHOTO BY CHRISTINE PETKOV

Center of Hope team members at IU Health Arnett Hospital in Lafayette

Top row, left to right: Marica Robinette, RN; Elizabeth Wallace, RN; Shelby Ledman, RN; and Erin Urbikas, RN

Front row, left to right: Alex Baker, RN; Megan Shupe, MSN, RN, CEN, SANE-A, FNP-BC; and Kayla Glover, RN

(Not pictured: Jona Metro, RN; and Michelle Lipscomb, RN)

Center of Hope The ever expanding hope for...

Center of Hope is a program that provides a space for sexual assault victims through safe and secure processes administered by a certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), also known as a forensic nurse. Center of Hope is available in Greater Lafayette through IU Health Arnett and Franciscan Health and has expanded to surrounding hospitals, including IU Health Frankfort and IU Health White Memorial.

Center of Hope was established at IU Health Methodist and other hospitals in Indiana with the recognition of the need for full-time forensic nurses who can appropriately and professionally assist victims with medical care, mental health assistance and more. IU Health Methodist, Riley Children’s Hospital and IU Ball Memorial have staffed Centers of Hope that began as on-call programs.

The shortage of forensic nurses was made apparent to IU Health, and it immediately emphasized the importance of raising awareness and supporting the center through donations. Though the program has spread throughout the state, the success of having available trained forensic nurses has been met with the need for services in other locations and encouragement to crime victims to reach out for guidance. Recognizing the need, the IU Health Foundation quickly stepped in to provide funding.

The funding provided by the foundation and the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute (VOCA Grant) made it possible to establish IU Health’s first Center of Hope in the West Central Region at IU Health Arnett Hospital in 2018. With the support and help of the IU Foundation, the Center of Hope was able to expand to IU Health White and Frankfort in 2020, allowing forensic nurses to provide care at all of the locations so that patients are not required to travel.

According to Megan Shupe, MSN, RN, CEN, SANE-A, “Center of Hope is a broad term used by many organizations that offer services to victims of crime in terms of the medical forensic programs.” This includes programs based in hospitals or community locations with trained forensic nurses who provide the medical legal exams to victims of crime.

Shupe came to IU Health Arnett in 2012 and recognized forensic nurse services were not available. She quickly inquired how she could bring Center of Hope services to the region. It took time for Shupe to share her mission to the top of the chain at IU Health Arnett, but she stayed vigilant.

“I was lucky to be a part of an interview for a director position in the emergency department where they were bringing on some new people. So, several years back, I asked some questions to the candidates in the interview, and I chose my vote based on the person that was going to support my mission. So, when he was appointed, he got me in front of the executive leadership team,” Shupe says.

“Within two weeks of his start date, I presented the idea to them, and it was a unanimous yes. So they were never saying no. They weren’t being asked appropriately, or they didn’t

know what they were saying no to before. But once they had the information, it was absolutely that we needed to do this. And so we moved forward, and we started at IU Health Arnett where we have gotten a lot of grant funds from various sources over the years.”

Shupe next tackled funding, and the VOCA Grant and the IU Health Foundation have provided more than $800,000 in funding since 2018. IU Health Foundation funding is made possible through donations, and those donations made it possible to expand services to two critical access hospitals at IU Health White Memorial in White County and IU Health Frankfort in Clinton County. This change allowed for dedicated space for equipment, so a patient doesn’t have to be transferred to a single location.

Shupe says her mission has always been to do better, and even though Center of Hope services have expanded, there still is a lot of work due to the state and national shortage of forensic nurses. She says a major part of the issue is that the program typically demands forensic nurses to be on call.

To help address the problems with the current model — and the burnout inherent in an on-call model — Shupe has been advocating for full-time positions. Due to budget constraints and other issues, Shupe has worked hard for compromises, such as two newly added full-time forensic nurse positions in the emergency department. These nurses can make victims of crime their full patients of priority.

Elaborating on Center of Hope services, Shupe says, “Our primary patient population is sexual assault and domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse or neglect, maltreatment,

all of those things (including) human trafficking. We can provide medical legal exams to any patient who has been a victim of crime, including injuries from impaired driving, stabbings, gunshot wounds, etc.”

Shupe’s primary goal for victims of crime is the immediate vetting, with the hope that in triage patients would be placed in a room with a space for them to have privacy to talk about what has happened to them. Through her years of experience running Center of Hope programs, Shupe understands every patient may have different primary concerns, which can include infections, injuries, safety, and the forensic portion of the exam that includes photographs, body mapping, and swab collection for potential DNA. The goal is to provide comprehensive care based on each individual patient’s needs and concerns.

Shupe explains that at discharge a patient is given a resource folder that contains information about local, state and national resources that a patient may need or choose to utilize at some point after their discharge.

“We review the contents prior to discharge and make notes along the way to assist patients in remembering what each resource may be able to assist them with. We spend a lot of time educating patients about safety, follow-up and how to access resources should their needs change after discharge.”

Center of Hope data show that 138 sexual assault victims were cared for in 2018. Numbers have not consistently increased, in part due to a decline in reporting in 2020-2021 due to COVID and a decrease in reporting of crimes to law enforcement. Sources report many different reasons for the decrease in reporting; fear of not being believed and lack of

prosecution are common reasons.

Shupe has been working with sexual response teams, community events, and other partners to help spread the word about Center of Hope services and also allow people to feel more empowered to tell their story and come forward to report what has happened. Shupe includes, “The barriers that victims face when they chose to report crimes, the response or lack of response or resources are the things that we hope to change through our work on Sexual Assault Response Teams and community outreach events.”

Even with these efforts, there still are large gaps throughout the state when it comes to access to services. Shupe shares as example, “I had a homeless shelter worker call me from Kokomo, Indiana, and she had been working two hours on finding a place to send somebody who had presented to their shelter, who was in need of an acute exam.

“We obviously accepted that patient and she came to us, but two hours of phone calls to find what you need is heartbreaking.”

Helping to eliminate access issues like this, Shupe hosts a callout about six times in an effort to recruit new forensic nurses who are wellinformed of the education requirements and the level of commitment necessary to be successful. ★

Forensic nurse requirements:

• Trained in adult, adolescent and pediatrics including two didactic courses, 40 hours each

• 15 hours on intimate partner violence training

• Clinical hours for each of those patient populations to become competent providers

A new forensic nurse will complete 150 to 300 hours of additional training. Once they have been practicing independently for at least two years, they can sit for a professional certification exam, such as, SANE-A or SANE-P, which is similar to other professional certifications and sets those nurses apart as the “cream of the crop” and as true experts in their area of expertise. A professional certification is not required to practice as a forensic nurse.

Responsibilities for forensic nursing include providing trauma-informed care, performing medical-legal examinations, performing photo-documentation of injuries, providing preventative treatment for pregnancy and STIs, and providing extensive education before discharge. Other duties include creating safety plans, serving as an expert witness in legal hearings, participating in board and council meetings, and providing prevention education through community outreach.

More information regarding the IU Health Foundation and the Center of Hope can be found at iuhealth.org.

- A NEW ERA FOR THE FOWLER HOUSE

Namesake's great-great-great-granddaughter takes the helm at 1852 Foundation

BY AMY LONG PHOTOS PROVIDED

"Schilli recalls her grandfather's tales... of selling homemade brew to Purdue students during the Prohibition... or sleeping on the sunporch..."

s a young girl growing up in Lafayette in the 1980s, Joyce Schilli loved to spend Saturdays with her beloved grandfather. The outings usually included lunch at Arni’s, followed by a visit to the Fowler House Museum.

At the time, the building, perched on a hill above the corner of Ninth and South streets in downtown Lafayette, housed the collections of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association. Together, the two would poke around the old house and immerse themselves in history.

But these weren’t run-of-the-mill museum tours. Their excursions were exceptional because Schilli’s grandfather, Joseph Fowler, had grown up in that home, and he led her through the rooms in a way that no TCHA docent ever could.

“He just told me different stories about growing up in the house and things of that nature, and it was always fun, because I loved spending time with him,” Schilli says. “He was a special person.”

Schilli recounts her grandfather’s tales of climbing down the attic stairs on his hands; or of selling homemade brew to Purdue students during Prohibition from a speakeasy in the basement; or of sleeping on the sun porch and making his own air conditioning unit with a bucket of ice and a fan.

In June, Schilli’s connection to the historic home came full-circle when she took over leadership of The 1852 Foundation. The nonprofit organization was founded in 2015 to oversee the restoration and preservation of the Fowler House Mansion and to run the Fowler House Kitchen, a 75-seat restaurant housed within the historic building.

“I have a time-vested interest,” Schilli says. “I’ve been going to the house for the last 50 years. Can anybody else really say that?”

Because Schilli is a direct descendant of the home’s original owner, Moses Fowler – she is his great-great-great-granddaughter — it might seem like her appointment to the board of The 1852 Foundation was her birthright – something that had been in the works for generations. But though she grew up in Indiana, Schilli has been based for years in east Texas, where she owns and operates her own trucking and transport companies. If you had asked her a year ago, she would not have said that managing a historic home in Lafayette was part of her long-term plan.

But the opportunity came up quickly, and Schilli is not one to shy away from a challenge. “A lot of it has to go to my hard-headedness to making things work, making things prosper,” Schilli says.

Passed down through generations

A prominent local businessman, banker and railroad magnate, Moses Fowler built the Gothic Revival-style home in 1852. In 1902, the house was passed down to Moses’s grandson Cecil Fowler, who lived there with his family until his children — including Joseph Fowler, Schilli’s grandfather — were grown. In 1941, Cecil Fowler sold the house to the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, which ran the building as a museum until 2005, and used it for office space and storage until 2015.

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1852 board members Marc Bumbalough, Joyce Schilli and Louise Fowler

James Fowler Family

In 2015, Matt and Dr. Ann Jonkman established The 1852 Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and built up its coffers with donations of their own money. The foundation then purchased the Fowler House from the TCHA and subsidized $1.3 million in updates and repairs so that the home could remain open to the public for tours and special events. Improvements included the addition of accessible restrooms as well as a commercial kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances. Since then, the house has functioned as a restaurant serving lunch and dinner, as well as a venue for weddings, meetings, reunions and holiday parties.

But recently, The 1852 Foundation has struggled, hit hard by COVID-19 shutdowns, as well as a surprise 2022 property tax bill for nearly $25,000. Since 2015, an educational exemption had freed The 1852 Foundation from its property tax obligations. But last year, the County Tax Assessor’s office revoked the exemption, asserting that the building was being used as a restaurant, and not for educational purposes. Matt Jonkman, the foundation’s president, appealed, and the issue eventually grew into a drawn out, much-publicized dispute.

In spring of 2023, drained of energy and funds — and with the property tax bill issues still unresolved — the Jonkmans decided that they needed to scale back and announced that the restaurant would shut down.

“It is with heavy hearts that we announce our impending closure,” a Facebook post, dated March 21, 2023, reads. “We welcome all community support through the remainder of the 2023 year. Reach out to your local state representative today in support of legislative changes.”

Keeping it in the family

In addition to her transportation companies in Texas, Schilli owns a Maaco body shop in Lafayette and maintains family ties in the area. Through the years, she kept tabs on the Fowler House and honored her grandfather by visiting the historic home on her trips through town. She had been following the Fowler House on social media last spring when she saw Matt Jonkman’s announcement and immediately sent him an email.

“I told him how sorry I was that this was happening,” Schilli says. “I wished him the best of luck and if there’s anything I could do, to please let me know.”

Schilli adds, “He responded, and we started talking, and things transpired from there.”

Because the historic home is owned by The 1852 Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization that can be neither bought nor sold, the transfer of leadership did not require a sale – only the appointment of a new board of directors.

“My wife and I had no intention of running the place for six years,” Jonkman says. “I just wanted to do something good. I loved that house. My wife and I got married there. It had a special place in our hearts. … The best future was going to be giving it back to the Fowler family or someone else that intends to run it over the years.”

Two months after Schilli first reached out, the Jonkmans turned over the leadership of the 1852 Foundation to Schilli on June 5, 2023 — what would have been Jo-

seph Fowler’s 108th birthday. To round out the board, Schilli appointed her mother, Louise, as well as Marc Bumbalough, a longtime business associate who serves as the chief operating officer for Schilli’s companies.

Bumbalough lives in Brookston, and is boots-on-the-ground at Maaco and, now, at the Fowler House Mansion. He says he encouraged Schilli to take over The 1852 Foundation leadership, not because it made solid business sense, but simply because it seemed like the right thing to do.

“I said, ‘I think you’d be a fool to pass up this opportunity,’” Bumbalough recalls. “I knew how much her grandfather meant to her, and this house is her grandfather. I knew she had to do this. She would regret it the rest of her life if she didn’t jump on the opportunity. Whether successful or not successful, she would have always regretted it.”

Bumbalough adds that he ordinarily would have advised Schilli to take her time with her decision. But the transfer of leadership happened quickly, in part because of Schilli’s and Bumbalough’s commitment to the home and to the people who work there – including a full-time manager and a restaurant and event staff of about 20.

“We started working towards a transition, which had to go fairly quickly to avoid a shutdown – a lot quicker than how any other acquisition would happen,” Bumbalough explains. “We didn’t want the employees to lose their positions. We didn’t want the restaurant to shut down. So, we came in and basically assumed management of The 1852 Foundation, which was the easiest way to change the leadership.”

In the interest of a seamless transition, Schilli says she plans to keep the Fowler House Mansion running much the way it did when Matt Jonkman was in charge. “At this time, nothing’s changing,” Schilli says. “We’re still going to have the kitchen running. We’re still going to be a venue for weddings, funerals, parties of any sort, any kind that you want.”

Without any big changes planned, Schilli and Bumbalough have been focused on learning the ropes of running a nonprofit organization, as well as on maintenance and preservation of the building.

Almost immediately after she assumed leadership, Schilli says, her team

reached a compromise with the Tippecanoe County Tax Assessor’s office.

“Basically it came down to a square footage issue: How much of the house is dedicated to the restaurant, versus how much of it is dedicated to the house itself,” Bumbalough explains. “We were able to come to an agreement for now, and they’ll continue to work with us on that.”

Next on the to-do list, Schilli says, are needed repairs, including replacing rotten wood around some windows and fixing a leaky fountain. At the same time, the team also needs to attract patrons and diners, who will, in turn, generate revenue. And to do this, they need to increase their visibility.

“The announcement came out in March about the closing of the house, and people still think it actually happened, and that we closed,” Bumbalough says.

Compounding that problem is the sluggish post-pandemic landscape. “Before COVID, [the Fowler House Mansion] was booked solid every weekend,” Bumbalough says. In contrast, the house hosted only about six or seven weddings in all of 2023.

“We know we can get back to that,” he adds. “That’s what we’ve got to do.”

Constrained by strict rules about modern improvements on historic properties, as well as by their shoestring budget, the new leadership is trying to figure out how to grab the public’s attention.

Photo by Christine Petkov

“We can’t put a big flashy sign, like McDonald’s has, out in the front yard, and we wouldn’t want to,” Bumbalough says. “We don’t want to take away from the house.”

For now, most of their customers find them through Facebook. Yard signs posted along South and Ninth streets invite passers-by to drop into their speakeasy-themed bar for after-work drinks. Themed fund-raisers planned over the next several months — including movie nights, wine tastings and a Kentucky Derby Party –will generate attention and some additional income. And, Bumbalough says, the team will work hard to woo local businesses – including and especially Purdue University — for luncheons, meetings, retreats and other events.

While positions in nonprofit leadership and restaurant management come with specific sets of challenges, Schilli and Bumbalough have discovered that those jobs are not entirely out of their trucking and logistics purview. Including the Texas trucking company, the Lafayette Maaco, the Fowler House Kitchen and The 1852 Foundation, Bumbalough helps Schilli run seven different businesses.

“I talk to Marc probably two hours a day,” Schilli says, ticking off the different topics that they cover. “We’re either talking trucks, we’re talking kitchen, we’re talking hiring wait staff to hiring tarpers. We’ve got a broad spectrum of people we hire. But the interesting thing is, the more and more we get into this, there’s really not much difference in the type of people we’re hiring.”

Whether you’re a mechanic, a truck driver, a chef or a server in a restaurant, Schilli says, “you’ve got to be organized. You’ve got to be thinking two steps ahead about what you’re doing next. And so even though we’re hiring for different positions, we’re actually looking for the same type of person.”

In the long term, Schilli looks forward to getting to the “fun” things, like refinishing the second-level floors, renovating the bathrooms, and decorating the rooms with period furniture. In fact, Schilli and her mother own several pieces of furniture that are original to the home — and they are in touch with cousins and other relatives who also have original pieces. Schilli looks forward to rounding up as much as she can and reinstalling those pieces in the Fowler House Mansion.

All of the improvements will be in service of her long-term goal to make the Fowler House Mansion a grand Lafayette destination, the way she remembers it when she visited with her grandfather.

“When people come to the Fowler House, I want them to feel at home,” Schilli says. “Even though the first floor’s a restaurant, I don’t want them to feel like they’re walking into a restaurant. I

want them to feel like they’re walking into a home. It’s the way it’s decorated. It’s the way people present themselves. It’s the whole attitude and the whole atmosphere of it. And those are things that we’re slowly changing at the house as time progresses.”

The Fowler House Mansion, at 909 South St. in Lafayette, is open for lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and for brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.

Ultimately, “I would like to see the Fowler House to be a premier stop for anyone going to Lafayette,” Schilli says. “And I would like to see us having a waitlist for people wanting to be married there, or have their graduation there.”

“The house’s mission is to educate the public and protect the significance of the architecture and historic value of the house,” Bumbalough says. “I would like to see it more full of people. And close to everybody in the community knowing that it’s here and knowing what it’s supposed to be about.” ★

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