Aim Hometown Innovations E-Magazine, Issue 3

HOMETOWN

INNOVATIONS I S S U E #3

A growing trend Community gardens pair green thumbs with public greenspace Fishers entrepreneurial spirit with Mayor Fadness Knox launches Pop Up Store Imagine Alley comes to Angola 1

In This Issue COV E R S TO RY

Community gardens PAGE 8

Hometown Innovator: Fadness PAGE 12

LABORATORIES OF INNOVATION

Serving new municipal leaders with a series of training opportunities Every four years the majority of Indiana’s cities and towns hold municipal elections and 2019 is one of those years. This represents a year of transition for Aim, where we see many active leaders retire and move on and welcome hundreds of newly elected officials. It also means a year of familiarizing these new leaders with their roles and reinforcing the part Aim can play in helping them meet the challenges of Matt Greller, municipal leadership.

CEO of Aim For as long as I can remember, Aim has embraced the job of assisting those new to their municipal offices.

We follow the election with regional trainings in five locations around Indiana. These regional meetings are perfect for council members, clerks, clerk-treasurers, mayors, and newly appointed officials looking to immediately prepare for their new assignments. These meetings are designed to offer information that is needed during the transition period and during the first days in office.

Regional Trainings • December 3, 2019 - Munster • December 9, 2019 - Evansville • December 10, 2019 - Jeffersonville

Pop Up Store in Knox

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Imagine Alley in Angola PAGE 20

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• December 14, 2019 – Noblesville • December 17, 2019 – Fort Wayne

Next, we offer Mayors School to address specific issues Hoosier mayors will face in the early days of their administration. This conference is the perfect balance of instruction and networking with peers, allowing plenty of time for asking questions and exchanging ideas.

Mayors School • December 11-13, 2019 – Noblesville, Embassy Suites

Next up is Boot Camp for Newly Elected Officials. This multi-day conference kicks off with a full day of workshops for Clerks and ClerkTreasurers, quarterbacked by the State Board of Accounts. The remaining days are geared towards all municipal officials, elected and appointed, to receive a well-rounded curriculum to help familiarize them with the issues they will face throughout their first year in office. This intensive conference is the largest gathering of municipal officials in Indiana every four years, drawing nearly 1,000 municipal leaders, state officials, private sector experts in local government and more.

Boot Camp • January 21, 2020 – Indianapolis (Westin Hotel) Clerk-Treasurers Day at Boot Camp • January 21-23, 2020 – Indianapolis (Westin Hotel & Indiana Convention Center)

These events are designed with incoming officials in mind. But that isn’t the only reason the event is among the most successful and meaningful things we do at Aim. These events are successful because at each workshop we have a great number of veteran officials that accompany those new to office.

They come for varying reasons – to introduce their new colleagues to other local officials, to get some refresher materials and information for themselves, or to offer their expertise and lessons learned to help advance the cause of a more informed Aim membership.

Check the Aim website in the coming weeks and months for more information on our NEO events and we hope to see you and your newly elected leaders at one of our events!

A HOOSIER MOMENT Projects to boost the downtowns of La Porte and Sullivan will receive $5,000 grants from the state to help make the quality of life improvements a reality.

La Porte will launch a “Paint the Town” effort to engage community members in a variety of service projects, including painting faded light poles, washing storefront windows, installing new wayfinding signage and more. In Sullivan, the city’s Main Street organization will put the funding toward revitalizing an area of greenspace at the entrance to the downtown area.

The communities won the grants through the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs’ INspire Idea Competition. The competition encouraged communities with Main Street organizations to present innovative ideas for their downtowns. La Porte and Sullivan leaders made their pitches for the money during the Great Lakes Regional Main Street Conference in South Bend.

“It was exciting to see the creative ideas that came out of our Main Street organizations,” said Jodi Golden, executive director of the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs. “These projects demonstrated a definite need, but will also improve quality of life for residents and visitors to these areas.”

Real-time weather data Zionsville is utilizing new technology to offer real-time information on weather conditions in the town.

The two weather monitoring stations by WeatherSTEM upload current weather data each minute of the day. And the information is publicly available, with a customizable notifications system that allows users to send tailored information directly to their phone and email.

The stations collect a comprehensive set of information including current weather conditions, archived weather conditions, radar and satellite and upcoming forecasts. What’s more, a lightning reader connected to the system can help determine whether or not a local event needs to be moved indoors for safety.

Within the town, community leaders use the data to help with planning and operations. The Wastewater Department uses the information gathered each day to plan for additional flow into the department’s system and eventually what will be processed at the treatment plant. This tool also helps the department with daily rainfall tracking, a requirement from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

“With treating water that is in pipes underground, any additional water especially from rainfall can make a big difference in the total amount of water that the treatment plant can handle,” said Barry Cook, superintendent of the town’s Wastewater Department. “It is helpful to see hourly rainfall, so I can better prepare the plant for increases in the flow from different parts of the collection system.”

Powered by a solar panel, WeatherSTEM stations have a variety of sensors including amounts and rate of rainfall, wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, ultraviolet radiation and solar radiation. The newly-installed stations have cloud cameras to document the sky conditions each day, and a video is produced at the end of the day showing a time lapse of the minute-by-minute view.

The data is available at http://boone. weatherstem.com. Additionally, the station sends out live updates and forecasts on Facebook (Zionsville Northwest, Wastewater Plant) and Twitter (Zionsville Northwest, Wastewater Plant). Data also is available through the WeatherSTEM app.

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Quality of Place BLUFFTON IS TRANSFORMING A LONG-TIME CITY PARK INTO A YEAR-ROUND DESTINATION WITH A NEW PAVILION

Bluffton broke ground in August on a new pavilion for the city’s long-time Washington Park.

The family-friendly park is one of the most visited in the city, and community leaders say the new amenity will allow for year-round use. The pavilion also will act as a wellness center and the permanent home of the Rock Steady Boxing Gym. The Rock Steady program is a non-contact fitness class designed for people living with Parkinson’s Disease.

“The benefits for economic development for having quality of places in your city are pretty obvious.

There are other benefits you don’t see right away and that’s having a healthier community,” Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis said as the community gathered to celebrate the ground breaking.

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The new pavilion will replace three older buildings on the site and consolidate their functions into one space. Through the project, city leaders aim to bring a more attractive and useable meeting area to the park, and increase greenspace as city officials envision the park’s future uses. Like Rock Steady, the park also will provide a dedicated venue for city programming.

Currently, many are offered in the city council chambers, which isn’t a space conducive to painting and other activities, Pam Vanderkolk, Bluffton’s parks superintendent, noted.

Beyond its practical uses, the project also will strengthen connections among Bluffton residents.

“The city of Bluffton is known as the ‘Parlor City’ and not many of us have parlors in our houses anymore,”

said Steven Putt, with the project’s architect Design Collaborative. “The purpose of the parlor was to invite your neighbors and guests in and get to know them. As we see it, this new building will provide that to this community and this immediate neighborhood and give people new life and opportunity to know one another again.”

Washington Park shows remarkable foresight on Bluffton leaders who in the 1870s preserved the space for recreation as homes went up around it.

“A lot of families,” Ellis said, “a lot of generations, myself included, have grown up around here.”

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Working together to build a brighter future for Indiana.

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LOVE YOUR CITY CAMPAIGN Under the leadership of Gary Mayor Karen FreemanWilson, the National League of Cities launched a Love My City campaign designed to strengthen the ties between communities and the residents they serve.

The campaign is focused on: encouraging civic engagement, building communities for all generations, uplifting legacy cities and ensuring housing for all.

“As local leaders, we know the emotional bonds people create with their communities have a powerful impact on prosperity and livability,” said Mayor Freeman-Wilson, who is currently president of the National League of Cities. “According to research from the Knight Foundation and Gallup, the stronger the attachment of residents to their communities, the higher the gross domestic product growth. We also know that when people love someone or something, they will give their time, talent and treasure for it. As local leaders, we have to create cities that our citizens will love.”

To learn more about the campaign and to access various tools and resources, including a custom Love My City logo generator, visit, www.mycity.love.

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BEE HOTELS? THEY'RE A THING. A park in Columbus is being transformed into an ideal habitat for pollinators, thanks to a state grant focused on small, but meaningful quality-of-place projects.

Blackwell Park, known for its naturalized setting, will benefit from trail improvements, new signage – and in a unique twist, the addition of bee hotels. The project is part of an effort to boost interest in the park, with its trails, trees and flowering perennials. And to make it an even better place for local pollinator species.

Native bees, unlike honey bees, live on their own instead of hives.

They create nests for their babies in small recesses in dead trees and plants, or in the ground. But those spaces have decreased as more greenspace becomes manicured.

That’s where bee hotels can help.

They give native bees a safe place to call home.

“Bee hotels are one way to provide some more space for them,” said Rachel Kavathe, a Columbusbased landscape architect, who is helping lead the project. “More importantly, it’s an educational

opportunity for people to learn about native bees and that they need spaces in landscape as well to live.”

So what does a bee hotel look like? Typically, they’re the size of a birdhouse and filled with small reeds and blocks of wood for nesting. As a nod to Columbus’ heritage, Kavathe hopes to work with area schools and community organizations to design the hotels in an architecturally fun way, so they aren’t just a typical box.

“There is a growing need for people to experience nature, and not everybody has the means or the ability to go to a faraway National Park,” Kavathe said.

When updating the master plan for the city’s parks, residents were clear. They wanted more trails and natural experiences to compliment the athletic fields and active recreational spaces in the city. The Columbus Parks and Recreation Department partnered with community stakeholders and pollinator supporters to apply for the Quick Impact Placebased Grant from the state. Columbus received $5,000 to use at Blackwell Park.

In April, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs awarded more than $52,000 to Columbus and 10 other communities through the grant program. Among other projects, Batesville is planning a collaborative mural, and Richmond will install community games in its downtown plaza.

Already, volunteers have planted hundreds of native perennial plants that were donated to the city in Blackwell Park to attract bees and butterflies. The grant will go toward educational signage, so park visitors can learn about the different plant and animal life they’ll encounter.

“As you walk the trail right now, you will see the plants. We made sure to plant the pollinators in a space where people would be able to enjoy them,” said Stacy Findley, project and resource development director for the city’s parks department. “We hope it’s just the beginning of many exciting nature and conservation programming, and Blackwell Park is such a perfect place to start.”

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INNOVATION

Bedford Garden Park replaced and expanded the city's original community garden. The city received the land from the Bedford Urban Enterprise Association and started planting on the site in 2017. The result is an innovative community space for the southern Indiana city.

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GREENSPACE REVITALIZATION

Growing community

I Barry Jeskewich, the city's park director, says the concept for the Garden Park is about growing produce and appreciating greenspace. A new greenhouse is coming online soon to allow for year-round use.

n one Bedford city park, visitors can plant flowers and vegetables, pick berries from shared bushes and take part in a growing trend of cities and towns creating community gardens from public greenspace.

The uses of Bedford’s Garden Park are as unique as the gardeners who have turned the space into a one-of-a-kind destination. From garden beds to a honey bee apiary and a new greenhouse, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department has transformed a long-time vacant property into a place for community members to cultivate the land together.

Community-based gardens are popping up in cities and towns across Indiana as a way to build stronger ties among an area’s residents and where they live. Like Bedford, Mishawaka is in the process of opening a greenhouse and community garden to educate local high school students. Richmond is partnering with a nonprofit in planning a community fruit orchard to help address a food desert in the city.

“It can be a great opportunity for stress relief and community building for people to reconnect by growing their own food,” said Nathan Shoaf, an urban agriculture state coordinator with Purdue Extension. “That’s something that a majority of people did at one point in life, a couple generations previously.”

In Bedford, the city built the garden on land gifted to them from the Bedford Urban Enterprise Association.

The organization had purchased the property years ago hoping to locate a company to support a nearby General Motors plant. However, the property sat vacant.

To revitalize the space, city leaders organized a group of community stakeholders to put together a crowdfunding proposal through the state’s CreatINg Places program.

The program by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority allows cities and towns to crowdfund for projects through community donations and receive a matching grant from the state if the fundraising goal is met. Bedford surpassed its crowdfunding goal, and Garden Park soon became a reality with the first gardens planted in 2017.

“Really the concept of the entire park, it’s not so much about growing produce as much as it is appreciating greenspace, health and wellness and social responsibility as well as social engagement,” said Barry Jeskewich, the city’s park director. “It has brought a lot of people together. I’ve seen people meet up there and tend to gardens.”

The Garden Park offers more than 60 plots that people can rent. Not one demographic uses the space, Jeskewich said. Some people may live in an apartment and use the park because they really enjoy planting but don’t have the greenspace at home. Some of the gardeners could be farmers who live on acreage but like the concept of having a small garden in town as well to grow different produce.

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(Left) Mishawaka is currently finalizing an educational greenhouse and community garden for the city. (Right) Richmond is planning a community fruit orchard in an urban park. (Far right) Bedford's Garden Park is multi use and includes a shelter, where master gardeners have held classes. Leading up to the shelter are stepping stones decorated by community members.

Photos: CreatINg Places program

Master gardeners have held classes at Garden Park, and community members can join a tool-share program.

All plots are free and on a firstcome, first-serve basis, with current gardeners having the right of first refusal on their same bed when gardening picks up following winter.

Right now the garden is at full capacity, with people growing everything from cucumbers, tomatoes, a variety of peppers and corn. Most people who use Garden Park tend their crops for personal consumption, but a few groups grow food for donations to local community shelters.

“The biggest benefit I see is the way the community has come together to embrace this project and really taken

ownership for a select piece of property within the city of Bedford,” Jeskewich said. “It has given people a sense of pride for Bedford and given people the opportunity to have another park to explore greenspace and be active.”

In Mishawaka, the idea for a greenhouse came from the need to expand space for a gardening class at a local high school. Like Bedford, the city turned to crowdfunding to raise funds for its greenhouse and accompanying community garden.

The class used to meet in a makeshift storage room at the high school, which they shared with the science department. The plan is to officially open the new greenhouse this fall.

The project will be maintained by

Bedford moved a swing set to Garden Park, so a variety of ages can enjoy the space.

Among the plots where gardeners can plant flowers and produce, Bedford's park features several raised beds.

A Garden Tour Bedford's garden has something for everyone and is a treasure for the southern Indiana community.

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the city’s parks department and allow students to showcase different plants and produce. Students will grow items to take home and for use by the city.

The former space allowed students to plant about 14 flats of flowers at a time. With the new greenhouse, they could do upward of 400 flats. The city is installing raised garden beds where they’ll plant vegetables for community members, with any unused produce going to the farmers market.

“People appreciate the effort the city is putting forward to better its community and better its attributes for the rest of the city,” said Jake Crawford, landscape manager and urban forester for the Mishawaka Parks and Recreation Department. “People have

been really excited about this project because it impacts so many groups. It just hits a lot of different check boxes for great community partnerships.”

Richmond is partnering with a nonprofit, Wood Block Press, to crowdfund with the goal of planting a community fruit orchard at a city park. The project is centered around education on how an orchard is created, maintained and harvested.

What’s more, the orchard will help address a food desert in the city by offering nutritious food in an area where offerings are scarce.

By placing a public-access orchard in the heart of the city, community members will have a greater idea of where their food is sourced, said

Denise Retz, the Richmond parks superintendent.

“These efforts will really showcase to the community this is where our food comes from. This is how it’s grown and produced,” Retz said. “That really farm-to-table kind of feel.”

A local beekeepers group placed a honey bee apiary in the park featuring pollinator-friendly plants.

A butterfly garden tells visitors what they can do to encourage pollinators in the space.

Among its features honoring veterans, a rose garden pays homage to women's efforts during World War II.

RESOURCES IU Environmental Resilience Institute The institute completed a comprehensive case study on Bedford's Garden Park. Learn more here.

National Recreation & Park Association The association offers an extensive how-to guide on building a community garden. Read more here.

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HOMETOWN INNOVATOR

Fishers accelerates growth through entrepreneurial spirit Under Mayor Scott Fadness' leadership, Fishers has become a municipal powerhouse. Aim sat down with Mayor Fadness to discuss his long-term vision for the Central Indiana community, as well as an innovative collaborative proposal for Hoosier cities and towns.

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You have led Fishers at a pivotal time for the community, originally as town manager and now as the city’s first mayor.

Describe the dynamics of leading a fastgrowing city like Fishers.

Listen to Fishers leaders on the Aim Hometown Innovations Podcast here.

“I’m a bit of a product of the environment that I grew up in professionally. I started here as an intern in 2006 and had a lot of different roles. We were already a fast-growing town at that time, and there were a lot of things changing both externally and internally. And so for me, I’ve never known a different environment than one that’s full of change. Part of that has become second nature to how I operate. I feel very comfortable in fluid, fast-paced environments, and that’s probably part of the reason that I feel comfortable in change-orientated environments.”

What have you found most rewarding about your job as mayor?

“The most rewarding has been the team of people that I have assembled to do the work of what needs to be accomplished in Fishers. When you see what the team can accomplish, and when you push the limits of pace, breadth and depth and the complexity of the problems we decide to go try to solve – that’s really a fun thing to see and a fun thing to be a part of.”

Fishers is known for a high quality of place. As mayor, you’ve led several initiatives to bolster the community.

Describe key projects you’ve overseen during your tenure that have made

Fishers the vibrant city it is today.

“I think there’d be three things that started the transformation of Fishers. The first, is the co-founding of Launch Fishers, and focusing our efforts on all things around creating an entrepreneurial movement and ecosystem in Fishers. From that momentum, we now have the Internet of Things Lab and the Fishers Test Kitchen, both testaments to the entrepreneurial spirit in Fishers. The second is, the creation of an urban core to create a quality of place in our community where residents and visitors can gather to enjoy a dinner out, a free concert, or other entertainment.

The third, is a bit unconventional, but leads to where I think mayors across our state will need to be focused, and that’s our mental health initiative. We can’t talk about creating quality of place without talking about quality of people. Our people are living in quiet despair, and so turning our attention to that is really vital. You would think that would be a natural fit with a mayor’s job description. But the reality is that the vast majority of mayors would not put down that part of their responsibility is the state of their people’s health. We take care of roads, economic development and police and fire, but if people are what’s driving the 21st century economy then that’s your most precious natural asset. If you’re not maintaining it and taking care of it, it leads to problems long term. We’re waking up to the fact we can’t turn a blind eye to some of the issues that we face.”

People ask me a lot about how we come up with these ideas. The source of it is actually maybe a little bit different in that I believe in looking around at what's happening globally and trying to translate that into what we do locally.

— Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness

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What can city and town leaders, regardless of their municipality’s size, take away from those projects and Fishers’ focus on livability?

“People ask me a lot about how we come up with these ideas. The source of it is actually maybe a little bit different in that I believe in looking around at what’s happening globally and trying to translate that into what we do locally.

I think too many times city leaders get too focused on just the day to day and the delivery of services. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own community, which I totally understand because it can become all-consuming. Maybe it’s because I have such a good team around me, but I’m afforded the opportunity and the time and the bandwidth to really think about what’s happening in the world around us and trying to figure out how that translates into positioning Fishers to do well in that world. I think sometimes we don’t spend enough time thinking about those things.”

As mayor, you’ve been focused on a mental health initiative. Describe those efforts and the impact they’ve made on the community.

“We had to create a culture here, which is hard in a political realm, where we don’t mind naming the things that are problems in our community and taking

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action. In 2012, I couldn’t have even told you how many people died by suicide in my city. For many, that would have been a vulnerable place to be, but by leaning in to our problems, we’re able to come up with some pretty unique solutions. It’s typical to blame problems on somebody else versus saying to ourselves, 'there are macro-level things that put us in positions where we are today.' It’s usually never one person’s fault. But instead, we look at it from a perspective of approaching the problem collectively and without an ego to go about the work that needs to be done on behalf of the people.

For me, the mental health initiative started at 2 a.m. one night. I was doing a police ride along, which I try to do once every month or so. We were driving around, and I asked the officer which calls bothered him the most. And he said IDs, which I thought he meant checking someone’s identification. It turned out, that was incorrect. IDs are immediate detentions. In response, I asked how often that happened and he said once a shift. For me, I lived under the same kind of cloud of disillusion that everyone else did in that Fishers is such a great place that these things don’t occur.

For example, that year we had gotten a number of accolades as a city for being such a great place, and I could tell you right off the top of my head that we had

three homicides in 20 years. I knew that statistic. But I did not know, nor did my police department nor did my fire department, how many people had been immediately detained or how many suicides that we had. And lo and behold, that year I think we had 12 people die by suicide and probably 40 or 50 others make serious enough attempts that if medical intervention had not occurred they could have perished. And we had over 130 immediately detained. It just sent me down this path of realizing a problem, and discovering that we were not doing anything about it.”

It’s a holistic approach. What are the key aspects of the program?

“It’s about public safety. It’s about integrated mental health services in the schools. It’s about community culture, so bringing down the stigma, and it’s about public policy. Those are our four big tiers if you will. We are fairly well resourced as compared to a lot of other places, and we have a fairly transient population. We’re not cemented in old practice and dogma. Because of that, we have an opportunity, but we also have a responsibility to develop these proofs of concept, to develop these ideas, because we’re in an environment that’s very hospitable for it. And a critical part of our program is our passion to share lessons learned with as many different communities as we can that maybe aren’t afforded the same environment to spin something new up. When you look at entrepreneurship or mental health, we are proud of the fact we are out and have fingerprints in so many different places, in all four corners of the state of Indiana, because we believe we have a responsibility to share what we learned good and bad with our journey.”

What advice would you offer a municipal leader who is exploring launching a similar strategy to focus on the health of their community’s residents?

“Leave your ego at home because you will lose it quickly. There is nothing more humbling than trying to tackle

something as complex as mental illness. Right when you think you’re kicking butt and doing a great job, you get a notification from your police chief of someone who has died by suicide.

Secondly, I would say be in it for the long run. This is not a program where you can Tweet something and declare a victory. You have to be in it for all the right reasons. And whatever you build it has to be of substance, and it has to be systemic. It has to live beyond any political cycle. if you’re willing to do that then you have a shot of making a difference in the lives of people around this issue. This may sound harsh, but anything short of that you are doing a disservice to the people who suffer from mental illness.”

You’ve been a leader on legislative initiatives for Indiana cities and towns.

Last session, Aim pursued legislation that would enable members of regional development authorities to raise local revenue to fund regional capital projects.

Can you explain a little bit about how this proposal came about, and why this is an important piece of addressing our population problem?

“When you look at statistically how our regions are doing, they aren’t doing well in comparison to their competitors.

At its core is this philosophical belief that we have to grow our way out of some of these systemic issues that we have in our state. By that, I mean we have to create this flywheel of investment and reinvestment, investment and reinvestment over a long period of time to really have any ability to transform the regions that we find ourselves living in. Today, there is no mechanism to do that. There is no revenue source to do that, so the whole point of regional investment hubs is to say, ‘Hey, as a collective group of communities if you want to play the long game and say over the next 20 years we are going to raise this revenue and invest it strategically in things that we believe will become an engine for additional growth and additional development in our cities then we should have the ability to do that.’”

How would Investment Hubs benefit all regions statewide?

“Ideally, getting more of these tools into the hands of locals, developing these proofs of concept, hopefully at some point will allow any region to come together and try to do this.

Because of where I sit in Fishers, the idea came out of a problem we have in Central Indiana, but that doesn’t mean the framework isn’t applicable for Northeast Indiana, Northwest Indiana, Evansville and even smaller communities like Huntingburg and Jasper. It is rooted in the idea that collectively we can do more than individually.”

What is your long-term vision for Fishers, and what’s your next step in the process?

“When we first sat down and started thinking about where Fishers needed to go for the long-term sustainability of our city, I really did focus in on being smart, vibrant and entrepreneurial.

That was our vision of what Fishers could become. I think the first three or four years since I’ve stood on the stage and said that’s what we are going to do, everything was a rush to create little examples of what that meant. I feel like we are crossing over the line of having to convince everybody that that’s a thing, and now we are into turning the gas on full boar and let’s go. The ultimate vision for me and this goes back to the point of thinking globally and acting locally, I hope we can create a culture in Fishers before I leave that change is the expected. The only thing I know is any city that is not prepared culturally to change at a speed faster than what they are today will not be successful in the world we are about to embark upon. The rate of change and the ability to adapt and evolve either internally within your government organization or externally within the community. If you can’t figure out how to speed up the rate of change, you are going to be fundamentally left behind.”

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KNOX LAUNCHES POP UP STORE Knox community leaders want to attract more retail to the northern Indiana city’s downtown.

To kickstart those efforts, the city purchased a vacant building to fill with a local entrepreneur. The idea: Provide a launch pad for a new business by softening the upfront costs of opening a storefront.

They call the concept a Pop Up Store. And today, the vacant building in the heart of Downtown Knox is being transformed into a coffee shop.

“In small downtowns, you’re not going to get your chain stores,” said Mayor Dennis Estok, who leads the city of more than 3,500 residents. “You are going to get something that is unique.”

And for Knox, unique means “The Rabbit.” The shop will feature an onsite roaster, along with a menu of drip coffee, lattes and more. The store’s

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owners run a wholesale coffee roasting company, which also will serve as support to the retail operation.

The idea for the Pop Up Store came from Estok’s belief that more people would follow their dreams of opening a business if they weren’t scared of the initial costs. So the city decided to give an entrepreneur a big break.

And in turn, the community will gain a permanent retail store.

The Redevelopment Commission purchased the building for $16,000 with funds from tax-increment financing and made about $10,000 worth of improvements. Then they opened the store up to applications from prospective tenants. The new tenant is making additional improvements to the building and will receive six months of free rent to help them become established in the community. If successful, the business

owners could one day purchase the building from the city, Estok said.

“The thing is you can do these small things, you do not have to be a rich city, you can do these small things that can make an impact,” Estok said.

“I think everything we’ve done has helped the quality of life in Knox.”

Just down the street from the Pop Up Store, an artist is painting a new mural on a downtown building.

The city also added a splash pad, performance stage and concession/ bathroom building to a park near

downtown. With the splash pad, Estok wanted an amenity for families that didn’t come with the high price tag of trip to a water park. The splash pad is free and has had a big impact on the small community.

“It has drawn people from the surrounding communities, so we’ve noticed an influx of people from other towns coming in, which we kind of wanted to see that,” Estok said. “We wanted people to come in and see what Knox had to offer.”

City leaders paid for the park

projects out of a mix of local funds, including the city’s miscellaneous income, CEDIT, riverboat and taxincrement financing. The projects also benefited from donations and community volunteers.

Now, there is a hunger out there for the city to continue making improvements.

“Everything we’ve done has brought people in. It has given us that small hometown atmosphere,” Estok said, “and I think people now don’t hesitate to say, ‘I’m from Knox, Indiana.’”

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Imagine Alley comes to Angola

A favorite pastime of Brooklynn Shively and Teryn Stanley is taking photos in unique settings. But all too often their hobby meant the friends and high school students from Angola would need to travel to bigger cities as they searched for the perfect background.

“We started discussing how cool it would be to have something in our downtown area like that,” Shively said.

“We just felt like it would liven it up and create more foot traffic in our area – and more social media influence from our little city.”

The teens took their idea to Angola Mayor Richard Hickman and city leaders. The result: the northeastern Indiana community now boasts an artistic space called Imagine Alley.

A series of murals and hanging plants invite community members into the space, where they can sit at tables and chairs to strike up a conversation or relax. The alley, which cuts through two brick buildings, serves as a major walkway to enter the downtown’s public square. Going beyond its utilitarian purpose, the

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former passthrough is a downtown destination in itself.

“Art is a mirror of who we are as a culture, who we are individually.

Being able to see ourselves in that way gives emotional ties to where we live and to each other,” said Maria Davis, downtown services coordinator for Angola. “Art is a way to bring people together of all walks of life.

It has a positive effect in inclusion and diversity – and I think that’s a message to talk about now.”

The alley’s design allows for the easy interchange of artwork, with the pieces displayed on frames built into the space. Several community members have featured paintings, including a local artist who decorated one of the alley’s old wooden doorways and a local nonprofit, which serves individuals with economic, physical and developmental challenges, whose clients created a mural.

The arts is a focal point of Angola’s long-term vision to strengthen its downtown. Another motivator to activate the alley was Angola’s

participation in a regional conference of the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs, which included a placemaking workshop in the city’s downtown. That eye-opening experience meant when the two Angola students approached the city with their idea for art, planning staff knew just the right place for it.

“We thought, we got a public space that’s not being utilized and needs tender, loving care. That helped us proceed from there,” said Vivian Likes, the city’s director of economic development and planning.

“Imagine” was placed on the alley’s name for the vision the community embraced to deliver the final product.

Since Imagine Alley’s opening, it’s acted as a community gathering point for a local guitarist to play music and a grandma to bring her grandson to show where his imagination can take him. Even a wedding has been held in the alley, with the bride and groom excited their venue wasn’t just an office in the nearby county courthouse.

“Imagine Alley allows people in our community to become involved in our community and express themselves in a way they couldn’t do verbally but

in some way artistically, they can,” Angola Mayor Richard Hickman said.

“It kind of helps bring them into the fold of the community.”

Project organizers received a grant through Arts United in Fort Wayne to help make the project a reality. The grant required crowdfunding, and ultimately nearly $5,600 was raised for the project. Additionally, a group from Trine University, which is located in Angola, manufactured the furniture for the alley.

Among other art projects underway in the community, Angola is partnering with Decatur to feature sculptures on the city’s square and a major travel corridor. Decatur, a community just south of Fort Wayne, is known for its popular Sculpture Tour, which brings numerous pieces of public art to the city each year.

To coincide with the sculptures, an adult education program in Angola is offering artistic welding courses.

Angola also has launched an Arts Council and is planning a birdhouse project where area residents and businesses will compete on who can decorate the best roost.

The city has made these strides by believing in a culture of “yes” versus a

culture of “no.”

“Basically, OK, we hear what you are saying,” Davis said. “Let’s figure it out amongst all of the things that have to be done and all of the ordinances that exist. Is there a way to be able to think outside of the box to be able to do that? The mayor is an awesome leader and allows us to work on these projects in order to make the community better.”

The alley also provided an immersive experience into local government for the two students. The teens learned, “you can’t just go up and paint on a wall,” Stanley said.

“There were a lot more steps to it,” Stanley said. “But we really appreciate the support of the community. We came in with this idea, and the city grabbed onto it.”

Listen to Mayor Hickman on the Aim Hometown Innovations Podcast here.

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Whitestown opens downtown park Whitestown is a young community, where neighbors often get together within subdivisions, said Nathan Messer, the town’s parks director. That sense of collegiality played a key role in turning the initial smaller parks project into a $5 million effort that brought a splash pad, playground, shelter, along with new sporting facilities, to Whitestown’s Main Street.

“I feel this will give a great central meeting space for people to get together,” Messer said. “Parks is a huge part of economic development and quality of life for a community.

It helps attract business. Businesses want to be located where we have amenities. It definitely attracts people, and our home values have grown.”

The park, with its vibrant blue and green color scheme and unique playground equipment, is adjacent to a neighborhood of around 1,100 homes. The park also will eventually connect with an area trail network.

To see the project to fruition, Whitestown leaders used an innovative construction model. The town partnered with Meyer Najem

Construction to utilize a delivery method called Construction Manager at Risk and was the first municipality in Indiana to use the strategy.

In Construction Manager at Risk, the entire project team (owner, design team and construction manager) are solidified early in the process.

This methodology encourages a team approach and clearly defines a common goal, which is to provide the owner with the product they desire.

And to do so, within their budget and on time, all while mitigating the risk of change orders.

“Parks and recreation are key to the perpetuation of communities. The younger generation in their 20s and 30s that have kids want green space, trails, and playground amenities. The live, work, play concept is vital to retaining families,” said Dan Lawson with Meyer Najem Construction. “It’s just quality of life.”

The Main Street project has contributed to a doubling of parkland in Whitestown in recent years.

“It went really quickly,” Messer said, “and it’s come out very nice.”

I feel this will give a great central meeting space for people to get together. Parks is a huge part of economic development and quality of life for a community. It helps attract business.

— Nathan Messer, Whitestown parks director

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This summer Whitestown opened a new urban park that brought a splash pad, playground, shelter, along with new sporting facilities, to the community's Main Street. The park also will eventually connect to an area trail network.

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There's a kiosk for that.

INDIANAPOLIS LAUNCHES INNOVATIVE PILOT PROGRAM DESIGNED TO EASE PAYMENT TO LOCAL GOVERNMENT Need to make a payment to the city or county? In Indianapolis, there’s a kiosk for that.

And through an expansion of an innovative pilot program, more Indianapolis residents will soon gain easy access to a kiosk, where they can pay in cash or credit for a variety of government fees and services.

Especially for residents who pay in cash, the kiosks will increasingly mean they can skip the trip to the downtown municipal building and pay conveniently closer to home.

The program is all about Mayor Joe Hogsett’s focus on making city government more user friendly.

“When we launched Indy 3.0 last year, we acknowledged that the future of serving Indianapolis looks different in the 21st century,” Mayor Hogsett said. “The expansion of the kiosk pilot program builds upon our efforts to bring city government directly to neighborhoods, creating easier accessibility for residents to a wide variety of services.”

The program, which began in 2016 with a single kiosk for community corrections payments, has already been a big success. That kiosk, within the lobby of the Marion County Community Corrections building, has already conducted more than 21,000 transactions, amounting to

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$1.6 million in cash payments. Now, the city is planning three additional kiosks, with two of those machines being placed in Indianapolis’ neighborhoods and another within the City-County Building lobby.

Along with community corrections payments, the kiosks will allow residents to pay for traffic and parking tickets.

Especially for residents who rely on public transportation or don’t have a bank account, the neighborhood kiosks will offer a more direct line to city services. That means residents can skip an inconvenient trip to downtown. And they can potentially incur fewer late fees or avoid the need for a money order because the kiosks accept cash.

“Expanding this pilot program continues our push for accessibility and convenience when it comes to government service,” said Ken Clark, the city’s chief information officer.

“Citizens should be able to engage with their government and complete transactions on their own schedule.

Advancements like the new indy.gov make this possible, but our work to build upon this effort is far from over.”

Eventually, the hope is for residents to have the option of paying property tax payments and a whole host of services and fees on a kiosk. The

program coincides with the city’s revamped online payment portal, pay. indy.gov. Because the city has already done the technology infrastructure to allow for online payments, adding new options to a kiosk is fairly easy, Clark said.

“The kiosk program is another chance for us to make sure that our citizens don’t have to come downtown for services – that is always an option and you’ll always be able to – but with our city being the largest number of square miles in the entire state, we have to reach further out to be able to get everyone the services they need,” Clark said.

However, cities and towns of all sizes could benefit from payment kiosks, especially those with municipal utilities, Clark said.

“A good fit is those redundant transactions, high volume, where you currently have a high cash population,” Clark said. “If you have data that tells you that and you have enough square mileage that it is at times difficult or inconvenient for people to make it to your payment location, start to think about how you can provide those services in a location that is valuable to your citizens.”

The 2019 Aim Ideas Summit marked another successful year of municipal officials coming together to share strategies on accelerating Indiana’s cities and towns! More than 700 community leaders gathered August 27-29 in French Lick to learn from a dynamic group of thought leaders on a wide array of issues affecting our cities and towns, from quality of place to regionalism – and beyond.

We welcomed Gov. Eric Holcomb for a Q&A on the biggest issues facing our cities and towns with 2019 Aim President and Huntingburg Mayor Denny Spinner.

COMMUNITY PLACEMAKING AWARDS WHITING | MASCOT HALL OF FAME

HUNTINGBURG | MARKET STREET PARK

We heard directly from the Aim team on our modernization efforts, including our Investment Hubs proposal that would offer long-term funding for cities and towns through regional collaboration. And we positioned Aim’s efforts for continued success in selecting the 2020 leadership team, with Warsaw Mayor Joseph Thallemer as our 2020 president.

Already missing the Ideas Summit? Aim has its eyes set on the 2020 event! Please plan to join us October 6-8, 2020 in South Bend for the state's premier gathering of municipal officials.

GREEN AWARDS PROJECT | WHITING'S WHOAZONE

COMMUNITIES | WESTFIELD & WHITING

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS RUSSELL G. LLOYD DISTINGUISHED SERVICE | Noblesville Mayor John Ditslear The Russell G. Lloyd Distinguished Service Award is given to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to local government.

Nominees for this prestigious award must display accomplishments beyond their community, including contribution to Aim and public service and leadership.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT | Schererville Clerk-Treasurer Janice Malinowski

WEST LAFAYETTE | STATE STREET

The Financial Management Award is given to a finance officer or administrator who has made outstanding achievements in fiscal management, financial recording and leadership in public service.

MUNICIPAL MANAGEMENT | Highland Parks Superintendent Alex Brown CARMEL | MONON BOULEVARD

The Ivan H. Brinegar Municipal Management Award is presented to an appointed municipal official with a minimum of 10 years of city or town service who displays strong leadership, contributions to the community, and serves as a role model to citizens and other municipal officials.

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