Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook.

Welcome to our program.

We hope you enjoy our show.

Please make plans each week to join us as we discuss the region's most important economic development initiatives with a panel of experts.

Elkhart County has long been a center for entrepreneurship and innovation, and is one of the top manufacturing hubs in the country.

Today, we're giving you an inside look at all things Elkhart County.

As we sit down with Elkhart County leadership to give you insight on the projects that continue to drive their resurgence.

Coming up on economic outlook.

Elkhart County has a rich history of manufacturing and has long been thought of as an important hub for innovation and entrepreneurship.

The RV industry gets a lot of attention, but there's so much more to the story.

We're showcasing Elkhart County today and diving deeper into the projects that you should know more about, and the places you should plan to visit.

Joining me for that conversation are Elkhart County Commissioner Suzie Weirick and Chris Stager, the president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Elkhart County.

Welcome.

Good to have you both back.

Thank you.

Thanks to be here.

Yeah, we're excited about all the things we're seeing.

And we thought, what a perfect time to bring you back in to be guest and give us a snapshot of kind of things happening in Elkhart County.

Before we start, though, Suzy, let me come your way.

So you're an elected official, Elkhart County commissioner for folks who aren't sure.

Remind us a little bit about commissioner and the important role you play there.

So, commissioners are the executive and legislative branch in Elkhart County.

That's not the same elsewhere.

We're a board of three.

our responsibilities are basically public safety and economic development.

And so we focus a lot on, making sure that all avenues lead towards solid workforce development and making sure that we can supply the industry and help the industry grow in the area.

Great.

And how many years have you done that?

seven.

I can't believe that was almost a stumper for you.

All right.

Good.

Well, thank you.

We're we're appreciate your leadership.

And we see you and so many things working in the community.

So we're grateful to have you here today.

Chris, you're no stranger as well.

You've been here a once or twice in your time.

So for folks who have forgotten or aren't quite sure.

Tell us a little about the Elkhart EDC and what it does.

EDC of Elkhart is the county is a public private partnership, and we're the lead the economic development organization, for Elkhart County.

We've been in existence about 22 years, and we work largely with manufacturing, logistics clients.

But like all of us that are involved in economic development, talent development and, employee, attraction and growth is a large part of what we do now.

Suzie, let me come your way.

So just for a high level, I think elected officials in particular always get the chance to say here, the state of the economy is such.

So give us a quick, state, the economy.

What's the economy look like in Elkhart County these days?

You know, there's been a lot of pressure on the manufacturing industry.

Obviously, we're over 50% manufacturing, which is the highest probably in the nation of any one community.

And, we've been known as the bellwether for the economy nationally as well.

And I think one of the things that I'm a little bit pleasantly surprised that we're seeing is we're seeing an uptick in some of our manufacturing.

It's not as low as it was.

Our, unemployment rate increased in 22, 23.

Right.

and now I think we're stabilizing and we're going to see some people called back and some jobs back on the move.

So that's kind of an interesting perspective that I was surprised to see so soon.

Right.

one of the other stats that I learned recently was the, distribution of the type of employment we have.

I mean, I mentioned manufacturing is huge.

Everybody knows manufacturing is huge in Elkhart County, but the second highest, area of workforce is needed in the service and food service specifically industry.

So that was kind of a great prompt about what quality of place is looking like and some options for our residents.

Right, Chris, you're working with companies.

You're both companies that are expanding in Elkhart County now that are thinking about growing or expanding your thinking, or you're talking to companies that are thinking about coming to the area, give us a, kind of follow up state of the economy.

From your perspective, what are you seeing?

Well, I think the natural correlation that most people would make when the, you know, the big industry, slowdown occurred that, you know, we wouldn't see, investment that the levels we have the last year was it was probably in the top five, investment in Elkhart County.

And what was very unique about last year was this the first time in our memory where our personal property, investment was higher than our real property, which means, we're starting to see more advanced uses of automation and higher value technology investments, and we were already pretty high on that.

We are with our overall robotics per capita, per, per workforce capita.

Yeah, maybe.

Sure.

That stat I think that five I think last time you were here we talked about it.

One of the well that was a sort old, information that in 2017, the Brookings Institute, indicated to us that we had the highest per capita robots of anywhere in the United States.

Yeah.

And I think that's we teased in the opening kind of the history of innovation and entrepreneurship.

It's like, like people make things right.

And so and and so let's talk for a second.

RV just because we can't not touch on it because it's, it's like a big, big but but you know, we tease that RV is such a big, important.

There's a lot more to that.

people always want to know what's going on in RV, right.

For the economy.

So tell us a little bit about what's going on in the RV industry.

Well, I think the, you know, the the industry, you know, they project sales.

And I believe this year they were saying that they anticipated around 300 to 315,000 units as Suzie referenced though, it appears that the selling season is off to a pretty good start.

So we're certainly seeing, and we're excited about that.

And, we're excited to see, that it's reflected to some degree in our unemployment rate.

You know, we, you know, we we termed the term a soft landing.

But, really, if we compare this to the recession, that we went through 10 or 12 years ago, it has been a much softer landing for Elkhart County.

You know, it's interesting, as we've had RV experts with us before, even the 315 is less than they've done in recent years, but still probably one of their most productive years in history.

I think people forget that the boom that we had for a a few years sort of move the number of way up here, but 315 is still a pretty good number.

Yeah.

And Covid really kind of, really skewed those numbers.

you know, obviously everybody was homebound and there, there were a lot of, a lot of steps taken at the same time that we were in Covid, the great American outdoors Act was passed by President Trump.

So it drove a lot of people that were seeking a way to get out and about and really drove those sales hard.

And I guess, you can say we're right sizing again, you know, and, I'm not sure that we know exactly where that's at, but I am encouraged about by the recent information we've received.

Sounds good Suzie let me come back your way.

So you talked about one of the one of the principal focuses is economic development, the public safety and economic development too.

The primary focuses, you've got sort of the, a broad selection of communities in Elkhart County to.

So give us, just ways government can help influence that.

Some of the things that you get or some of the ways you get involved in this to to sort of help drive economic activity there.

So I've talked a lot about in the past, leaving the last time I was on here about quality of place, development and what that looks like and quality of place to everybody is a little different.

Somebody it's economic attainment someplace that's a different place to live, someplace that's a new trail, right?

Or a new ice cream shop.

And apparently the ice cream shops and the, food industry has made their appearance well known in Elkhart County, which is fantastic.

And it's definitely been.

And fun.

Yes, definitely been fun.

but some of the things that we are doing to touch on the investment in the workforce directly, as a government, we invested in the Ivy Tech Flex Lab and through our Tiff dollars have helped that come to fruition with, the other investors and making that an option for workforce training.

the jobs that we're seeing are still requiring some skills, some basic skills.

but at the same time, we're providing an opportunity for training locally.

So hopefully they stay locally.

And then we also have some opportunities with, housing development.

Obviously housing is a national issue and locally we are getting ready to kick off some projects, in some of the smaller communities, individually.

So Nappanee is bringing a housing development called the Wellfield Housing Community.

And I think their goal is, 100 houses, in the first 100 residences in the first phase.

And then there's a larger one in Goshen coming up called Cherry Creek.

And their first goal, their first phase, just they're hoping to start in 2024, but about 288 residences.

And then with that ultimate goal of about, 1000 to 1400, depending on what the condo market looks like, towards the next phase is in development.

So in the next probably four years, we should have a significant opportunity for new housing, which then will help us with our increased numbers and workforce demand.

Great.

I think it ties in.

Well, we just a few weeks ago, we, as you know, we focused on housing on the show.

I know you both are regular, watchers here, but but what we were talking about was sort of this, slow recovery from the housing crisis of 2008, the need to build some inventory, Chris let's stay in housing for a second, and talk about and talk a little bit about the need, if you will.

I think people have a hard time understanding the, the need and why why you both need to be focusing on something like that.

Just give us some housing perspective.

Well, obviously it's a national problem in, in Elkhart, communities case, you know, our last statistic said we were importing about 35,000 workers a day.

And you look back historically, why that happened.

One of the reasons was we just didn't have stock in the stock that we had.

I think there was 20 years that we didn't see a significant growth in housing.

So to retain our, top talent, you know, we obviously got to freshen that up and, keep trying to drive opportunities for all, all incomes and all types of people to feel welcome to the community.

Yeah.

Let's, Suzie touched on workforce.

So let's stay in the workforce space for just, just a few minutes.

You mentioned, Ivy tech and kind of the flex lab and some of what they're doing there.

obviously, as you were, we were talking earlier with robotics and all the things there, there's a need to have a skilled workforce there that maybe both touch a little bit on even the, the things you're trying to do start to finish.

Right?

You're trying to, at a very young age, get kids on a path to understand what careers look like at an old age.

You're retraining folks who may have been in different industries, talk about how important that workforce piece is, because, like I think in the like, I know in my old days of economic development, I was worried about property and water lines and gas lines.

But workforces always talk about how about we talk for a few more minutes about the workforce piece.

So the workforce piece, workforce piece starts basically with schools, right?

I mean, the the initial opportunities that the kids have from kindergarten all the way up, and we're looking at some opportunity is that talk about daycare and increasing some of those services available in our county, as well as then supporting the schools moving forward.

the state legislature here this year made a primary goal of I, I believe it's a third grade reading level attainment if I said that appropriately.

and so with that then starts on the career pathways and refocusing all the kids.

And I know that the school districts in Elkhart County, the public school district specifically, are focusing on some career pathways to make sure that we have the workforce that we need, and we have a robust workforce replenishing itself on a regular basis.

So the investment continues through those partnerships as well as the partnerships with the corporations.

Goshen College has a robust partnership, in developing nursing staff and some other health care workers, as does Beacon involvement in some of that beacon health care system.

So there's a lot of collaboration going on to make sure that we have the workforce that we so desperately need.

And for you, this becomes a really important piece of your pitch, right?

As you're talking about companies who want to grow here, companies want to come talk about it from your perspective.

Well, I think there's a couple points I'd like to make.

The state has been, great in some ways in rewarding us with some dollars, to support that.

it's been interesting and, and speaking more on the development side of Ivy tech.

So Elkhart Community Schools, that example led the state in dual credit attainment, which most people wouldn't wouldn't naturally think off the top.

So and Ivy tech does beat out all the dual credit across the state.

So we're very proud of that, statistic.

And you know, one of the you know, the, you know, the career pathways that we're we're starting and we've had many events that, you know, we're taking, you know, six fifth, six seventh graders in the manufacturing facilities to show them opportunities.

You know, then oftentimes a perception is a dirty business manufacturing, you know, but that perception needs to change because a lot of is out there.

You could be an engineer or an accountant, quality control professional.

There's quite a lot of opportunity available in manufacturing and, and the, the projections, ongoing, are a little bleak right now.

And we need to keep driving back.

You know, if we want things that are made in America, then we need to reestablish us as a manufacturing partner and to touch a little bit on the manufacturing days piece, I had the opportunity wants to go along and shout out some of those.

And it was actually a very well-run program as a collaboration, again, with the schools in our businesses.

The schools, brought the kids in, for the day, and they rotated through the different avenues of a business and they had some great speakers.

so I was down at the smoker craft plant, years ago when they did this, and they even brought up, some of their female welders and they talked about how anybody is, trainable to whatever you want to do.

And they did talk about all the different options, whether it was an accounting or different sales force options, but as well as in the manufacturing side.

So if you're not looking for that college degree, we have some great homegrown opportunities for you here.

Great guys.

We're gonna take a quick break here in the studio.

We're going to go out into the field.

George Lepeniotis my co-host is out.

George let me toss it to you.

Thanks, Jeff.

I'm in downtown Elkhart, and I am actually joined by your counterpart over here in Elkhart County.

Levon Johnson, president and CEO of the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce.

Levon, thank you for being with us.

That's my absolute pleasure.

And I know, I know that you know, Jeff.

Well, and I'm sure you're better at being a chamber president than he is.

Don't tell him I.

So I don't know about that, but that's all specialist.

He does get good luck.

But you know, here today, you get to talk to me.

And I'm excited to be here because I.

You know, Elkhart is such a unique place for our regional economy, but also for our national economy.

I mean, you've heard so many people talk about Elkhart is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to our nation's, economic future.

But before we get to kind of that big part of it and some of the other exciting stuff happening here, tell us a little bit about yourself.

You're an Elkhart native, born and raised and went to Indiana State University, Eagle, Sycamore and, came back here after college and I worked for all of our community schools as a high school teacher at Elkhart Memorial and then principal of Elkhart Central High School and head football coach, sponsor all sorts of things end up in central office work.

And my last job there was the, supervisor of corporate community partnerships.

So 25 plus years with Elkhart schools.

Well, what made you decide that leading the chamber would be right for you?

And what attracted you to that opportunity?

Well, I've switched jobs within the school system, but I've always tried to switch for impact.

and, this was an opportunity to, take what I was doing at the end of my career in education and expanding on that, and really helping, just, Elkhart to continue to be a quality place and being a place where I could have impact and work with a lot of other people in a lot of other industries besides education that are doing that same work.

And, at the end of the day, it's all about relationships.

And I love people and I love the community I'm in.

It's also a great place to do that.

That's awesome.

Well, and, you know, you talk about in pack and I, I find that such an interesting concept because I think that most folks go to work and there's a there's also I mean, of course, we all work for money, but we also work to make an impact on our lives in the lives of others.

So when we think about the chamber and we think about its role in Elkhart, what would you say the chamber's role is in Elkhart?

Broader community?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think the big thing really is, I look at the chamber as a community development organization, and we just happen to do that through business.

and I think we've got a lot of people that are in that community development work, and they do it through the framework, whether it be health care, education or whatever else.

But our focus is on business and how do we make sure we've got a healthy business environment that allows business to grow in this space, that allows them to employ more people, that increases quality of life in this place.

And ultimately, that's where we want to be.

And, and, and really focusing on that work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So speaking of that Elkhart business, we you know, we all know that the RV industry is the primary Elkhart business.

But there are so many others.

But before we get to the others let's talk about the RV industry.

It is a major employer.

it has seen some stellar years.

how has that industry really shaped and defined Elkhart, in your opinion?

Well, I think over the course of history, what what makes us quite unique is we reinvent ourselves, constantly.

And we've done a great job of, marketing ourselves as the RV capital of the world.

That's absolutely true.

and we do employ a lot of people in that, in that industry.

And we know that coming out of Covid, we had really spectacular years where we were a couple years ago, 600,000 units were headed out.

but I think even in that time period, the leaders in the RV industry would say that's not sustainable.

And there is a place where we need to be.

And so right now, we're in a situation where we're all say, market adjusting, and we'll get back to normal.

and, all indications are early on that we're starting to climb back to where we need to be.

But there are definitely challenges in that.

but I will take that core industry and continue to grow, that industry.

But how do we diversify and make sure that while the RV industry is growing, it's also a percentage of the growth that's happening right?

Yeah.

And, you know, the funny thing is you talk about those highs, those peaks of 2021 post-Covid, when people were reinventing vacations and reinventing, the RV industry and an RV, manufacturers couldn't keep up.

It almost was all encompassing, right?

All consuming, employees, you know, talent, other resources.

It became, almost like you said, unsustainable.

What are those other industries that you're looking to encourage?

Where do you really see growth next for Elkhart?

Yeah.

So again, we're a manufacturing town.

And we we have absolutely bought into that.

So the idea is when we think about nationally, the conversation about, bringing industry back into, to the country, we're set and ready to do that.

We've got skilled labor force to, take on those challenges.

as automation becomes more important.

but we look at, our role in health care and, plastics and aluminum, in corndogs, for grease.

And, I mean, that's it goes on and on because this is a place where we make things and this is a country that needs things made, and, we're primed and ready to do that work.

Yeah, yeah.

Final thought here.

Would you say that not only this skill that has been built in the county, but also the infrastructure is there, right?

I mean, Elkhart does find itself in a unique geographic place.

Does.

Absolutely.

And that plays to our favor, from a manufacturing supply chain.

and getting things back out, we know that we're only a day's drive away from 70% of the population of this country, which is, makes us, puts us in a great spot.

And, you know, the state continues to invest in infrastructure in this area.

And you can see that by the roads that lead to here and the scope of where people come to work from.

Thank you.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for showing us around this great facility.

Jeff, back to you in the studio.

I was only joking.

You're both great presidents and you're both doing amazing things to promote, our region's economy and continuing to make sure it's strong and stable.

George.

Thank you.

Appreciate the inside.

Look at some things happening over there in Elkhart County.

Chris, Suzie, thank you for continuing our conversation.

Suzie Weirick County Commissioner Chris Tager from the Elkhart EDC.

in our less, you know, part of the segment here, we touched briefly on Quality Place.

Suzie, you mentioned how important that was.

Chris, I think it's that's it feels like a newer thing in economic development.

It wasn't as critical but just really critical now to touch a little bit on quality of place and why that's important.

Well, you know, obviously, you know, if we look statistically at our, region, you know, we graduate, something under 39,000 college students within a 100 miles of here.

And, you know, we had had better amenities to retain them.

You know, they want the things that they can get in the city, and that's more of a feel.

So I think most of the communities now could start to see, the impacts of things like the aquatic center, you know, the, you know, we're hearing about the, the, you know, the riff from the original Original Cities project, the double tracking of the South Shore, improvements are going on all the trails and which I guess I could leave that over to you and let Susie take it from here.

But, you know, we're starting to see, those things being most of them are complete.

And now we're just starting to see the utilization of.

And just really going through the roof of the aquatic center is just an amazing thing to watch.

Every morning I drive to work between 6 and 9:00 in the parking lots full.

Right.

You know, it's it's like it's fantastic, that, you know, because, you know, before we didn't have that, you know, three years ago, we weren't weren't we didn't have that for the community.

And I think if we really want to retain our top talent, we have to have better amenities than what we have.

And a chance now to double down on that, potentially with some state funds to, continue to do more of those projects.

Suzie, you talk a little bit about Quality Place and why that's such a critical as you're trying to bring people here, bring businesses here and get people to stay here.

Talk about the rolling so, the last, maybe 5 to 10 years, the the job market has shifted to where the people are and the people want to be where they want to be, so they can work from anywhere.

And we want them to choose here.

So we've made an active, decision to start vamping up our placemaking and drawing attention to the quality of place.

and I don't think you can, talk about that without talking about our parks development and our trails development.

Elkhart County still struggles, having as much park area per capita as we really should have, but bringing in those convening locations and adding in a lot more trails.

Again, one of the best things about Elkhart County is our ability to collaborate.

We have pulled in all the different communities, we've talked with and started working with an organization through the Community Foundation on developing trails.

one of our most popular trails is the Pumpkin Vine trails.

And, that was a 40 year project in the making.

And we finally finished the last little piece.

and now we're looking at other connectors across Elkhart County and maybe drawing some attention down to Nappanee with these new housing divisions through the housing divisions.

I know Cherry Creek has some great, plans for connecting through there to other trails around the community.

So we're we're really making some some great strides and putting those things to, to work so people can enjoy the space.

So so Chris, we're headed to this next phase.

Leaders in Elkhart County are quickly thinking about how to maximize some state and local investment to potentially get some more dollars to do.

What are some of the things on minor talk to us about, you know, ready to and sort of what's happening in the in people's heads on that.

Well, obviously, you know ready to quality focus.

But you know, we've been blessed that the, the team that has put together our first our original cities grant and then our ready Grant one, they did a wonderful job.

And I guess I could say that we're probably, in some cases, the leader and best practices in the state.

And, and we're working very closely with the state government on that program.

So it doesn't give us a competitive advantage, I don't think, on the award side, but, we understand the process better.

and, you know, that funding is just just variable because many of these projects, we just need that extra bump to get them over the top financially, you know, including the housing.

You know, that's one of those things that, you know, if you look at the, most affordable housing, the math on that doesn't work without some, some assistance.

So, ready has been very valuable for that.

And as Suzie referenced, the things, the quality of place, things that those projects would not have happened, but what they did is created, collaboration.

And it started a conversation and it really engaged the private sector to become more part of the community.

And that's what we really like is the biggest outcome.

We're seeing much more collaboration between business and government.

Right.

Suzie, in our last minute and a half, so broad audience listens and watches the show here.

Some of them haven't been there for a while.

Give them kind of a quick highlight.

Some things they should come and see and do or experience if they haven't been Elkhart County for a while.

So, there are so many fabulous trails to places.

So I do have a bike and I don't mind riding on occasion, but more so I'm going to go ride towards that launch or towards that ice cream.

I might be a little food motivated.

So there's you mentioned ice cream.

I know it's definitely some some opportunity for, for that quality of place to involve whether just, adults, whole families or whatnot.

And we have blue jays, we have greenways, we have opportunities abound for for different avenues.

And as Chris mentioned, some of them are inside.

And we're looking at increasing, that because we are a winter climate as well.

Right.

And trying to make sure that we incorporate some different quality of place opportunities year round.

Right, Chris, last word.

I'll give you a chance.

Any anything else that our viewers should know about?

Elkhart County before we let them go?

Well, I just think it's, it's a very unique place.

you know, I think people underestimate how many things that daily impact their lives are made in Elkhart County.

You know, anything from febreeze to the, you know, the RV's that go down the road.

And, you know, I could go on and on, but it's a it's a it's a it's a very dynamic community.

And we're looking forward to the future and continue that.

the tradition of Elkhart that honors the past.

But we want to keep it moving forward as well.

so what we're grateful for both of your leadership.

Thank you for the things that you do and you say and really grateful to have you here sharing those stories to our viewers.

Love hearing about what's going on.

We've over through the years have had some great updates, whether it be Goshen or Elkhart, Middlebury or Nappanee or whatever.

So it has been fun.

So thank you and we'll look forward to having you back for, further updates.

Thank you for having us.

Thanks for having us.

That's it for our show.

On behalf of the entire team here at PBS Michiana WNIT thank you for watching or listening to our podcast to watch this episode again, unique or any of our past episodes.

You can find Economic Outlook at wnit.org or find our podcast on most major podcast platforms.

This I encourage you to like us on Facebook or follow us on X. I'm Jeff Rea.

I'll see you next time.

This Wnit local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.