June 23, 2008

Incubator meetings come at providential time of progress

Sometimes as things happen and events come together, one wonders whether is it all just coincidence.

It seems providential, from this corner, that the series of public meetings concerning the possibility of a Regional Specialty Food Incubator and Test Kitchen will be takng place just as our annual Progress Edition is being published this week.

The meetings are being hosted by the city and the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center (NIIC), who used a $30,000 city grant to construct a business plan for the project.

The idea dates back to early 2007, when Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis was approached by Kim Pontius of Ivy Tech Community College about the concept. In working with the NIIC, they had targeted Bluffton as a possible location for a food development lab and test kitchen, due to the presence of food-related businesses such as Pretzels, Inc., Inventure Group, Ossian Meats and Dawn Foods.

The mayor announced it publicly as part of his “State of the City” address last year, a group of city and economic development officials visited a food show in Chicago, and favorable reviews followed.

Now it’s crunch time.

The meetings, which are not only open to the public but are being held for the express purpose of gauging public opinion, will be held Wednesday at the Arts, Commerce and Visitors Centre at four different times: 7:30 a.m., noon, 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Obviously, you don’t need to go to all of them, just one.

“Please,” the mayor is asking politely. “We want as many people from the community as possible to look the plan over,” he says. The city council will ultimately decide if it’s worth pursuing, but public opinion will weigh heavily in the equation, Ellis says.

That these meetings are happening this week may be coincidence, but the timing couldn’t be better.

The News-Banner has quite a few stories to tell about Wells County progress these days. Few communities, particularly our size, can boast about having well over $300 million being invested in their industrial park. And while fuel and food prices are of considerable concern, and there are reports of layoffs in some local industries, we have heard constant comments and questions (“envious comments” would be an appropriate description) from friends and acquaintances in neighboring communities about “what’s going on in Wells County.”

The edition will be printed in four sections beginning tomorrow, highlighting our community’s progress. We trust you will find them enlightening, educational, and perhaps even entertaining ... a triple-E treatment, you might say.

And we trust you will find the time to attend one of the four sessions Wednesday — targeted to last just one hour each — to learn more about a project that has been touted as having the potential to produce even more good stoires for future Progress Editions.

MARK MILLER

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