Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/147468
face time We're specifically seeking a good mid-size grocer, restaurants, barber shop, a health-and-fitness center — just the daily needs. A place for breakfast, lunch and dinner. An ATM machine, gas stations. We need all the services out there. property tax base away. It's a very large community – it's the whole western side of Brown County, 33 square miles, but it relies almost entirely on its property tax. We started objecting to and legally opposing any more land removed from the village. That process started in 2008 and languished in the courts until May 9 of this year. All 3,000 acres were sent back to the tribe and to the regional Bureau of Indian Affairs office to start all over, because they had very inadequately or not at all followed their own regulations. We were able to preserve that property tax base. At the same time, I was working to bring Centennial Centre, the economic development piece, to life. Centennial Centre was launched on Aug. 12, 2009. It was a big 350-acre soybean field and now we've created a tax increment district, and we've had construction workers on the job every day since 2009. Now over 500 folks live out there, and 300 workers are out there every day – not to mention the construction workers that are out there all the time, and it is growing so rapidly that we are the fastest growing community in Brown County. Hobart was the second in the state for new home building permits. All of this was done in the darkest of the economy – 2008 through 2012. I think when there's an obstacle like a dark economy, you don't have a choice, you learn to just move forward anyway. We have quite a number of homes – a real diversity of homes, which Hobart really needed. Now we're building the second big neighborhood out there, and we have a new assisted living facility. That has stimulated the next phase, which is commercial. We're specifically seeking a good mid-size grocer, restaurants, barber shop, a health-and-fitness center – just the daily needs. A place for breakfast, lunch and dinner. An ATM machine, gas stations. We need all the services out there. We have a great in-house team; they allowed me to streamline the in-house approval permitting process to where we can have a new project in the ground with all that approval and permits within 30 to 45 days if necessary. I think that's an advantage for small government, much like small business. You can work lean and mean and quicker. I like to call us "nimble." We have $53 million in building valuation in the ground right now, another $18 million booked to date thus far and more coming in. We've started a second tax increment district in the south. It has $16 million in the ground – so when I say Hobart is the fastestgrowing community, we really are. Mobile App Now Available! Mobile Check Deposit service coming soon! • Access your accounts • Transfer funds • Find branch locations • Pay your bills • Locate nearest ATMs • View Rates Download it today! www.foxcu.org 18 | Insight • A u g u s t 2 013 w w w. i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m