Wabash, Indiana

and walk to a lot of amenities, downtown.” A corresponding initiative was the city’s 2014- 2018 Strategic Investment Plan (SIP), a four- year strategic plan defining a vision, a set of goals, and projects selected with input from many community members and leaders. The loft apartment project was part of the SIP, as was a program to help rehabilitate owner-occupied housing. Other projects in the SIP include: renovations to the Eagles Theatre, a 440-seat edifice built in 1906; creating an all inclusive playground at the John Drook Memorial Park; making improvements to the State Road 13/15 corridor; creating an outdoor amphitheater at Paradise Spring; making various streetscape and connectivity improvements; establishing a combined Trails project; and continuing a façade improvement program for downtown buildings. Long adds that the city is also currently investing in cleaning up dilapidated buildings that are considered brownfields, working with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Indiana Finance Authority through the Brownfields Remediation program. “We are also tackling neighborhood blight, not only to demolish unsafe buildings in residential areas, but to ensure that replacement homes that are built on empty lots conform to the surrounding neighborhood,” pictured above Mayor, Scott A. Long WABASH , INDI ANA pictured right Wabash County Courthouse overlooking Downtown Buildings