Growing Grant County: Site Readiness and Infrastructure — What It Takes to Compete for Investment

Growing Grant CountyEconomic Development 101

May 6

Site selection is not a beauty contest. It is an elimination process.

When a company, or the consulting firm representing it, evaluates locations for a new facility, the first question is not “Which community sounds the most appealing?” It is “Which communities can we rule out?” Sites get removed early if they cannot prove the basics: usable acreage, sufficient utility capacity, reliable transportation access, a clear permitting path, manageable environmental risk, a credible workforce pipeline, and a timeline that will not threaten the company’s ability to open on schedule.

Understanding that logic is one of the most useful things Grant County leaders, property owners, and municipalities can do right now because it changes what “ready” actually means.

What Site Selectors Are Really Asking

Site selectors act as intermediaries for companies: they reduce the time and uncertainty involved in comparing dozens of potential locations. That means they need clean, comparable, decision-grade information about a site early in the process. A community that cannot produce that information quickly gets removed from contention, not because the site was bad, but because the site was unknown.

Indiana’s own site-readiness programs reflect this logic. The state’s Site Certified program and its Shovel-Ready Site Initiative (SSI) are built around removing barriers and improving permit positioning before a site is heavily marketed. The state’s reasoning is straightforward: the communities that attract the most investment are the ones that answer questions before they are asked.

For Grant County, the question is not whether we have land available. We do. The question is whether our priority sites are documented, verified, and positioned to survive early round screening.

Grant County’s Real Strengths in This Picture

Before turning to gaps, it is worth being clear about what we have, because the foundation here is genuine.

Grant County sits on I-69 between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, giving industrial and logistics projects direct interstate access to two major metros and their distribution networks. Our labor force participation rate is approximately 75%, a meaningful asset in a national environment where workforce availability often outranks tax incentives in site selection decisions. Our education and training pipeline includes Ivy Tech, Indiana Wesleyan University, Taylor University, and the Grant Regional Career Center, alongside WorkOne East Region 3 resources.

We also have proof of momentum, and it is visible across the county right now.

Prysmian announced a $1.5 million investment in new production equipment at its Marion manufacturing facility in December 2025, bolstering U.S. operations and reinforcing Marion’s role in advanced manufacturing. Cafe Valley presented a $20.3 million expansion agreement to the Marion Common Council in early 2025, proposing approximately 100 new full-time jobs at no less than $19 an hour. Earthwise Plastics in Gas City received an amended tax abatement in April 2026 for an $8.5 million investment that is expected to create 20 new jobs. Jonesboro’s new water plant officially came online in October 2025. Gas City broke ground on a new YMCA complex on March 31, 2026, with Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith in attendance: a facility that will bring recreation, wellness, and youth development opportunities to the entire county.

READI 2.0 investments are adding housing and quality-of-place assets across our communities. River Rock Lofts, a $10.8 million mixed-use development in Marion’s downtown riverfront district, received an $850,000 READI 2.0 award in December 2024 and will bring 44 apartments and 3,300 square feet of commercial space to the heart of the city. In Upland, a new “hospitality node” neighborhood near Taylor University is in development, featuring a boutique hotel, event venue, hiking trails, and attainable housing options for older adults and families, with completion targeted for 2028. Indiana Wesleyan University opened a 12,000-square-foot Welcome Center on Feb. 19, 2026, strengthening the institution’s commitment to Marion as a home for students and talent.

These are not projections. They are evidence that Grant County is a place where employers and institutions make long-term bets. The Growth Council maintains an active property inventory with publicly listed technical fields on access, utilities, fiber, and incentives, and we operate with a countywide data platform and a pro-growth posture.

That foundation is real. The work ahead is to convert it from a general story into site-specific certainty.

Three Areas Where We Know We Have Work to Do

We are proud of this momentum and honest about what comes next. We know where the gaps are. Here is where we are working to improve:

Gap 1: More listed sites than fully documented sites.

We deserve credit for making properties visible. But Indiana’s site-readiness standards are considerably higher than “listed for sale.” Even at the entry tier, the state’s Site Certified program requires a clear title, a known asking price, verified utility capacity and distance to service, and a baseline due diligence package that includes a Phase I environmental assessment, ALTA survey, topographic work, and property layout. Higher certification tiers add geotechnical studies, wetlands and floodplain screening, zoning memoranda, and archaeological review.

Some of our publicly marketed parcels show partial utility infrastructure, agricultural zoning, or unresolved site-preparation questions, which also means those sites are earlier in the readiness journey than their listings suggest. Our first gap is not a shortage of land. It is a shortage of a short list of fully documented, low-surprise sites that can survive early screening.

The practical move is to concentrate resources: identify two or three priority employment sites, ideally a mix of an industrial greenfield near I-69, a municipally serviced infill or redevelopment site, and a backup option, and fund the due diligence work needed to move those sites toward certified or SSI positioning within the next 12 to 18 months.

Gap 2: A countywide story told through multiple permitting windows.

Our economic development messaging correctly emphasizes that businesses evaluate workforce, transportation, housing, and partnerships across municipal lines. But the public permitting structure does not yet match that countywide message. Grant County’s Area Plan has jurisdiction over Jonesboro, Fairmount, Matthews, Upland, Van Buren, Sweetser, and unincorporated areas, while Marion and Gas City issue their own permits. The county’s new online permit system is being rolled out in stages, with some activity still handled by phone, email, or in-person contact during the transition.

That is understandable from a local government perspective. From a site selector’s perspective, it is friction, and friction in permitting means uncertainty in timelines, which means project risk.

The solution we are working toward is a countywide “single front door” for development responses: one intake contact, a standard permit-and-zoning flowchart by jurisdiction, a utility contact matrix, and a clear estimated response time for common project questions. Indiana’s IEDC regulatory affairs team already helps businesses navigate state permits and coordinate state agencies. We intend to mirror that logic locally, with a standing team that includes the Growth Council, county Area Plan, Marion and Gas City development staff, local utility representatives, and highway and transportation contacts.

Gap 3: Workforce-enabling infrastructure treated as a secondary issue.

This is the gap that most directly affects our existing employers, and it deserves to be elevated.

Our labor market is engaged but tight. Grant County’s own economic snapshot puts the labor force at roughly 31,137, with approximately 30,214 employed and a 3.0% unemployment rate as of late 2025. But the picture is more nuanced than those numbers suggest. U.S. Census Bureau commuting data (OnTheMap, 2022) shows that 14,205 workers commute into Grant County for employment each day — from Delaware, Madison, Wabash, and other surrounding counties. At the same time, 12,780 Grant County residents commute out for work. Just 13,720 people both live and work here.

That commuting pattern tells an important story: Grant County is already a net importer of labor. Our employers draw from a regional workforce that extends well beyond our county line. And as we add more quality jobs, like the ones Prysmian, Cafe Valley, and Earthwise Plastics are creating, we have the opportunity to retain more of our own residents and draw more workers into the county. The labor shed is larger than it looks. The question is whether the barriers that currently keep people from participating can be reduced.

Those barriers are real. Grant County’s own data identifies childcare, housing affordability, transportation access, and broadband as participation constraints. The 2024 county housing study found annual demand for 340 to 450 new rental and for-sale units over the next five years and called for more diverse, attainable, and walkable housing options. A 2025 transportation study conducted by Carey Services and Transform Consulting Group found that just 23% of working-age Grant County residents with disabilities are employed, compared to 66% of those without, and that limited transportation coverage and hours are a primary reason. The study recommends expanding shuttle services, building employer partnerships, and hiring trained drivers to make transportation more inclusive and functional as an economic tool.

Housing, childcare, worker mobility, and broadband are not quality-of-life amenities we will address someday. For our labor market, they are the business infrastructure. We are working to align these investments with site readiness in the same way we align roads and sewers. Existing employers feel these constraints first, which is why addressing them is also a Business Retention and Expansion priority.

What Property Owners Can Do Now

If you own a site in Grant County and want it taken seriously by companies and site-selection consultants, the single most valuable upgrade you can make is moving from marketing language to a verifiable site packet. Here is a practical screen:

Control and price: Clear owner of record, known asking price, known sale or option terms.

Boundary package: Recent survey or ALTA, parcel map, legal description, confirmed acreage.

Physical condition: Topographic data, grading needs, soils and geotechnical information, floodplain and wetlands status.

Utilities: Written confirmation of electric, water, wastewater, gas, and fiber availability — with distance, capacity, and extension timing.

Access: Truck route, curb cuts, nearest interstate, and airport distances.

Entitlements: Current zoning, rezoning path if needed, and known permit owners by jurisdiction.

Environmental baseline: Phase I ESA, known historical uses, and obvious constraints disclosed up front.

Marketing packet: One clean PDF or digital data room with maps, photos, utility contacts, studies, and a one-page summary.

One discipline deserves emphasis: separate “available” from “development-ready.” If a parcel still has agricultural zoning, lacks direct utility service, or has unresolved wetlands or access issues, it can still be marketed, but it should be marketed honestly, with a clear path to readiness. Incomplete or inconsistent data erodes trust faster than a modest site ever will.

The Bottom Line

Grant County does not need to make every available parcel investment-ready. That is not a realistic goal or a productive one. What we need is a short list of priority sites documented to a high standard, a coordinated countywide response system that eliminates permitting uncertainty, and a serious commitment to the workforce-enabling infrastructure that determines whether the people of Grant County can benefit from the jobs we recruit and retain.

The investments by Prysmian, Cafe Valley, and Earthwise Plastics, alongside the YMCA in Gas City, the River Rock Lofts in Marion, and the Hospitality Node in Upland, are reminders that employers and institutions reinvest where confidence and execution are strong. Preparing the sites, coordinating the process, and supporting the labor force that will staff the projects: that is the competitive work ahead.

We welcome your questions, your site information, and your partnership in this effort. Contact us at communications@grantcounty.com or (765) 662-0650.