INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Eric Holcomb is tremendously proud of the creation of the LEAP District, a sprawling 9,000-acre industrial park in Boone County by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC).
LEAP was designed to be a place where businesses could quickly assemble their next enterprise.
As it says on the IEDC website, “Build faster, expand further and reach higher as you shape and support the economy of the future.”
Anyone who ventures out to Lebanon will see a parade of cement trucks and the steel framework of a building going up. It will be part of Eli Lily’s $9 billion pledge to create its newest pharmaceutical manufacturing plants at LEAP.
But having ready-to-build land available comes at a cost and to date, the IEDC has not disclosed its total outlay for property or the infrastructure to support future business.
Today, FOX59/CBS4 asked Gov. Holcomb if state taxpayers should have a better idea of the price tag for building LEAP.
His response: “We go to the legislature through their representatives and make our case for the appropriate amount of dollars that have gone through the budgetary process and they obviously can say yea or nay.”
But the State Budget Committee routinely said ‘yes’ when the IEDC asks for state funds.
That happened again yesterday.
The IEDC was seeking an additional $88 million dollars to complete land acquisition for LEAP and to fund infrastructure.
The request was approved. The Republican majority voted for the expenditure. The committee’s Democratic minority voted against it, with leading Rep. Edward Delaney (D-Indianapolis) saying, “It seems to me we have an open-ended investment here.”
It appears the state investment in LEAP is at least flexible.
Commerce Secretary David Rosenberg explains LEAP was designed to be a long-term project with costs expected to rise as the industrial park changes to meet the demand of its tenant businesses.
