Page 3 - New Allen Alliance Digital Book

September 21, 2018

Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs
Regional Stellar Communities Program
One North Capitol, Suite 600
Indianapolis, IN 46204-2288
Re: East Allen’s Rural Revival
East Allen County, Indiana Regional Development Plan – Indiana Regional Stellar Communities Application

Dear Indiana Regional Stellar Communities Selection Committee:

It is with great excitement that we to submit to you East Allen’s Rural Revival Regional Development Plan. Our plan is the result of years of strategic planning, East Allen’s Rural
capacity building, and advocacy for our rural region. The Indiana Regional Stellar Communities Designation opportunity has given our communities and partners Revival brings
additional incentive to move from strategic planning to strategic doing. The hours of input and collaboration over the last five months by more than 60 cross-sector together our seven
committee members have provided an iterative process of engagement that has already led to a more highly functioning region. In addition, this opportunity spurred us
to establish a broad-based communications strategy based on web, social media, television and newspaper engagement with a four-month reach of over 30,000 views, communities
leading to a significant increase in community awareness of our efforts. under one bold
vision – to connect
This regional development plan has been built upon the foundational work conducted in 2015-2016 as part of the NewAllen Strategic Investment Plan process. During
that time, we engaged with more than 800 stakeholders and residents. This effort has since received the 2017 John Keller Award for Outstanding Planning Initiative by communities
the American Planning Association Small Town and Rural Community Division. East Allen’s Rural Revival now brings together our seven communities under one bold through improved
vision – to connect communities through improved quality of place. Plan activities focus on projects that bring people together. Activities include the following:
quality of place.
1. Downtowns, Parks, Sidewalks and Trail (re) development
2. Senior housing, enabling community members to age in place
3. Community health programming related to obesity
4. Small business, workforce, and industrial site development
5. Infrastructure maintenance and upgrades

East Allen’s Rural Revival represents our vision to be a great place to live in Allen County. We are in alignment with Northeast Indiana’s Regional Cities goal to
grow the region to 1,000,000 residents. As stated in the Road to One Million Plan, “We know that at our current population trends and growth rate, our total population
could grow over the coming decade. However, because of the impacts of retiring Baby Boomers and lagging growth among Millennials, our labor force will actually shrink
and our gross domestic product and wages will stagnate.” At an estimated 57,000 current residents, and targeting the Road to One Million’s established 2.1% growth
by 2031, East Allen would grow by 25,000 residents to 82,000 during this same time period.

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