Swayzee’s Economic Development Corporation begins partnership with Ball State University

The Swayzee Economic Development Corporation hosted a town hall on Wednesday to discuss their 10-year plan to revitalize the community in partnership with students from Ball State University’s Department of Urban Planning. 

Don Thompson, the president of the Economic Development Corporation, said he heard about Ball State’s previous urban planning projects through The Grant County Community Foundation.

“I know I looked at (a report) in Union City, I looked at another community, they’ve probably done a dozen or more Indiana Communities,” said Thompson. “The reports are the most professional you would ever hope to see.”

Dr. Michael Burayidi, Ball State’s director of urban planning, said that the first thing he and his students will be focusing on is collecting data on the Swayzee community.

“Following the data collection, we’ll analyze the data,” said Burayadi. “And then that will help us to identify what are the priority issues and concerns that we should be paying attention to.”

Those who were at the meeting had group discussions on how to improve Swayzee, while members of Burayidi’s team took notes and asked questions.

“We had a lot of good comments about functions that young people could get involved in,” said Maureen Dalrymple, a member of the Swayzee community. “The FFA, we used to have 4-H here, and different programs like that, even our churches are suffering with young people being involved in other things.”

Dalrymple said she went to the meeting, because she likes the changes that are being made, and she wants to see what changes will be made in the future.

Burayidi said that Swayzee residents will be emailed a brief survey about what they would like to see changed in the community along with the data collected from the meeting.

According to Burayidi, the Swayzee community had one of the largest turnouts of any of his community development meetings. 

“We’re very pleased with the turnout,” said John Key, vice president of the Economic Development Corporation. “And very pleased that among all the conversations, people were not just coming to grouse and gripe, they really wanted to be part of the solution.”

Burayidi said that a second meeting will be held sometime in late September or early October, but a date has not yet been announced.