Gary mayor will focus on casino, home program

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Gary, Indiana, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson delivers her mayoral inaugural address during a public swearing-in ceremony held at West Side Theatre in Gary, Ind., Saturday, January 7, 2012. | Guy Rhodes~For Sun-Times Media

Updated: February 11, 2012 8:16AM

GARY — Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson is confident the city will see a land-based casino within the next two years, though she stopped just short of promising it.

The mayor unveiled her plan for the city to a record-breaking crowd at the Gary Chamber of Commerce’s monthly luncheon Monday afternoon and said by 2014, she expects it will break ground on a new land-based casino along the Interstate 80/94 corridor. Legislation currently downstate should be the catalyst for that plan.

“We’ve met with the governor’s staff, and they understand our efforts are more toward economic development than gaming,” she said. “I’m not delusional, but I know there are people on both sides of the aisle who support our efforts.”

Freeman-Wilson said she will be traveling downstate as early as the next few days to further discuss the possibilities with legislators.

An official announcement of her economic development plan is forthcoming Tuesday, but the mayor previewed how the various departments dealing with economic development, such as the Board of Zoning and Appeals and Plan Commission, will be streamlined under the heading of Department of Commerce, over which one person will serve. That way, only one person’s “head will be on the chopping block.”

The move would have the department head review all proposals and make the calls to various agencies like the Regional Development Authority, Indiana Department of Economic Development or other federal agencies to see what, if any, kind of help those agencies can provide. It will also reduce the issues of getting quorums for meetings.

Overall, that and other measures will combat the No. 1 problem Freeman-Wilson said she heard from residents all through her campaign: Not getting a timely answer to a question or problem, if an answer was given at all.

Aside from streamlining the economic development departments, she established Constituent Services, which promises to answer every resident question and complaint within 72 hours.

“Will (the solutions) be done the way they want it? No, not always,” she said. “But in 72 hours, there will be a response.

“What I distill it down to is this: Make sure we deliver the best government your money can buy. My effort and belief is that politics should not enter good government, and our decisions will be citizen-centered.”

She also plans on bringing back the $1 Home Program, of which she was a participant 25 years ago.

In that program, residents are able to purchase a rundown house and then receive a period of time in which they must rehabilitate it.

Some houses and properties, on the other hand, aren’t salvageable and will be torn down. That will include the Sheraton Hotel.

“As I look at the Sheraton, there is no opportunity to redevelop it,” she said. “It will come down sooner rather than later.”