According to the Journal and Courier, the recent announcement of a $37 million Saab manufacturing plant in West Lafayette is the latest round of encouraging development news for what's happening around Purdue University. Improvements in infrastructure to calm traffic and create a more urban, pedestrian-friendly environment is paying dividends.
Since the start of the project – which crammed $120 million of work on State Street and on a system of streets on the north, south and west parts of campus into a little under three years – more than $550 million in student housing high-rises, retail and industrial projects have gone up or are about to in what the city considers the State Street corridor. And that’s just so far.
“It’s a whole new skyline,” West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis said Friday morning, looking up State Street hill toward what he’d been touting as a new downtown. “Did we think it would be this fast? No, with a caveat. … I thought we’d start small and grew big later. But here it is.”
Whether it’s been too much – or the correct type – is something Dennis likely will have to address in a late-forming challenge in the November election, as New Chauncey Neighborhood resident Zachary Baiel lines up an independent campaign for mayor.
“It’s definitely time to reflect on that,” Baiel said Friday, the same day told the J&C he was running for mayor.
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