Inside the Region
Welcome to Inside the Region, the podcast that explores the forces shaping our local economy.
In each episode, we dive into the conversations driving business growth, investment, and innovation across the region. From major development projects and capital investment to workforce strategies, market trends, and data insights, we unpack what matters most to business and community leaders.
Inside the Region
James Turnwald, Executive Director of MACOG
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Today we’re joined by James Turnwald, Executive Director of MACOG — the Michiana Area Council of Governments. James has been at the forefront of regional collaboration on transportation, economic development, infrastructure, and long-range planning across Northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan.
In this episode, we’ll talk about the importance of regional thinking, the challenges and opportunities facing our communities, and how organizations like MACOG help bring together local leaders to create a stronger, more connected future for the South Bend region.
Welcome to Inside the Region, the podcast that explores the forces shaping our local economy. Being brought to you by Old National Bank, where relationships and results matter, discover what Old National Bank can do for you at OldNational.com. In each episode, we dive into the conversations driving business growth, investment, and innovation across the region. From major development projects and capital investments to workforce strategies, market trends, and data insights, we unpack what matters most to business and community leaders. Now here's your host, Director of Economic Development at the South Bend Regional Chamber, Alison Hersey.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Inside the Region, where we explore the issues shaping our economy and communities. Today we are joined by James Turnwall, Executive Director of Michigana Area Council of Government. That's a lot of words. Also known as Maycog, which most people call it. James, thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01So I always kind of start out with uh what is your role? What was your experience? How did you get here?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So uh as an organization, we've been around since 1970 serving the region. Um, but the way that I got involved with Maycog, um, back in 2008, I moved up here from Cincinnati for an opportunity as a regional planner. And I didn't really have any ties to the region. Uh, it was not home to family or to friends. Moved here for a job opportunity. And now I am very happy to call it home. Um, slowly worked my way up through the organization and in 2014 became the executive director and been there since. And this is now home to myself and my wife and our four kids.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, it was clearly probably the amazing weather that brought you up here and kept you here the entire time. But we are coming up on spring, so it should be lovely for a few months at least. Well, it's always interesting. I always find individuals, especially who have no ties to the area. And I did not when I moved out. I moved out for a job as well, and then said, Yeah, I'm just gonna stay here. This um, you know, uh is the place that that works best for me and and my family. And, you know, it's been almost probably over 25 years now that I've been here and just love being in the Midwest. So always nice to meet another transplant. Um, so you know, kind of what's your what's your role as the executive director? What's that mean?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so our organization works essentially with all of our local governments uh to address regional issues. So as the executive director, I am overseeing our organization and how we work with our local governments and really help them address regional issues. And a lot of that is through providing them data to make um informed decisions on regional issues. It's providing them with resources. So doing a lot of work with state and federal agencies on grants, and then really just trying to provide additional uh staffing capacity to help them address things like transportation, sustainability, community development, and um housing now.
SPEAKER_01You make it sound a lot easier than it really is. And and the key, if people are listening in there, was the word grant in federal and state, and really trying to um, you know, help with the data. There's so much there. Some communities just don't know where to start. I know you've helped a couple communities with their comprehensive planning, um, something that smaller communities may just be looking for some expertise in. That's something that Maycog can help out with. What which ones uh recently I think New Carlisle was one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we serve St. Joe, Elcart, Marshall, and Calciasco County. So we uh back in 2008, uh 2016 time frame in that area, kind of our motto to our local government or our smaller towns were tell us when you need us, right? Um they didn't always know when they needed us or why they might need us. And so after 2016, we started doing comprehensive plans for our communities. And in our Four County region, we have 29 small towns. So there are quite a lot of small towns in our region. And the trends around small rural areas is population decline. And so we really wanted to work with them to try and figure out how do they want to grow, if they want to grow, what do they want to look like over the next 10 years? And that's where we do a lot of their comprehensive planning with them. And we're able to provide those resources at a much cheaper rate than say the private sector. And uh some of those recent ones in St. Joe County have been in uh New Carlisle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And it's not just small communities, though, because you I was on um the steering committee for uh was the um the SEDS planning, which has to be done every few years. Can you give a little background on that and why we do it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So the SEDS is the comprehensive economic development strategy. It's something that we are asked to put together by the US Department of Economic Development Administration. And so we work there to um put together just an overall plan for the region around economic development and the different strategies that might play into some of those kind of key areas where we want to see growth and development. And that the purpose of that is that the document then allows our local governments and different folks to apply to the Economic Development Administration for federal funding. So it's really a foundational document that allows for access into different federal funds.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's great. Cause so often, not even knowing where to go for those grants, smaller communities, really any community, it can be a tangled web trying to figure out the process. Um, it sometimes can be very long-winding. You've been through this many times, and so you kind of uh are the expert. And so communities and and counties can look to you for the assistance in these and truly try to help navigate. Um, I did notice I uh read your 2025 annual economic or annual report, exciting stuff there. But, you know, I loved this phrase and I wrote it down. It says MAKOG works behind the scenes to turn regional collaboration into real visible results. And I felt like it really summed up exactly what Make OG is because most people aren't familiar with it. You're behind the scenes, but you're making so much happen because of your knowledge and your expertise.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I no, I I think that line does definitely resonate with us and kind of explains who we are in a nutshell. We're not necessarily uh the government entity that's out on the front line. That's usually our cities, our towns, and our counties. Um, but we're usually providing them with a degree of assistance, whether it's in planning or with data gathering or with grants to really help them execute on their visions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I grabbed um one little nugget of information with $17.4 million in um transportation funds. You are able to um get through grants, 23 communities in the community crossing uh matching grant program. That's huge.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, we do a lot of work in transportation. It's probably our our most known area. Um, each year we help communities apply for community crossings, which is really a program that's focused around paving, trying to make sure that we're, you know, uh having nice smooth roads and not having uh potholes and being able to address those. Uh and the state legislature had put that program together a few years back. It's been very instrumental. Um, each year we're capturing nearly $20 million worth of paving to be able to do across the four counties. So it's really critical to be able to make those small improvements on roads. And then on the federal side of things, we also receive about $16 million per year that we're putting into roads, bridges, intersections, new trails. Um, and so those are the much larger capital projects that we see.
SPEAKER_01And it's something people don't really think about until they're driving down the road. There's one road I take into work every day that is like going through a minefield trying to get here and just had to pay for my daughter's car to be realigned. I asked, I said, this is like a new car. How could this, you know, it's not exactly new, but how could this happen? They said, potholes. I was like, oh, okay. So these are things that really can impact every day individuals saving them money and really making their quality of life better. You talked about some trails as well. I know there's a big push on some um trails throughout the community. And they're they've really, how many? I'm not even sure, how many miles at this point do we have?
SPEAKER_02Across the four counties, we have uh a little over a hundred miles of different uh trails that are in the region. Um, but what we're really trying to do, one of our big efforts that we're focused on, is there's been a really great effort to connect the trail system from Niles through St. Joe County, through South Bend and into Mishawaka. And that's an interconnected trail system of like 15 to 20 miles. In Elkart and Goshen, there's also through the the Maple Heart that connects into the pumpkin vine there that goes from Elkart down to Goshen, Goshen over to Shipshawana, and that's another 15 to 20 miles. And one of the efforts that we're focused on right now is trying to connect those two trails, those two interconnected trail systems together so that we could connect from Mishawaka to Elkhart. It's probably about a 10 uh to 12 mile gap, depending on the route that it takes. Uh, but if we could do that, that would then mean that we would have around 40 to 50 connected miles of trail. Um, and that would be huge for tourism, but also just great for quality of life in the region. If you want to take a really long, you know, kind of bike ride with the family, you could do that and experience a whole portion of the region.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that would really enhance um the outdoor activity time for the area. I know there's some really big uh trails that that are kind of up in Michigan. And so it'd be really nice if we had something like that down here for for our residents. Um, I'm gonna pivot a little bit and talk um something uh a little bit more exciting. Brownfields. Um, so yeah, um, you guys do a lot in this space. And I think a lot of people don't, you know, aren't aware of really, hey, what's a brownfield? And you know, you're driving, you see something, and then, you know, all the efforts that are going on um to try to to um take those brown fields and turn them into a positive uh in a community.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we receive some funding from the uh EPA to do brownfield assessments. And for those that aren't familiar, brownfields are essentially properties that are either contaminated or believed to be contaminated. And in our region, we have a really proud industrial legacy. And so that means we do have a number of buildings that um, you know, are are in disrepair and have previously been used in manufacturing in some way, and they may or may not be contaminated. Now, those are the traditional very large visible brown fields that we often think of, but it can also be a corner gas station, it could be an old dry cleaner, it could be a building that was built in a certain time period that used asbestos or um other materials. And so what we do is we work with landowners that are not the responsible parties, they're not the ones that created the potential contamination, and we work with them to do an assessment to try and figure out is there contamination? What type of contamination is there? And then what would be the process to get this site into a positive reuse? How could we use this site for say housing or for a commercial purpose? And so we do all of that and it's free to the landowner. It's a hundred percent federal funded, it's free to the local government. And then we work with that local government and those landowners to try and help get those properties back into a positive reuse.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's been some really big projects uh within the brownfield um realm that has brought uh, you know, different parks and and amenities into the community. Um, one other thing you had talked about, and I'm I'm looking at the clock, so I want to make sure we spend a lot of time on this, is housing. There's a lot of conversation about housing. You guys undertook a massive study of maybe two years ago. I encourage everyone who's listening to please go out to the Make Hub website. They have just so much information out there. Um, but can we, you know, let's talk a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So in 2024, we did a regional housing study where we really dive deep into this question of what is the housing market look like? What are the challenges around, say, affordability? Um, and you know, it's something that all of our local governments were talking about the challenge of housing. And so we we took a look at it, and what we were seeing is that over the last two decades, we really just have not been building the same number of housing units that we used to build. And then there is also post-COVID, post-2020, there is uh an inverse relationship right now between what people can afford versus the median home price. So the median price that folks can afford is around $192,000 in our region. And the average home price, depending on what uh data source you're looking at, but it's around or $290,000. So there's a very large gap between what the average consumer in our region can purchase versus what is on the market. And the way that I like to think about that is if you're uh say a school teacher, you're just starting off, you're starting off in the PHM school district, you're making around $40,000 a year. That means that you're able to afford without being house burdened, essentially 30% of your income or more, you can afford a house that is $114,000. That's just not typically available on the market. Even if you're two teachers working um and you're just starting off in the same household, that's $80,000 a year. You're still only able to afford a home that is about $200,000. And so there's this large challenge for our uh middle incomes, our incomes that are 80% of the area median or below of being able to afford a home. And so what we're trying to work on is a two-pronged effort. We were able to receive about $20 million from the Lilly Endowment. Um, and we're doing that with our community foundation. So those are our kind of critical partners there. And we're working with them to try and address uh affordability and attainability of housing. So really trying to make housing more attainable. Um and that's a two-pronged effort working on trying to address vacant and abandoned properties through our land bank and then uh a series of different loan products that we're working on with nonprofits and individuals to try and make um uh housing more attainable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and homeownership is pretty complex. I saw that you guys um do some education on that front as well for new homeowners. And I think it's just so important um for people to really understand the all of it and understand what they're getting into. Those loans can be, if you don't know what you're doing, it's hard to figure out which is the right one for you and what those different um implications are. And so it's great to see that that's another part of what Maycog does for our community.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're working with a really trusted partner in Tend, Indiana, and they're putting on different courses across the region around home ownership uh and trying to help uh first-time home buyers and and home buyers in general just be more educated on uh some of their options that are available to them, and and then also trying to make sure that they're aware of some of those different products that we have available through our buy or keep kind of efforts of the regional uh attainable housing investment fund, um, that the general consumer, the general kind of person looking to buy a home if they're at 80% or below of the area median income might be qualified for.
SPEAKER_01So you mentioned it before. I heard it real quick. Land bank. Let's get back to that. That's a recent um thing that has come about in our community. Uh just recently, the St. Joseph County um you know approved uh participation in the land bank. Can you just kind of level set what is a land bank? Um, why do we need it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a great question. So in our area, um, we have since say Studebaker closed, we've seen population decline. With that population decline, we have then seen people move out of the region, and that means that for various reasons, there were homes that were vacant or abandoned. Now it's not just in the Studebaker era, this has also then been you know further complicated during kind of the housing bubble that happened in the early 2000s. Uh, but what you have seen is uh for various reasons, uh you have properties that are vacant and abandoned. So it's a it's a really convoluted and complicated process to go through getting those vacant and abandoned properties back into a positive reuse. Uh but those vacant and abandoned properties have a real cost. They um not only bring down the overall uh neighborhood and affect the neighboring properties, but for a local government, a vacant and abandoned property, say in the city of South Bend, when we've studied this, there were a few hundred homes that were on frequent kind of enforcement. They were um properties that are vacant and abandoned and regularly need to have uh mode or tires or couches or all sorts of garbage removed from that property. And to the city of South Bend, the regular enforcement of those properties is costing about $900,000 per year.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, it's kind of hard to even wrap your mind around it when you just see one or two here or there. But when you amplify that or multiply that across uh, you know, one city, how how much it could really be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so that's a million dollars that doesn't go towards police or fire. It's not a million dollars that goes towards a new bike trail or whatever investment you would want to see the city make. That is really just a million dollars that's spent on trying to make sure that those properties look acceptable. Uh and so what we want to do with the land bank is be able to have a process that allows for local um buyers, whether it's individuals or developers, be able to access those properties and be able to work towards getting those back into a positive reuse. So really trying to unlock all of those properties that are inside of our cities right now that are vacant and abandoned and just not being taken care of. Uh so that way we can we can try to strengthen our neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_01And and is there an estimated cost on, you know, for residents as they're looking at this, is how much is this going to cost the community? I mean, you've talked about already a million dollars we're paying annually to to upkeep it just in in South Bend. But uh, you know, I'm I'm kind of already I'm playing the resident here, but you know, you think, gosh, my property taxes are high and I, you know, gas is high and different things. Is there a cost for the residents associated with this?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So our initial efforts are really part of that grant funding that we receive from outside sources, the Lilly endowment. So a lot of the initial effort is really philanthropically funded. Uh, and so not only do we have money to set up for the first five years for that effort, but then additionally, um, the initial grant funds seeded an endowment. And that endowment will continue to grow over the first five years where we don't plan on in touching, uh we don't plan on touching that endowment in any way over the first five years. And so after the first five years, we'll probably receive about $200, some thousand dollars in uh just the interest off of that endowment to help continue the efforts. Now, local governments might voluntarily choose to help accelerate the impact of the land bank. And so the city of South Bend, say, in the first year, is putting in an additional $500,000 just so that we can try to amplify our impact in kind of a shorter window. But there are no additional new taxes or um anything that's being set up with that entity. That entity is actually a 501c3, so it's not even a governmental entity, it's not creating a new taxing district or uh new taxes to the individual.
SPEAKER_01I love the creativity of it all as we look at different housing um components and what is needed and the different layers that you guys are looking at doing. Is it, you know, I saw that you had um invested in a 50, you know, put some seed money in on a 57 unit housing structure in South Bend for affordability, affordable housing, you know, the land bank, different things we've talked about today, kind of all comes together to create the communities that we love to be here for, the ones that have kept us here, you know, 25 years and more.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're really focused on just being able to execute on our local government's vision. And one of the uniting features that they all want is to be high quality hometowns. And so we want to be able to help, um, you know, whether that's with transportation investments or housing investments. We want to make this area a great place to live, work, and play, and to be an excellent and high quality hometown. So that's what a lot of our efforts are really focused on, and that we're trying to help our local governments execute on those visions.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think that sums it up perfectly. James, thank you for being here today. We really appreciate all you do for the community and your insight today, helping us understand a little bit more about Maycog.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
SPEAKER_00To learn more about the South Bend Regional Chamber and explore our interactive data dashboard where local economic and labor market data comes alive, visit sbrchamber.com. A special thank you to our sponsor, Old National Bank, where relationships and results matter. Discover what Old National Bank can do for you at Oldnational.com.