In 2021, the Department of Defense’s Office of Local Defense Communities Cooperation awarded the Southern Indiana Development Commission (SIDC) a grant to develop legislation and recommendations to further protect several key DoD installations in the state from incompatible land use and structural encroachments. Pursuant to the grant award, SIDC contracted with White Smith Cousino to undertake the work along with their partners at Benchmark Planning and Crafted Communications. Naval Support Activity Crane, Lake Glendora Training Facility (LGTF), and Grissom Air Reserve Base were the three installations under study for this project. ]
Following the completion Joint Land Use Studies – now known as Compatible Use Studies – at NSA Crane and Grissom Air Reserve Base, the military partners in those areas recommended that Indiana should update its current legislation in order to increase mandated compatible use coordination at the local government level; and to put Indiana’s statutory framework on par with other states that have updated their statutes since Indiana’s were adopted in 2005.
To initiate the project, SIDC assembled a Steering Committee of representatives and stakeholders from the NSA Crane, LGTF, and Grissom ARB communities to steer the project and to provide guidance and input to the WSC team. The Steering Committee assembled and kicked off the project on November 16, 2021.
The resulting report included final recommendations and an Action Plan and identified twenty (20) regulatory and coordination areas in which other states have taken legislative and cooperative action and isolates those Indiana has addressed to-date. In sum, growth around each of the three installations has been relatively minor. Furthermore, while growth is expected in the current missions, there were no major changes in mission sets anticipated at the time this report was finalized.
