Submitted
The City of Tipton has successfully established a Riverfront District to promote investment in its historic downtown. Establishing the Riverfront District will help concentrate local efforts to recruit investment by leveraging the natural resources of Cicero Creek while also capitalizing on the momentum of the downtown.
“Downtown Tipton has made tremendous strides in the last eight years with regard to beautification and reinvestment,” said Mayor Don Havens. “However, we are hoping to leverage this Riverfront District to take our downtown to the next level. We have been successful at beautification, facade investments, and programming in the downtown and we hope this will enable us to redevelop key areas to make Downtown Tipton even better.”
The area identified as the Tipton Riverfront District is best defined as the Downtown overlay extending south to the northern border of the Cicero Creek. This area features several commercial businesses, residential area, park area and adjacent to the Tipton Community School Corporation.
“The goal is to think big picture with this district,” said Kegan Schmicker, Community Development Consultant to the City of Tipton. “While the Riverfront District will help us to attract capable and exciting restaurateurs, this will only be the first step. Successfully recruiting such eating establishments will have a positive impact on our retail establishments and aid our efforts to attract new residents to the area. Lastly, there is a recreation component to this that could be leveraged to make the City of Tipton an entertainment destination for people to visit and call home.”
The Riverfront District is a statutory program available to community be Indiana Code IC 7.1-3-20-16.1. It enables a community to issue three-way liquor licenses to approved applicants for an annual fee of $1,000. The nuances of the licenses do vary compared to a traditional license, but should enable the City of Tipton to spur growth.
The City of Tipton will be working in the coming weeks to formalize its application process and get all required documentation published at tiptongov.com/city, so any interested party may apply.