In 2002, Elkhart government and business leaders issued an SOS: The Elkhart economy--though booming--was heading for trouble if it didn't start changing its ways. They launched the Horizon Project and drafted an extensive plan to build a more sustainable economy in the face of growing global competition. Among other concerns, as reported by The Elkhart Truth, the Horizon Project analysis warned of Elkhart County's dependence on a few industries. It advocated offering incentives to encourage new industries, beefing up work force training, and an overhaul of land-use rules. The plan got under way -- but not in time to blunt the impact of the current recession.

Now, with the RV industry operating at a fraction of its earlier strength, and grinding unemployment levels here, the need to complete the economic makeover is just that much more urgent, say organizers. Enter Horizon Project 2.0, an attempt to jump-start the project, beginning Wednesday.
"We are in desperate straits," William Johnson, chairman of the Horizon Project from 2002 to 2006, told The Elkhart Truth. "We've got to figure out some ways to change the way we approach community development."
One of the organizers of this renewed push, County Commissioner Mike Yoder, is quick to point out that Elkhart made noteworthy progress on Horizon plan's original goals.
Groundbreaking for a new extension of Ivy Tech Community College in Elkhart in July marked one concrete step toward the 2002 goal of raising the educational level of local workers. He says an overhaul of land-use and zoning laws represents real progress toward the goal of better planned development. A coordinated economic development office combined the resources of local and state offices in one place, to accommodate incoming businesses, he says. Breaking with tradition, the county put in place a tax abatement to attract high-tech companies.
"We were just getting to the point where we were beginning to implement this stuff when the recession hit," says Yoder. "We'd actually had only done one or two tax abatements for high-tech companies before the recession."
Progress was sometimes slow, says Yoder, in part because times were so good prior to the recession.
"One reason it was so tough was that nobody saw the needs for these changes."
Now, Yoder says, Elkhart needs to get to its unfinished business: to vastly improve its educational system for long-term development. And it needs to formulate a robust set of policies -- including tax abatements and other incentives -- to retain and fuel some of the nascent business clusters in the area, and attract new companies.
There is a sense of urgency among leaders trying to breathe new life into the Horizon project this week.
"We are slowly sliding -- in some cases not so slowly -- sliding behind other regions of the country," said Dan Boecher, a loan officer with First State Bank and incoming chair of Horizon 2.0, speaking to The Elkhart Truth. "The slide will continue if not addressed."