The 100-Acre DevCo Site Becomes the Heart of Indiana’s First Living Disaster-Avoidance & Eco-Tourism Campus

The Choice in 2026

Option A: Give away 100 prime acres + millions in tax breaks for a water-hungry, power-hungry data center that creates 12–20 jobs and locks the land for 30 years.

Option B: Keep the land, spend almost nothing, and turn it into the central hub that makes Hobart the national model for resilient, beautiful, profitable green cities.

THE VISION: “Hobart Resilience Oasis”
A 100-acre living campus of food forests, warm soaking ponds, stargazing meadows, bee-education trails, koi & mushroom filtration lagoons, rustic courtyards, and glowing night walks — all built with the exact same mycelium/bio-mat/permaculture toolkit we’re already using at Lake George, Big Maple, and the bridges.

Zone on the 100 Acres

What It Is

Revenue + Savings Stream

Net City Cost after Grants

Central Courtyard & Classroom Village

Rustic timber-frame pavilions, cob ovens, solar kitchens, outdoor classrooms

School field trips, corporate retreats, weddings → $400–700k/yr

$80–120k (90 % tourism + education grants)

Warm Soaking Ponds + Steam Sauna Huts

Geothermal or waste-heat warmed ponds (data-center waste heat irony!), lined with bio-mats

Northwest Indiana’s only year-round natural hot-springs experience → $300–500k/yr

$60–90k (health/tourism grants)

Koi + Mushroom Filtration Lagoons

Multi-level ponds: top level warm soaking, lower levels filter + grow koi/perch/oysters

Fish & mushroom sales/city trades + free water treatment → $100–200k/yr + $150k/yr water savings

$40–60k (LARE + NRCS)

3-Mile Food-Forest Loop Trails

Apples, persimmons, pawpaws, hazelnuts, berries — free snacks for walkers & horses

U-pick days, guided tours → $150–250k/yr

$30–50k (NRCS + Sustain Our Great Lakes)

Stargazing Meadows + Solar-Lit Canopy Walk

Open prairie with mycelium-glow paths, tree uplights, observatory deck

Night tickets, astronomy clubs → $100–200k/yr

$25–40k (tourism micro-grants)

Highway-Edge Pollinator Paradise Bio-Filters

2,000 ft of riprap-style bio-mats + prairie garden visible from I-65

“Welcome to Hobart” living billboard that visually lures tourists → drives all other rev

$20–30k (INDOT mitigation + GLRI)

Waste-to-Asset Hub

Collect city yard waste + restaurant grease + horse manure → biochar, mushroom substrate, compost tea +

Sells to landscapers + fuels the whole campus → $80–150k/yr

$0 (self-funding after Year 1)

Total first-5-year city cash needed: under $400k
(Everything else paid by the same 8–10 grants we’re already filing for Lake George & Big Maple)

Total annual revenue + savings once running (Year 5 onward): $1.3 – $2.3 million

Plus millions in avoided water/power infrastructure costs we would have given the data center for free.

Jobs created: 80–150 seasonal + permanent (guides, gardeners, chefs, educators) instead of 12–20.

Maintenance: Visitors + school groups + horses do 90 % of it (picking fruit, harvesting mushrooms, feeding fish).T

his isn’t a park.
This is the national proof-of-concept that a small city can turn every liability (stormwater, waste, erosion, empty land) into assets that make money and make people drive hours to visit.

We don’t need a data center to put Hobart on the map.
We need 100 acres, the toolkit we already own, and the courage to say: “Not for sale — we’re building something better.”

Let’s make the old DevCo site the reason people say “Have you been to Hobart yet?”

Christine Pierce – Disaster Avoidance