FORT WAYNE – Six sites were declared Wednesday to be ready for commercial development under a new program sponsored by the Northeast Indiana Foundation and the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership.

The initial Certified Site Ready program sites are in LaGrange, Noble, Huntington, Wells and Adams counties, though more are in the works. The program is similar to – and meant to augment – the Shovel Ready program sponsored by the Indiana Economic Development Corp.

“Ours is actually more stringent with respect to control of the property,” said Mark Becker, executive director of the Northeast Indiana Foundation.

To be certified under the northeast Indiana program, a site must be under the control of a public entity such as a city, county or economic-development corporation. That way, private owners can’t back out of a deal at the last minute, Becker said.

In addition to control requirements, properties must meet 14 other conditions concerning available infrastructure, environmental and soil quality and other factors. When businesses look for sites, such a certification eliminates much of their guesswork, Becker said.

“One of the things they’re looking to do is eliminate sites,” Becker said, explaining that certification likely will keep a site from quick elimination.

That’s certainly what Keith Gillenwater, executive director of the LaGrange County Economic Development Corp., hopes. One of the sites unveiled Wednesday is a 114-acre parcel in Fawn River Crossing Industrial Park at the intersection of the Indiana Toll Road and Indiana 9.

“We’ve done a lot of the legwork so they don’t have to,” Gillenwater said of potential occupants.

Gillenwater said his organization spent more than $10,000 on boundary, environmental and geotechnical surveys and other work for the certification.

Becker said the foundation paid consultants Strategic Development Group to certify the sites in LaGrange County and elsewhere in northeast Indiana.

The certification is more than just economic-development mumbo jumbo, said Michael Hicks, director of Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research. It’s like passing a professional exam: It doesn’t make you a better doctor or an accountant, but “having passed it tells everybody you’re ready,” Hicks said.

Such certifications are less valuable in big cities such as Fort Wayne because they tend to be well served by economic developers who can identify properties that meet businesses’ needs, Hicks said.

“The people who are the biggest beneficiaries are much smaller communities,” Hicks said.

The Northeast Indiana Foundation and the partnership began developing the certification program about a year ago to increase the number of properties in the region with certification.

Park 30, a development in Whitley County, has been designated by the state as ready for construction. There’s no reason for it also to be designated certified site-ready, Becker said.

But Indiana is limited in the number of certifications it can make in a year and it must spread them around geographically. So the program announced Wednesday is meant to designate more sites in northeast Indiana, Becker said.

Gillenwater, of the LaGrange County Economic Development Corp., said he doesn’t expect the site in his county to jump off the market tomorrow. But as the economy recovers, he said, “we’re going to be in a great position.”

mschladen@jg.net