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Warsaw Redevelopment Commission on Monday approved the OrthoWorx Orthopedic Industry Retention Initiative (OIRI) subrecipient agreement for the Millworks housing project.
The Millworks housing development is at 302 W. Market St., the former Owens grocery store, and had its groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 23. AP Development LLC is expecting to have the 86 market-rate apartments, with an yet-to-be-named restaurant in the southeast corner, completed by the end of 2026.
Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner told the Redevelopment Commission Monday “the agreement is in the amount of $2 million. Money for the approval of any paid submission will run through us, but the money will not necessarily go through us. The money will go directly from OIRI to the developer. But this is basically the subrecipient agreement between us and OrthoWorx to administer the $2 million that had been awarded for the Millworks project.”
Board member and former Warsaw mayor Joe Thallemer said he assumed those funds are deposited within OrthoWorx’s coffers.
“Yes,” said Skinner. “So, OrthoWorx went in and received funding based on meeting certain criteria. So they already have the funding for this in the OrthoWorx bank account. The developer would submit applications to us, and we would approve those applications submitted, and then they would be directly paid from OrthoWorx to the developer. So, we’re the middle man in terms of approving the pay applications, but the money is not going to go from them to us to the developer. It’s going to go from them directly to the developer.”
He said the city will just approve the pay applications and submit them for payment.
“So as the subrecipient, we’re responsible for making sure the work is getting done, but we’re not going to be receiving the funds and paying them,” Skinner said.
Thallemer asked if the city had inspectors or does it rely on the developer’s submissions of progress.
Skinner said they haven’t contracted with an inspector. “We will be the ones responsible to make sure they’ve completed the work. Most of the times, they will submit their pay applications, they’ll submit any subcontractor pay applications, work completed; any materials stored that they’re asking for payment, they’ll submit pictures of or the receipts of those materials. So all of that is in the pay application request when we get it. We just review it,” he said.
Thallemer made the motion to approve the subrecipient agreement with OrthoWorx for the project, Council President Jack Wilhite seconded the motion and it passed 4-0. Councilman Mike Klondaris was absent.
The only other item the commission approved was a list of six claims. Those included $201.89 from NIPSCO for the Marsh building; $252.16 from Quill for office supplies; $250 from Argent Institutional Trust Co. for administration of the Winona PVD bond; $10,624.85 from Warsaw Community Development Corp. for the monthly payment of Main Street Warsaw’s contract; $254,000 from Metropolitan Title for the Polk parking lot at the intersection of Main and Indiana streets the city is trying to close on; and $10,440 from GAI Consultants for the County Farm Road sidewalk preliminary engineering.
Regarding the $201.89 from NIPSCO, Thallemer asked at what point were they devoid of paying that. Skinner said they should be done.
Commission member Bill Curl asked about the $254,000 from Metropolitan Title.
“So we wired funds for closing. It’s in escrow. Still trying to close this week. We can’t get it closed, then we’ll ask for our money to be sent back,” Skinner said.
“We only get so much time to wire those funds, and we were trying to close last Thursday, so we had to wire the money before we had the closing done,” he said.
There’s no closing date for the parking lot though they’re trying to get the purchase closed. Skinner hopes to close on it by the end of the year, but he doesn’t know. He said they have a purchase agreement for the parking lot signed by the city, but they’re trying to get the owners to sign it still.
Thallemer made the motion to approve the claims, with Wilhite seconding the motion and it passed 4-0.
