Utility relocation work has started on SoLa, the much-anticipated $280 million mixed-used development that's expected to transform downtown Michigan City and give it one of the most dramatic skylines in Northwest Indiana.
The towering 14-story development will be one of the tallest buildings in Michigan City and feature cutting-edge architecture, including a glassy façade and a donut shape with a hole circling around a fourth-story rooftop deck with sweeping views of Lake Michigan. The 628,000-square-foot project will include two boutique hotels, condos, townhomes, upscale restaurants, retail, bars and a rooftop pool overlooking Lake Michigan just steps from the Washington Park beach.
NIPSCO has been out at the site, getting it ready for construction.
"Now that the weather's better, they're moving the utilities," Michigan City Mayor Angie Nelson Deuitch said. "They've started relocating the gas lines. Basically, they're relocating the gas lines and prepping the site to begin."
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Scott Goodman is leading a group of developers to build SoLa, short for South of the Lake in the abbreviated style of hip New York City neighborhoods like TriBeCa in Manhattan or Dumbo in Brooklyn, to the You Are Beautiful site where the Michigan City News-Dispatch building and police station used to be. It's now an empty field just south of the Lubeznik Center for the Arts where one of Chicago-based artist Matthew Hoffman's You Are Beautiful sculptures had been displayed.
He's a prominent Chicago developer whose Sterling Bay firm developed Fulton Market, the Bronzeville Lakefront and the Tyson Food Headquarters. He's said he hopes to make Michigan City as popular for visitors and Chicagoans with second summer homes as nearby New Buffalo just across the state line in Michigan.
The project will capitalize off of all the beach traffic that flocks to Michigan City every summer, Deuitch said.
"We have a booming tourism business," she said. "SoLa is part of that because it had hotels, condominiums and townhomes. That there is really geared toward residential and tourism. We know we have tourism but we also want residents to live here."
The project is projected to generate $680 million in economic impact over the next 15 years. The hotels would drawn an estimated 100,000 visitors a year who would come to visit local attractions like the Indiana Dunes National Park, Mount Baldy Beach, the Washington Park Beach, the Blue Chip Casino, Lighthouse Place Premium Outlets and Washington Park Zoo.
SoLa is expected to create 800 jobs, including 292 permanent jobs generating $18.4 million in annual wages.
Economic Development Corporation Michigan City, Indiana Executive Director Clarence Hulse said his agency was in the process of filing tax credit documents with the state to help incentivize the more-than-quarter-billion-dollar investment.
"It's a huge project with a lot of complexity," he said. "It will have hotels, a parking garage and 25,000 square feet of retail. It's a huge project and very complex."
The nearly unprecedented scope of SoLa shows the economic momentum Michigan City has been experiencing.
"For a small city of 32,000, we're punching above our weight," Hulse said.
SoLa will include a 396-space parking garage tucked out of view and two hotels: TRYP by Wyndham and Trademark Collection by Wyndham hotels. They collectively will have 255 rooms, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, a gym, a spa, a 15,000-square-foot resort-style swimming pool and views of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline. The fourth-floor deck overlooking the shoreline will have the pool, a hot tub, pickleball, movie screenings, art shows and community events.
The development will have a 14-story condo tower and 17 duplexed townhomes facing Lake Michigan.
"We're excited about it. They're continuing to work on the design. It's going to be absolutely phenomenal," former Michigan City Redevelopment Commission President Don Babcock said. "The preliminary renderings I've seen of it show it will be the most magnificent building in Northwest Indiana by a long shot."
New renderings should soon be released.
"The amenities are pretty close to remaining the same but the look is better," he said. "There have been some preliminary drawings but they're not as nice and elegant. It's a similar look but more enhanced and nuanced."
For more information, visit www.SoLAmichigancity.com or follow @SoLAmichigancity on Facebook and Instagram.