Economic Development
Most people whose work involves finding the right location for a company have a mental map of the Midwest that was drawn before they ever set foot in it. Indianapolis is on the list. Chicago anchors the top. The space between them — the I-65 corridor through north central Indiana — tends not to make it onto the short list at all.
That blind spot is worth about $4 billion and counting.
The Greater Lafayette region sits midway between those two cities, at the center of a nine-county workforce laborshed, with a manufacturing base that has been drawing foreign direct investment for four decades. Subaru has built cars here since 1989. Caterpillar's Lafayette Large Engine Center is in the middle of a $725 million expansion, one of the largest manufacturing investments in the company's history.
When Sweden's Saab needed a U.S. production site for Air Force jet trainer components, its spokesman named the reason directly: Purdue University's aerospace engineering pipeline.
When SK Hynix — one of three companies in the world that manufactures leading-edge memory chips — announced a $3.87 billion advanced packaging facility in 2024, it chose West Lafayette over a 9,000-acre state-backed site 35 miles away. Same reason.
The investment that made the SK Hynix announcement possible had been underway for years.
Indiana's Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, also known as READI, directed $5 million toward a Purdue-Ivy Tech semiconductor workforce partnership in 2021 before SK Hynix had signed anything.
READI is a state program that funds regional development plans built around talent attraction, quality of place and long-term population growth. It's competitive, it's selective and the state has awarded it to Greater Lafayette twice. The first round, in 2021, brought $30 million to a seven-county region led by Greater Lafayette Commerce. The second round, in 2024, added another $35 million — $65 million total, among the highest cumulative awards in the state.
