Johnson County growth: prime location, available land, quality of life among the selling points.

• Author: Yoakum, Holly
• Position: Focus

A heavily traveled Interstate 65 runs through the eastern townships. The bustling U.s. 31 and State Road 135 retail corridors run through the middle. The Interstate 69 extension will be built at the county's western border. And county commissioners are planning to build an east-west road that will connect each of these north-south corridors.

With those major thoroughfares, Johnson County seems to be the perfect place to recruit distribution centers and warehouses. But Chris Kinnett, executive director of the Johnson County Development Corp., says distribution centers aren't on the list of businesses the county's economic-development leaders are working hard to attract.

"We are in a prime place for distribution, so that will be a natural development. We want to attract higher capital investments and higher-paying jobs," Kinnett says. "We're not going to chase away distribution by any means. We're not targeting those businesses either."

Kinnett says a recently developed master plan for economic development in Johnson County lists three types of companies county leaders want to see develop: advanced manufacturing plants, plastics factories and biology/life-sciences companies. Though the area already is home to a small number of firms in these sectors--such as Indiana Protein Technologies in Greenwood, Franklin Plastic Products in the county seat and Lear Corp. in Edinburgh--officials are eager to lure the kinds of firms that operate in other Indiana communities, such as Eli Lilly & Co. and Roche Diagnostics in Indianapolis and DeKalb Molded Plastics Co. in Butler.

The county's economic-development plan also places a priority on serving existing businesses, helping keep them healthy and vital and helping keep their employees educated and productive, Kinnett says.

Johnson County workers and business owners have been lucky. While much of the country and Indiana have suffered significant layoffs during the past year, this doughnut county has retained low unemployment numbers and steady income tax collections through 2002.

Forty-three percent of the county's workforce leaves Johnson County for employment, which means the county has an untapped workforce to sell. Kinnett hopes that will help attract new business and fill the area's business-park developments.

The most prominent is the Franklin Tech Park, being developed at I-65 and State Road 44 in Franklin. Franklin Mayor Norm Blankenship announced about a year and a half ago that the city would...