Working in Northwest Indiana: doing business on Indiana's North Coast.

• Author: Blum, Peter L.
• Position: Indiana's North Coast: Living & Working in Northwest Indiana

For decades since the steel industry first established its beachhead on the edge of Lake Michigan, the economic fortunes of Indiana's North Coast have been linked to the giant mills that loom over the Indiana shores.

The steel industry's presence in Lake and Porter counties is an impressive one, both physically and financially. Five mills owned by LTV Corp., Inland Steel Co., USX Corp., National Steel Co. and Bethlehem Steel Corp. virtually line the shore of Lake Michigan between Portage and East Chicago. Together, the five industrial complexes make more than a fifth of the steel produced in the United States. No region in the country can boast such a share of the industry. The mills employ more than 35,000 workers, according to recent statistics.

All the steel companies have made huge investments to upgrade their Indiana facilities, and they plan to continue that trend. 1991, for example, saw the completion of $260 million worth of expansion and improvement at the USX mill, known as USS Gary Works. In all, in the past five years the area's mills have invested $5 billion in modernization projects.

Charles Oberlie, president of the Northwest Indiana Forum, predicts that in the next year, however, the region's highly respected health-care industry will overtake steel in employment.

Oberlie works out of a small office tucked into an out-of-the-way side street in Merrillville. From there, he directs the effort to expand and diversify the economy for a seven-county area. Most of the growth is centered in the three northernmost counties--Lake, Porter and LaPorte--along the southern edge of Lake Michigan. The remaining four counties--Jasper, Newton, Pulaski and Starke--are rural areas with much smaller population bases than their three neighbors to the north. Nonetheless, they support a diverse industrial base in addition to the agricultural-services industry.

Oberlie's business bible--indeed the bible for the entire recruitment effort in the region--is a study on target marketing completed in 1991 by the consulting firm PHH Fantus, which is the nation's leading company in the field of corporate location strategic planning. Fantus examined the region and its entire demographic and economic picture and selected 10 manufacturing industries suited for the region. Oberlie and the forum whittled the list down to five realistic targets and hit the road on an intense recruiting trip. Selected for emphasis were food processing, automotive parts and accessories, fabricated metals, control instruments and plastics industries.

"Northwest Indiana is an excellent area for businesses," says Bob Buhle, vice president of Centier Bank in Whiting. "We've got tremendous transportation facilities that businesses need."

"You couldn't find a better location in the Midwest," agrees Terri Petras of the forum staff. "In terms of accessibility to markets, Northwest Indiana is prime. It is within 500 miles of 40 percent of the U.S. consumer market and that's as simple as an overnight truck trip for most products." Northwest Indiana is crisscrossed by interstate highways that run coast-to-coast and from north to south. There also is extensive rail and air service and shipping through the Port of Indiana at Burns Harbor in Porter County.

And, perhaps most important, a new airport to serve the Chicago area will be built in or near Northwest Indiana. The building and operation of the airport will bring thousands of jobs to Northwest Indiana wherever it is located and the business development opportunities are almost endless.

Oberlie says the ideal mix of incoming businesses would include many smaller...