WREC History

Enhancement of the Wabash River corridor as a priority community development project grew out of Vision 2020, a Lafayette-West Lafayette/Tippecanoe County regional comprehensive planning initiative completed from 1999 to 2001. The Vision 2020 plan identified enhancement of the Wabash River corridor as the most important multi-jurisdictional community development project facing Lafaeyette-West Lafayette. A community coordinating committee was formed with leadership provided by NCHS to look at local options and resources and to review river projects nationwide in order to identify a successful strategy to accomplish river corridor enhancement. The committeed identified a strategy utilizing a non-profit corporation to lead the corridor enhancement effort as the best management practice used by river corridor projects throughout the nation.

Project leadership provided through a non-profit strategy would address criteria identified by the committee as those necessary to achieve successful river corridor enhancement and to develop characteristics identified in successful riverfront projects nationwide. Key project leadership qualities include:

• Long-term continuity in relation to project planning, leadership, and fund raising; and

• The ability to function regionally as dictated by the scope of the proposed project in its physical size, complexity in range of develpoment, and the corridor's position geo-politically through four politial jurisdictions and Purdue University.

Initially, the project's focus was determined to include only Tippecanoe County. However, corridor enhancement was also planned to eventually extend into the adjacent counties of Warren, Fountain, and Carroll counties as detailed by WREC's four county work area. With expansion into this larger area, an appropriate, evolving leadership structure would also be required so that regional and county leaders could be included in the management and governance of the non-profit. This expansion further supported the requirement for governance to occur through a public-sector, non-governmental structure rather than the more traditional governmental entity. Finally, due to the project's anticipated fiscal cost, a community-driven project rather than a local government driven project was required. For this community-driven effort to be successful, the created non-profit agency must partner closely with local government. Therefore, the board membership includes local government and Purdue University representatives.