The City of Aurora’s housing strategy proposes to grow the City of Aurora’s population and Southeast Indiana’s workforce by fostering up to 150 new housing units in a proposed new single family housing development, new infill housing units, and opening a new development site. There are multiple components of this strategy for increasing and modernizing Aurora’s limited and aging housing stock. One Dearborn’s 2019 Dearborn County Housing Market Analysis & Implementation Action Plan identified a market for 135 new housing units in the River Cities (Aurora, Lawrenceburg, Greendale) area by 2023.

The first part of this project, the Kopp Farm Single Family Residential Development, is a sewer capacity improvement project necessary to allow for residential development on the Kopp Farm Site in the City of Aurora. A developer proposed in 2022 constructing up to 76 single family residences on 40 acres at the Kopp Farm Site on State Road 148/Sunnyside Avenue. Housing development on the site, as well as other potential housing sites further west on State Road 148, will require Aurora Utilities to construct new sewer lift stations and line upgrades.

Aurora Utilities has invested $140,000 in local funds and the City of Aurora has contributed $794,000 in American Rescue Plan Act allocation as match for a $700,000 Indiana Office of Community & Rural Affairs Community Development Block Grant for engineering and construction of Sanitary Sewer System Improvements identified in the Aurora Utilities Master Plan completed in 2021 by GRW Engineering. Dave O’Mara Construction has submitted a bid for construction of the Sanitary Sewer System Improvements totaling $1,506,955. READI funds address an approximately $215,000 funding gap between the sewer construction and engineering costs and the committed City ARPA and OCRA CDBG funds.

When residential development may occur at the Kopp Farm site, Aurora Redevelopment Commission will seek to establish a Single-Family Residential TIF District on this site to put toward public infrastructure needs at this or other development sites in the city. The sewer improvement project is located within a Qualified Census Tract.

SEI READI News