Sep. 30—The city of Kokomo has long been known for its pioneering achievements in the automobile industry. Last year, when Stellantis and Samsung SDI announced they would be opening a $2.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Kokomo through the joint venture company StarPlus Energy, it continued the city's reputation as the City of Firsts, becoming one of the first cities in the country to have such a plant.
Since that announcement in May 2022, Kokomo's foray into electric vehicles got stronger as supplier after supplier announced their intentions to locate to Kokomo and near the EV battery plant. With it is expected to come job and wage growth, according to local economic professors.
But manufacturing isn't the only industry that saw plenty of changes.
Tourism to the city is expected to grow compared to pre-pandemic years as more and more outside visitors come to Kokomo. That is largely being driven by Championship Park, the eight baseball/softball fields that host both local and travel games. As a result, more hotels are being built in the city.
EV suppliers
So far, three electric vehicle suppliers have purchased land near the StarPlus Energy plant and will build their own factories.
soulbrain MI, a supplier for the electric vehicle industry, announced late last year it will establish operations in Kokomo, creating up to 75 new, high-wage jobs by the end of 2025.
The company, which is headquartered in Michigan and is a subsidiary of South Korea-based Soulbrain Holdings, will invest $75 million to construct and equip a 30,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on 22 acres at 2141 N. Touby Pike.
"We are excited and honored that soulbrain MI has chosen to invest in Kokomo," said Kokomo Mayor Tyler Moore. "This additional development shows that Kokomo and Howard County are at the forefront of the emerging EV industry. I am confident that our talented local workforce will be poised to fill these positions and help soulbrain MI succeed."
The new facility will allow soulbrain MI to increase production of high-purity electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries, helping to power Stellantis' and Samsung SDI's new next-generation electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant being built nearby.
Jaewon Industrial, a supplier of chemicals and allied products, is investing $102 million to build two facilities on 100 East just south of the StarPlus Energy plant.
In the company's first phase, it will construct a 650,000 square feett facility, and in its planned second phase, it will construct a second, smaller 150,000 square feet facility just east of the larger facility.
The company will disperse conductive slurry and recycle n-methylpyrrolidone (NMP). NMP is used as a solvent in the electrode coating of battery manufacturing.
The two facilities will serve battery manufacturers across the U.S. and in Indiana, including the StarPlus Energy electric vehicle battery plant.
Jaewon plans to begin operations in 2024. The company plans to create up to 100 new, "high wage" jobs by the end of 2024.
The company, which is headquartered in Yeosu, South Korea, has established a subsidiary, JWA Co. Ltd., to serve the U.S. battery and EV market. Its facilities in Kokomo are the company's first U.S. investment.
"By establishing a presence in Indiana, we hope to help secure Indiana as the center of the North American secondary battery and semi-conductor supply chains," Jaewon Shim, CEO of Jaewon Industrial, said in a statement. "Jaewon Industrial is also committed to investing in R&D as well as innovation of leading environmentally friendly solutions for businesses."
The most recent supplier to buy land in the same area is Sangsin Indiana Inc., which bought 11 acres earlier this year.
Sangsin Indiana, according to its Linkedin page, manufacturers fuel cells.
PROJECTED WAGE GROWTH
After a few years of slower employment growth compared to other Indiana cities, Kokomo will outperform those same cities the next two years thanks in large part to the $2.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant, according to forecasts by the Indiana University Center for Econometric Model Research (CEMR).
The Kokomo Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Howard County, will see a more than 5% annual employment growth from the second quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2024 and see a decline in its unemployment rate, according to the CEMR projections that were included in Indiana University Kokomo's 2023 forecast for Kokomo.
That is a sharp reversal from the first quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022 when the Kokomo MSA saw nearly -2% annual employment growth and the county was often in the top three in highest unemployment rate in the state with unemployment rates ranging from as low 2.9% in December 2021 to as high as 6.9% in August 2022.
The model credits the investment by the joint venture between Stellantis and Samsung SDI to build an EV battery plant on the city's far northeast side for the projected wage and employment growth even though the plant itself is not expected to begin operations until the first quarter of 2025.
That's because of the "multiplier effect," explained Dmitriy Chulkov, professor of economics and management information systems at IUK and author of Kokomo's 2023 forecast.
"A large business investment like this ... means every dollar spent keeps being spent over and over in the community," Chulkov said. "People get paid construction wages first, then employment wages of this facility, and they go out and spend money on shops and restaurants, medical care, recreation and so on."
The plant is expected to have an initial annual production capacity of 23 gigawatt hours (GWh), with a possible increase to 33 GWh in the next few years, create 1,400 new jobs and will supply battery modulus for a number of Stellantis' domestic assembly plants.
Most notably, wages at the EV plant are pledged at an average of $32.07 per hour, or $66,705 a year assuming a 40-hour work week, by 2027. That is greater than the county's 2021 median household income of $59,238.
TOURISM REBOUNDING
The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected tourism all over the country. That was no different in Howard County, but the number of visitors to the county is beginning to recover, and new hotels are currently being constructed to meet the growing demand.
According to Sherry Matlock, manager of the Greater Kokomo Visitors Bureau, the county saw year-over-year growth in its hotel occupancy rate and in average daily rates. As of June 2023, the county's total hotel occupancy rate was 73%. That number gets as high as around 90% during peak weekends.
The occupancy rate is "pretty much" back to 2019, pre-pandemic occupancy rate, Matlock said, with sports and corporate travel doing much of the heavy lifting. Notably, the county's daily rate as of June 2023 was $109 a night. That's a $15 increase compared to 2019.
The county's Airbnb occupancy rate as of June 2023 was 76% with an average daily rate of $142 a night. The occupancy rate is up a few percentage points compared to June 2022. The county had a total of 36 entire houses listed on Airbnb.
Two new hotels, Fairfield Inn by Mariott and Home2 Suites by Hilton, are currently being built on the city's south side. Both are expected to begin operations in the first quarter of 2024, with the latter catering to extended stays.
The two new hotels will add more than 200 new hotel rooms to the county, bringing the total room count to a little over 1,000.
Sports travel, led by tournaments at Championship Park, and corporate travel, due to the StarPlus Energy EV battery plant, are driving the county's occupancy rate.
Championship Park is driving a large number of visitors to Kokomo and Howard County.
The facility, located at 2600 Veterans Memorial Drive, saw over 580,000 total visits from over 260,000 unique visitors from March 17, 2022, to Oct. 31, 2022, with the average person visiting the ballpark a total of 2.2 times and visiting for 181 minutes (just over three hours) on average.
Roughly 37% of those visitors were non-local, meaning they came to visit from more than 100 miles away; teams from nearly every state in the country visited Kokomo to play at Championship Park.
That led to more than 2,000 room nights being booked at local hotels during the March 2022 to Oct. 21, 2022, time period. Total visitor spend within the county during that same time frame was estimated at $120 million.
Championship Park was the eighth most visited attraction within a 50-mile radius, trailing its larger sister ballpark Grand Park Sports Campus (4.75 million), the Indianapolis Zoo (1.12 million), Gainbridge Fieldhouse (819,200) and more.
Tyler Juranovich can be reached at 765-454-8577, by email at tyler.juranovich@kokomotribune.com or on Twitter at @tylerjuranovich.
