The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority has created an agency that will acquire and remediate properties in an effort to assist communities in redeveloping land that the private sector has ignored.

The RDA Board of Directors voted Thursday to create the Northwest Indiana Land Development Entity, or LDE, to combine multiple properties, clean brownfields and demolish existing structures — a set of actions the LDE’s proponents say cities and towns struggle with.

“One of the things that came up over and over again in talking with folks in the communities, in the private sector, in the public sector, in the nonprofit sector is a need for getting land assemblage over certain hurdles,” RDA Economic Development Director A.J. Bytnar said during a presentation on the LDE.

Changes in

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