Boone County is on pace for its best year yet for chamber membership growth, according to Sean Reaves, Executive Director of the Boone County Chamber of Commerce, who joined WILO and Boone’s Best 102.7’s “Party Line” Monday morning to discuss storm recovery, upcoming community events, workforce housing challenges, and progress on the Lebanon Lilly development.
Chamber Adds Over 100 Members So Far in 2026
Reaves reported the chamber is adding new members at a pace of roughly 15 per month, and has already surpassed last year’s total membership growth with several months still to go.
“We have already added more members this year than we did all of last year,” Reaves said. “So that tells you kinda how the year has gone. And last year was a good year for us… we’ve got over a hundred new members so far this year and lots more joining. We’re having conversations still like every day with new members, and it’s been really exciting to see that growth.”
Much of that growth is coming from beyond Boone County’s borders, Reaves noted, as neighboring communities look to tap into the county’s momentum.
“We get a lot from Montgomery County, lots from Tippy, Northern Hendricks, Northern Marion County, Clinton County as well,” he said. “We’re seeing a lot of that where we become a little bit of a regional hub of activity, and so that has helped drive membership as well.”
Reaves added that some of those out-of-county businesses are turning membership into real investment. “You’re seeing that investment in Boone County by, they dip their toe in to the county through the chamber, but now they’re actually going to invest in the county, and that’s what we really want to see,” Reaves said.
Storm Damage Across the Region
Reaves also addressed the aftermath of last week’s severe weather, which brought flooding and high winds to central Indiana.
“We definitely got the same onslaught that everybody else did, but we’re lucky that obviously Boone County is generally a dry county as far as water,” Reaves said, noting that Sugar Creek and other tributaries still rose and caused some road closures. “I think the biggest thing last week in addition to the flooding was just the high winds — we had a lot of branches down, a lot of trees that were damaged, and some house damage as well.”
He credited local emergency crews for their response and offered sympathy to harder-hit areas. “The emergency crews over here had done a great job trying to keep everybody safe,” he said. “I pray for our friends over in Hamilton County, down to Marion County, and even on up north — Monster, I know, got hit really hard too. Just really rough to see everybody getting beat up so bad by Mother Nature.”
Upcoming Chamber Events
Reaves previewed a busy calendar of chamber programming:
• Off the Clock — This Thursday at Witham Hospital. “Great chance to show off all the great things that Witham Health Services does,” Reaves said, describing it as a free, open networking event that rotates monthly among different Boone County businesses.
• Culinary Collective — August 25th, geared toward restaurant owners and operators. This quarter’s speaker is Scott Grosjean, CEO of Silverbag, a company that audits business expenses. “They come in and look at your expenses and everything from your garbage to your copier to everything and tell you how you could be saving money,” Reaves said. “And they don’t talk about your labor.”
• Marketers Meetup — Aimed at small and medium-sized businesses handling their own marketing. “Bring your computers,” Reaves said of the format, where a marketing professional walks attendees step-by-step through tools like Google Business Profile updates. “It’s very helpful to those folks that don’t have an experienced marketer on their team or they’re not outsourcing their marketing.”
• Welcome Wednesday — A monthly session for new and lapsed chamber members. “It’s just a chance for them to learn more about their chamber membership and how to get the most out of it,” Reaves said, comparing membership to a gym membership: “The act of joining is great… but if you don’t come in, you don’t see the benefits.”
Workforce Housing and Childcare Remain Top Concerns
Asked about ongoing challenges facing the county, Reaves pointed to housing diversity and affordable childcare as the two biggest issues chamber members raise.
“Even though a lot of housing is being brought to market, it’s diversity of housing that I think is the biggest challenge,” Reaves said. “We’ve gotten away from using the term affordable housing because affordable to you and I might be different than someone else. So it’s really the term now in the workforce industry is workforce housing.”
Reaves said the issue ties directly into economic development efforts across the region. “As companies are coming into this area of our state — and that means Montgomery, Clinton, Boone, Tippecanoe — they wanna know what the workforce situation is and how they’re gonna find workers,” Reaves said. “A part of that is that you gotta have housing, you gotta have affordable child care available to people for working parents. I’d say those are probably the two biggest we hear about the most.”
Transportation, he said, is less of a concern locally thanks to Boone County Transit. Looking ahead, Reaves said he’d like to see more agricultural-sector investment in the county. “I would love to see a company with ag interests come in and be a part of the Lebanon project or part of any kind of growth out in Boone County,” he said. “I also think it would be a little bit of a win for our farming community to see more ag development.”
Lebanon Lilly Project and Data Center Update
Reaves gave an update on the massive Lebanon development anchored by Eli Lilly and Company. Lebanon Project 2, part of the Lilly development, has opened following a ribbon-cutting roughly two months ago. Still under construction are LP1 — the larger of the two Lilly facilities — and the Medicine Foundry along State Road 32, along with a nearby data center.
“I don’t want to speak out of turn and give a wrong date, and I think those are constantly moving,” Reaves said of completion timelines, promising updated figures in a future appearance. “They’re very safety conscious on all the projects, and so when you have the kind of winds that we experienced, I don’t know how they wouldn’t have been affected by that.”
Reaves also shared a data point from a recent chamber conference that put Boone County’s single data center in perspective. A counterpart from Loudoun County, Virginia told him her county has 234 data centers. “My jaw — I had to pick it up off the floor,” Reeves said. “We’re a county that used to be an ag county, and it’s slowly progressed, and now this is a big industry for us — all the data centers.”
He argued that while data centers bring fewer jobs than some industries, the jobs tend to pay well. “A lot of people will say data centers don’t bring a lot of jobs, and they’re right,” Reaves said. “But the jobs they do bring in are typically higher wage jobs… and that’s helpful.”
Boone County Bites and Fall Job Fair
Reaves closed with details on two upcoming events:
Boone County Bites Food Festival — Saturday, August 29th, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Witham Pavilion at the Boone County Fairgrounds. Tickets are $25, capped at 400, and include sampling from 25 restaurants plus live music. It’s a 21-and-over event due to alcohol service. “It’s indoors and it’s air conditioned,” Reaves said. “You’ll have 25 restaurants there, and they’ll all have sample portions of food out for you to try… You won’t go home hungry.”
Fall Job Fair — Set for the first week of October at the Boone County Fairgrounds, with a registration deadline for hiring businesses this week. Confirmed employers include Witham Hospital, Eli Lilly, FTIC, and GXO. “It’s a free event to come out,” Reeves said. “There’s no cost to the job seekers,” and resources like interpreters and Boone County Transit will be on-site to help attendees.
