CHICAGO – Representatives from four planning agencies in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin today signed the Wingspread Multi-State Regional Accord, the first agreement of its kind in the nation..

"This is the first time in the nation that four adjacent regional planning agencies covering all or parts of 17 counties in three states have come together in this kind of partnership, and it can serve as a model for similar agreements in other areas of the country," said NIPC President Herbert T. Schumann. "We recognize that the future of the greater Chicago metropolitan region depends upon initiatives that extend beyond state borders."

The 17 counties in the Wingspread Accord cover a total of nearly 8,000 square miles and more than 1,500 governmental entities comprised of cities, townships and special-purpose governing units.

"The four agencies signing the accord acknowledge that the multi-state region is characterized by socio-economic-environmental interdependence," said Gary Mayor Scott King during a news conference in Chicago. He also serves as president of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC).

Parameters of the agreement were negotiated last year at the Wingspread conference facility in Wisconsin. In addition to Schumann and King, signing the final accord were Batavia Mayor Jeffery Schielke, vice chairman of the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS), and Jean M. Jacobson, secretary of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) and county executive of Racine County.

The initial activities planned by the Wingspread groups are:

• Develop a tri-state regional web site as a point-of-entry for information about the Chicago-Milwaukee-Gary area.
• Conduct a strategic analysis of the economy in consensus with business organizations in the tri-state regional area.
• Create a case book with profiles of development projects to encourage sound economic development projects in the tri-state region.
• Sponsor a series of workshops to identify common coastal management issues of the Lake Michigan Coastal Management area in the tri-state region.

Key commitments of the Wingspread Accord are:

• Serve as a forum for local government leadership and engage business, civic and institutional sectors to support regional planning.
• Enlist federal and state governments to play key roles as partners and funders of tri-state planning initiatives in cooperation with existing agencies.
• Increase interstate and interagency communications.
• Develop methods to improve planning efforts.

NIPC provides forecasting, land use, community development and natural resource planning for northeastern Illinois, the third largest metropolitan region in the country covering approximately 1,520 square miles. It contains 272 municipalities, six counties and more than 1,000 other governmental units.

SEWRPC serves as the official area-wide planning agency for the highly urbanized southeast region of Wisconsin. The 2,700-square-mile region contains seven counties, 147 general-purpose local units of government and numerous school and special-purpose governmental districts.

CATS is the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) designated by state and local officials to administer the urban transportation planning process for the northeastern Illinois region, which includes Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, plus a portion of Kendall County.

NIRPC is a multi-purpose area-wide planning agency created by state statute, covering the three counties of Lake, Porter and LaPorte in northwestern Indiana. It is home to 741,468 citizens and covers 1,520 square miles, with 41 cities and towns and 44 townships in the area.

Editor’s Note: Complete contents of the Wingspread Accord News Information Kit distributed at the 10 a.m. news conference are available for downloading from the NIPC Website at www.nipc.cog.il.us.