City to give nearly $3 million to South Bend Chocolate Co. founder for dinosaur museum
SOUTH BEND — City officials recently took the first step in granting nearly $3 million to South Bend Chocolate Co. owner Mark Tarner, on the condition that his company finishes building a dinosaur museum and a new chocolate production plant within two years.
Tarner is also expected to invest more than $15 million of his own money and create nearly 150 jobs under the agreement with the city.
Battered by revenue loss from pandemic-forced business closures, Tarner said last year his project may not come to fruition. But he received $1.76 million from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, and he says the project will succeed if the South Bend Common Council approves a plan to give him $2.7 million.
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“We went through COVID, and it was terrible. We’ve really done a tremendous job of surviving," Tarner told city officials recently. "Our sales are back. … Like the gambler that I am, I just put all my chips in. So I think we can make it a success."
"And I don’t know anything about the financing," he added, half in jest. "I know how to sell chocolate.”
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Having founded the chocolate company in 1991, Tarner has spent the past two decades leading it while digging for dinosaur bones at a private site in Montana. At an 88-acre site southwest of the U.S. 31 bypass and U.S. 20, he plans to build:
A museum to display the dinosaur bones alongside live animals such as tortoises
A South Bend Chocolate Co. Museum and a chocolate production facility
A South Bend Public House restaurant along with a small farm
An interactive trail highlighting the Saint Lawrence River continental divide, which separates the Great Lakes basin from watersheds that drain south to the Atlantic Ocean
The city has supported the project since 2017, when it annexed the site and sold it to Tarner. In 2019 officials agreed to give Tarner $1.4 million to make infrastructure improvements, said Acting Director of Community Investment Caleb Bauer.
Tarner expected to finish the tourist attraction by the end of next year, but cites "supply chain delays" for a requested six-month extension to June 30, 2024. The Redevelopment Commission, which controls the use of Tax Increment Financing dollars, approved the proposal last week, and the Council will likely make a final vote in November.
"I think the future of our county is on the northwestern edge," Tarner said last week to the RDC. He said the nearby intersection has annual traffic of "13 million people."
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"A lot of visitors are going to Michigan to vacation," he added, "and I want to capture those. Because to grow, we have to capture outside money.”
Bauer said the city's support rests on Tarner's private investment of $15.4 million and the creation of 144 new full-time jobs.
But the larger vision is to support a tourist attraction in light of the future investment, namely new hotels and restaurants, it could draw to the area. Bauer compared the museum project to Fair Oaks Farms, an agritourism attraction off I-65 near Rensselaer that drew 500,000 visitors in 2019. A popular dinosaur museum in Ogden, Utah, receives on average 175,000 visitors a year, Bauer said.
"A tourism attraction of this scale is not something we’ve had in the city in a number of years," Bauer said. "The potential room nights that could be generated by this facility —we’re optimistic it could represent $10 million annually in tourism revenue for local hotels and for the (St. Joseph County) Hotel-Motel Tax Board."
Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jordantsmith09
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend Chocolate Co. founder requests city aid for dinosaur museum
