IU selects Cannelton Grows for rural revitalization studio in Perry County

Indiana University has chosen Cannelton Grows Inc. for its 2026 Rural Placemaking Studio, giving the Perry County group conceptual designs that could help turn the main floor of a former school building into a community hub centered on local food, wellness and entrepreneurship. The selection, announced March 5, put Cannelton among 15 rural Indiana organizations in the new cohort.

The studio pairs IU students and faculty with rural partners through the IU ServeDesign Center at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design and the IU Center for Rural Engagement. IU says the program serves communities with populations under 50,000, generally within about a 90-mile radius of Bloomington, and the 2026 cycle is the third year of the effort, which launched in 2024. Peg Faimon said the partnerships are “transformative for students, communities and leaders.”

For Cannelton, the payoff is more concrete than a campus announcement. Perry County Grows recently opened its downtown Cannelton market at 218 S. 7th Street, and the grand opening and ribbon-cutting on Feb. 7 drew residents into a marketplace for local food, makers and wellness vendors. The new studio work could extend that momentum by giving Cannelton Grows leaders Peg Faimon, Jon Racek, Jeni Waters and Bob Grewe a roadmap for how an underused school building might add more daily life, more storefront activity and more reasons for people to stop downtown.

That matters in a city where every reused building counts. Cannelton, a small Ohio River community in Perry County, had a population of 1,524 in the 2020 census and served as county seat until the seat moved to Tell City in 1994. Renew Cannelton, formed in 2014, says its mission is to restore vitality to Historic Downtown Cannelton, and Indiana Landmarks has said decades of economic decline left many historic buildings vacant. The IU project does not fix all of that, but it gives the town a design partner as it works to turn empty space into public use.

Over the coming months, the most visible changes will likely be on paper first: concept plans, layout ideas and a clearer picture of how the former school could function as a gathering place for food, wellness and entrepreneurship. If the designs advance, they could help Cannelton build on the new market at 218 S. 7th Street and strengthen the downtown core that local revitalization groups have been trying to reclaim for years.