By PAULENE POPARAD

The Burns Harbor Redevelopment Commission plans to assemble a citizen advisory committee both to help provide redevelopment ideas and to help the town score higher in grant applications to fund such projects.

Meeting Thursday, the commission also authorized town attorney Robert Welsh to file litigation as soon as possible seeking access for environmental testing purposes to the long-abandoned Standard Plaza truck stop on U.S. 20 east of Indiana 149.

Nevada representatives of the estate that owns the parcel haven’t responded to the town’s offer to enter into a contractual agreement allowing temporary access to the site, which is being considered for possible redevelopment as a pedestrian-friendly town center.

Direct contact with the estate still will be pursued in addition to the legal action, and property entry also will be attempted through the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, which has assessed more than $80,000 in outstanding fines against Standard Plaza for its improper closure years ago.

187 Acres

On a third front the commission reviewed its draft application for $100,000 from the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, and also voted unanimously to ask Arcelor Mittal if the steelmaker would consider support for the purchase or outright donation of a portion of its 187 acres in Burns Harbor for a future east/west pedestrian trail and regional park.

Planning for the town center, the park and a trail along the Little Calumet River that would link the east and west units of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore are projects that would be funded with the RDA’s $100,000 grant. Future RDA grants also would be sought for design and construction.

The first $100,000 request to be considered in August is needed as the local match for a $100,000 Indiana Department of Natural Resources Lake Michigan Coastal Program grant commitment to be used to update Burns Harbor’s 1993 comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance. Aug. 13 the Town Council will consider adoption of a building moratorium generally along both sides of U.S. 20 pending completion of the zoning review.

Brownfields Committee

Commission member Louis Bain will bring his recommendations regarding the new Brownfield Advisory Committee to the commission’s next 5 p.m. July 30 meeting. A committee of approximately five persons representing the commission, citizens, business interests and environmentalists is being eyed.

Bain said he will attempt to have the names of committee nominees for next week’s meeting so it can begin its work. The town attorney is being consulted whether the Redevelopment Commission or Town Council would make the actual appointments.

The committee is an outgrowth of the town’s planned application this fall for money from IDEM to remediate the Standard Plaza so it’s shovel-ready for a developer to revitalize the prime commercial location. Commission consultant Matt Reardon of SEH, Inc. told the commission the access/ownership has to be resolved and the fact there is an outstanding IDEM fine may make the property ineligible for a grant award from it.

Assuming those issues are resolved, Reardon agreed with Bain that demonstrating local support for a redevelopment project can go a long way in helping a grant application. Part of a Brownfield Committee’s job would be to foster support within the community for its recommended projects. “We don’t want tunnel vision,” said commission president Cliff Fleming. “This committee should be ongoing.”

RDA Application

Consultant A. J. Monroe of JJR Inc. presented the commission a draft RDA application for members’ review. He proposed an ambitious timeline for the projects involved because “(the RDA) wants to deliver results to northwest Indiana.” Also, the $100,000 DNR grant for zoning reviews has to be spent by June, 2009. “It will require a lot of effort on our part. We have to get going and get done.”

Part of the RDA’s mandate in order to receive state funding is to promote the goals of the Marquette 1 and 2 plan conceived by U.S. Cong. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville, for redevelopment of the Lake Michigan shoreline and adjacent areas.

Monroe said it would help Burns Harbor’s application if Visclosky were to support the town’s plans, and for the National Park Service to do the same. Both will be contacted.

Regarding the connector trail and the park donation, at member Mike Perrine’s suggestion the commission voted 4-0 with Jim McGee absent to have JJR prepare a legal description of Arcelor Mittal’s heavily wooded old-growth bottomland surrounded by NPS property the town and its partners would want. Perrine said the town is in the process of creating a park foundation to accept donations of land, the value of which could be conveyed to the town as the local match for future grants.

Perrine said a meeting with an Arcelor Mittal representative to discuss the land acquisition already has taken place.

Duneland School Connection

Thursday’s meeting was the first for John Marshall, a Duneland School Board member recently named to the Burns Harbor Redeveloment Commission as a non-voting member under a new state law. Marshall owns a real estate management company. He said he plans to listen and learn, then become an active redevelopment member. “I’m looking forward to this opportunity.”

Duneland School Corp. owns approximately 20 acres on Haglund Road in Burns Harbor.

The RDA application states that over a six-year period since 2000 the town experienced a 32.5 percent growth in its population with almost 580 new homes platted since 2003.

Posted 7/21/2008