By KEVIN NEVERS

With the vocal support of friends, neighbors, and customers, Craig Jones, the owner of Cams Auto Machine Shop at 1011 Broadway, has secured the variances he needs to build a new machine shop and office on eight vacant lots immediately east and south of his current location.

At its meeting Thursday night, the Chesterton Board of Zoning Appeals voted 3-0 to grant Jones four variances:

•To allow an automobile machine shop, a B-2 use, on property with a mixed zone of B-2 and R-3.

•To allow a side-yard setback on 10th Street of eight feet, 12 feet fewer than the minimum of 20 feet required by the Zoning Ordinance.

•To construct a building on an R-3 lot with coverage of 40 percent, 10 percent more than the maximum of 30 percent mandated by the Zoning Ordinance.

•And to construct an office building in a B-2 zone with eight parking spaces, one fewer than the minimum of nine required by the Zoning Ordinance.

Members Kim Goldak and Sig Niepokoj were not in attendance.

Jones established his engine-repair and rebuild business in 1983 in the 500 block of Broadway and moved it in 1989 to its present site. Most of his business, he told the board, consists of service to other businesses: body and repair shops, lawn mower and car dealerships. All work would be done within the new engine shop, although some limited vehicle storage would be required to the west and south, in an area which would have a six-foot privacy fence for security purposes.

Attorney Greg Babcock, representing Jones, noted that lately most of the economic development in Chesterton has been to the east and the south, with very little in the old part. This investment, he said, would “bring some revitalization to that particular site.”

At the public hearing which preceded the vote, seven persons spoke strongly in favor of Jones’ petition. George Schaefer, for instance, told the board that Jones provides a “unique service in the unique vehicle market” and does “repairs nobody else in this community could do.”

“He’s served this community for 25 years,” John Jarka said, “and he wants to grow his business a little. It’s good for the town.”

Town Council Member Emerson DeLaney, R-5th, called Jones’ project a “wonderful thing on the west end of town” as the “geographic center of town is changing.” The new buildings would be a part of a “revitalization” of the older part of Chesterton which includes the proposed skate park at the 15th Street trailhead of the Prairie Duneland Trail, he added.

Three persons spoke in opposition to the petition. One of them, Glen Wilson, who owns two apartment buildings in the neighborhood, told the board that the privacy fence would be “an eyesore” and that the business would “devalue my properties.”

Members, however, agreed with Jones’ customers. “I would certainly appreciate the investment in this part of town,” Member Brandon Kroft said.

The board accordingly granted the variances on the condition that Jones must build the privacy fence.

Preliminary Hearing

In other business, members voted 3-0 to hold a public hearing at their next meeting, May 22, on the petition of Gary Steindler for two variances to permit him to build a deck on the rear of his home at 2241 Westwood Lane: one to allow a lot coverage of 39 percent, 9 percent more than the maximum of 30 percent permitted by the Zoning Ordinance; the other to allow the deck to extend four feet into the side-yard setback.

Re: Starbucks

Kroft took an opportunity at the end of the meeting to address some of the flack the board has taken for balking at the petition of Luke Oil Company for a variance to swap its Shell logo for a Starbucks logo atop a 70-foot sign on its razed property on Indian Boundary Road.

“I think it’s unfortunate Starbucks is not coming here,” Kroft said, “but I think it has more to do with market conditions, not because they don’t have a 70-foot sign. There are plenty of other places to buy coffee in town.”

After the meeting Kroft told the Chesterton Tribune that he questioned the assessment of a Luke representative that the board’s rejection of the sign variance would be a deal-killer.

Luke has since informed Building Commissioner Mike Orlich that it will remove both the 70-foot sign and a second of about half that height.

Posted 4/25/2008