By KEVIN NEVERS

The final engineering of the South Calumet Triangle project will cost the Chesterton Redevelopment Commission nearly $400,000.

At its meeting Monday night, the commission voted 3-0 to approve a contract with DLZ of South Bend at a cost not to exceed $395,750. Members Sharon Darnell and Josh Lantz were not in attendance.

DLZ, which also provided the initial design of the project, was the only firm to respond to the commission’s request for proposals for the final engineering.

The single most expensive item in the contract is the actual roadway design and plans, at $135,000. But under the terms of the contract DLZ will provide all manner of other services, including an additional topographical field survey at $32,000; roadway lighting design and plans at $10,500; stakeholder meetings at $10,000; final streetscape design and plans at $28,000; right-of-way engineering at $44,000; bid phase services at $6,000; and construction administration services at $49,500.

The project will be divided into two phases, with Phase I to be completed in 2008 and Phase II in 2009.

Phase I:

•The intersection of C.R. 100E and Beverly Drive/South Calumet Road.

•The connector road between C.R. 100E and South Calumet Road.

•The stormsewer link between C.R. 100E and Beverly Drive/South Calumet Road to the existing detention basin west on Beverly Drive.

Phase II:

•C.R. 1100N improvements.

•C.R. 100E improvements.

•South Calumet Road improvements.

•Traffic signal at the intersection of C.R. 1100N and C.R. 100E.

•Roadway lighting.

•Streetscape improvements.

•New detention basins west of South Calumet Road.

According to a proposed schedule included in the contract, Phase I right-of-way engineering should begin on Oct. 16; Phase I right-of-way acquisition on Dec. 3; and Phase I bidding on March 18, 2008, with bids to be awarded May 5, 2008.

Phase II right-of-way engineering should begin on Dec. 4; Phase II right-of-way on Feb. 18, 2008; and Phase II bidding on Oct. 15, 2008, with bids to be awarded Dec. 3, 2008.

The Connector Road

Meanwhile, Mike Jabo answered the question asked by Member Mike Bannon at the commission’s last meeting: how much money could be saved from the final project cost by eliminating the connector road linking C.R. 100E and South Calumet Road?

Figure paving, lighting, curbs, and sidewalk will cost you $125,000, Jabo said. That amount does not, however, include, design, land acquisition, and streetscaping.

“This is the first time,” Bannon noted, “the commission has attempted to quantify the costs of trying to accommodate businesses . . . , how much money we put on the table to mitigate any perceived impact on these businesses.”

By consensus members took Jabo’s estimate under advisement.

Bannon, irritated at the commission’s last meeting by news of a third tort claim notice filed against the Town of Chesterton by a property owner in the South Calumet Triangle, wanted to make the point that—in the inclusion in the project of the connector road aligned with the entrance to the Round the Clock Restaurant—the commission has gone “overboard” in trying to make the improvements palatable to businesses.

Town Council Member Jim Ton, R-1st, though, in a subsequent interview with the Chesterton Tribune, argued that any threat to eliminate the connector road from the project amounted to an attempt to punish property owners for pursuing their constitutional right to seek relief in a court of law. Ton also argued that the connector road is not an accommodation to businesses but an integral part of the overall design, and that without the connector road traffic will clump at the unsignalized intersection of C.R. 100E and Beverly Drive.

Posted 6/12/2007