The Chesterton Advisory Plan Commission will get its first look Thursday at
a conceptual plan for Alliance Business Center, which would be located at
the proposed Pope’s Farm development at 98 E. County Road 950N.
The commission meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at the town hall.
Following Alliance on the agenda is Urschel Laboratories Inc, which seeks
both preliminary and secondary plat approval of its development plan for a
new manufacturing facility and headquarters at Coffee Creek Center.
Representatives of Larson-Danielson Construction Co. of LaPorte have been
meeting with town department heads about the Alliance proposal, which at
this stage outlines only in broad terms what might be in a business park
there such as manufacturing, biomedical or parmaceuticals research,
commercial and retail as well as healthcare and residential.
Documents show the business center would be a planned unit development or
PUD that gives both the developer and the town flexibility to negotiate.
If a formal PUD petition is filed, a preliminary hearing, public hearing,
recommendation from the Plan Commission and final action by the Town Council
all would be required.
In July of 2009 developer Cliff Fleming representing Village Communities LLC
came before the Plan Commission with very preliminary plans for The Village
at Pope’s Farm of Chesterton on 81 acres that were annexed to the town in
late 2008.
Fleming is developer of The Village in Burns Harbor new-urbanism subdivision
where both single-family homes and several multi-unit apartment buildings
are being built.
The Pope’s Farm tract is located at the southwest corner of Indiana 49 and
950N and lies north of but is not contiguous to the new Porter Hospital
campus at the northwest corner of Indiana 49 and U.S. 6. A railroad
separates the two properties.
During initial Pope’s Farm talks with town officials the lack of municipal
water and sewer in the area was discussed. Chesterton currently is
completing a $2.8 million extension of sewer, water, stormwater and fiber
optic infrastructure to spur development along the Indiana 49 corridor.
Although the Pope’s Farm project never advanced to a formal public hearing,
Liberty Township neighbors and Plan Commission members both expressed
concern over traffic, drainage and density during the preliminary review.
At that time Fleming pledged to work with the neighbors as well as with
developer Robert Rossman, who in 2008 proposed the 50-acre Coffee Creek
Crossing commercial/retail development at the southeast quadrant of Indiana
49 and the Indiana Toll Road across from Pope’s Farm; Rossman’s mall never
was built.