Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Work to begin on Holiday Inn Express

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By KEVIN NEVERS

Wise Guys Discount Liquors--a division of WiseWay Foods--is coming to Chesterton.

To the parcel on 1100N immediately east of the BMO Harris Bank, across the street from the CVS pharmacy, and south of the Strack & Van Til--the latter of which, as it happens, was until 2013 a WiseWay grocery store.

At Monday night’s meeting of the Stormwater Management Board, MS4 Operator Jennifer Gadzala reported that she’s very close to finalizing her approval of the general contractor’s stormwater pollution prevention plan (SWPPP), which codifies the best management practices the contractor must use during construction of the Wise Guys liquor store to prevent silt and other materials from entering the town’s stormwater system.

Interim Building Commissioner Mark O’Dell in the meantime has nearly completed his review of the site plan.

Once the SWPPP and the site plan are green-lighted, Gadzala said, Wise Guys is free to apply for a building permit.

Wise Guys, according to its website, was established in 2008 as a “continuation of the WiseWay tradition of quality and service, now focused on the liquor aisle.” It currently operates at two locations in Merrillville, one of them a “superstore.” Wise Guys bills its selection of craft beers as “gigantic,” calls its store aisles “a library of spirits,” and offers both modestly priced wines and “hard to find European varieties.”

Holiday Inn Express

Gadzala had one other announcement to make on Monday: ground should break within a week on the Holiday Inn Express & Suites at the Indian Oak Mall, four years after the developer, Cosmos Hospitality Services LLL, first appeared before the Advisory Plan Commission seeking to amend the planned unit development ordinance governing Indian Oak.

The site of the Holiday Inn Express: the southwest corner of Indian Boundary Road and Ind. 49, south of the Walgreen’s pharmacy.

Gadzala told the Chesterton Tribune after the board’s meeting that silt fencing--as required by the SWPPP--was erected at the site last week, and that Cosmos Hospitality’s contractor for some time now has had all the permits it needs to build the 80-room hotel.

The delay, apparently, has less to do with the economy than with the way the owner of the Holiday Inn Express brand--Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG)--does business, Gadzala added. For the sake of brand uniformity and recognizability, IHG itself sets a franchise-wide design standard. That look, however, has a lifetime of only 10 to 15 years, at the end of which IHG “takes the existing Holiday Inn Express hotels and sells them off.”

Cosmos Hospitality, Gadzala said, was merely waiting for IHG to release the new design standard so as not to fall under the old dispensation, moving rapidly, as it was, in the direction of obsolescence.

2016 Budget

In other business, O’Dell--wearing his hat as Stormwater Utility Superintendent--submitted the utility’s 2016 budget.

That budget projects total revenues of $447,300, less $21,000 for the Capital Improvement Fund, a 10-percent increase over this year’s projected revenues of $405,3000.

The budget also projects total expenses in 2016 of $426,188, a 5.3-percent increase over this year’s projected expenses.

Salaries, wages, pensions, and benefits account for $337,188 or 79 percent of total expenses. Materials and supplies account for $10,250 of the total; contractual services, for $27,000 of the total; transportation expense, for $12,500; MS4 public education, for $8,000; and miscellaneous expenses, for $31,250.

The budget also projects a year’s end surplus of exactly $113.

September in Review

In September the Stormwater Utility ran a deficit of $16,921 and in the year-to-date is running a surplus of $5,054.

 

 

 

Posted 10/20/2015

 

 
 
 

 

 

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