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.