By KEVIN NEVERS

The Chesterton Downtown has long been a destination for out-of-town antiquers lured by the one-stop shopping opportunity offered by its high concentration of antique stores.

While those stores obviously compete among each other for any given sale, their very density lends them the economic muscle which no single store could ever hope to enjoy, by giving antiquers the variety and choice which make them happy to travel to Chesterton and spend an afternoon in its Downtown.

It’s precisely that economic muscle which Ken Baur and Craig O’Brien would like to build themselves. Baur, the owner of Framing Concepts Gallery, and O’Brien, owner of Ashley’s Jewelry by Design, see a Chesterton Downtown anchored by what they’re calling “unique businesses,” upscale establishments, both retail and service, which appeal to the medium- to high-price point demographic.

Think home furnishings. Gour-met cooking supplies. Antiquarian books. Fine dining. All graced by the charm and quaintness of the Downtown. The sorts of places, Baur says, which would give out-of-towners a reason to spend three or fours in Chesterton, as they do now, say, in New Buffalo, Mich.

Baur and O’Brien are both putting their money where their vision is. Framing Concepts specializes in preservation framing but also carries a selection of original art, much of it by locals like David Sander, David Tutwiler, and Trent Albert. Ashley’s specializes in custom-designed and crafted jewelry. In a kind of one-two punch the businesses are located next door to one another in the space of the old Ben Franklin, which Baur and his family owned and operated for 63 years.

Baur and O’Brien clearly grasp the implications of their vision: the Chesterton Downtown would never again be a market for staples, much to the dismay of old-timers who remember when a family could do all of its shopping without having to go to Michigan City or Merrillville. “It’ll never be that way again,” Baur says, “but it can be viable again.”

As it happens, Baur and O’Brien’s call to develop more of the “three iques,” as a local businessman once put it—antique stores, boutique shops, and chic restaurants—is exactly the recommendation made a year ago by a consultant hired by the Duneland Economic Development Company. Based on the results of a survey conducted in 2000, Diane Lupke urged municipal officials and business leaders actively to capture a market currently underserved in Northwest Indiana: cinema and theater, restaurants, children’s apparel, sporting goods, shoes, toys, electronic equipment, the kinds of goods and services which Marquette Mall and Southlake Mall have largely ignored. The Chesterton economy would not be the only beneficiary. So would Chesterton residents themselves, who are as underserved as anyone else in the Tri-County region.

The Chesterton Downtown already has a solid base of unique businesses on which to build. In addition to Framing Concepts, Ashley’s, and—naturally—a fine mix of antique stores and gift shops, it’s also home to Lucrezia Cafe & Catering and Range Master Outfitters, both of them strong draws for out-of-towners. But Janet Cypra, the economic development liaison for the Town of Chesterton, says that more needs to be done to recruit the “three iques.”

More will be done, she says, and soon, when the DEDC undertakes a new initiative encouraging unique businesses located elsewhere in Northwest Indiana to expand in the Chesterton Downtown and in Duneland at large.

Shop•Dine•Play

Still, giving out-of-towners a reason to make the Chesterton Downtown their destination won’t make it a viable destination if they can’t find it in the first place.

The problem, O’Brien says, is that the Downtown has never been marketed as the Downtown, a place of atmosphere as well as of retail, a district to shop but also simply to walk. When out-of-towners hit Indian Boundary Road, for instance, they see nothing to distinguish it from any of a thousand other nondescript commercial strips. “People are very leery of going beyond Indian Boundary.”

“I would say that there’s a difference between the Downtown and the Bypass area,” Baur says, a big enough difference at any rate to lead him to decline, when asked, to pay a share of the costs of the billboard rented a few months ago by a number of Chesterton businesspeople. That billboard, located on eastbound I-94 about a mile east of Ind. 249, reads Chesterton, Shop•Dine•Play, Over 30 Exciting Shops, Exit 26A•Rt. at Light•1 Mile.

Nothing on that billboard, Baur says, gives anyone unfamiliar with the town the slightest indication of the existence of the Downtown, much less the location, and he contrasts it with a billboard on I-65 in Lake County which specifically directs motorists to the historic court-house shopping district in Crown Point.

“There are different business groups,” O’Brien notes. “The Downtown group. The Indian Boundary group.” Someday—maybe—the Coffee Creek Center group. And each of them is or will be comprised of a separate segment of the market: the Downtown has its locally-owned specialty shops; Indian Boundary, its tourist-oriented convenience operations; Coffee Creek Center—maybe—the corporate-owned national chains.

These market segments really don’t compete among each other, O’Brien says, they offer entirely different ranges of goods and services, and it’s in no one’s best interests to pit them against each other. An out-of-towner who would be prompted, given the proper signage, to drive by the commercial strip on Indian Boundary on his way to the Downtown is likely to stop there anyway on his return to the Interstate for a quick burger or pizza, a tank of gas, a carton of cigarettes, or even a sit-down meal at one of the restaurants.

For Baur the key is to get them Downtown. “If there’s no Downtown,” he says, “there’s no unique aspect of any downtown.” Get them there, and then watch as their cash circulates, up and down Broadway, North and South Calumet, and Indian Boundary.

The Duneland Chamber of Commerce may be close to a partial solution at least: a comprehensive signage package. As part of that package signs directing motorists to “Downtown Shops & Businesses,” “Library/Historical Museum,” and “Chamber of Commerce” are planned for erection at the northwest corner of Ind. 49 and Indian Boundary and at the intersection of Indian Boundary and North Calumet. Chamber Executive Director Laurie Franke-Polz says that the package—to be funded by a Build Indiana grant—is now awaiting the approval of the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Baur admits to a nostalgia for the old days and the old Downtown. But nostalgia doesn’t pay property taxes or put food on the table. Unique businesses, as he envisions them, can, and the Chesterton Downtown with its architecture and ambiance is the perfect place for them. “What was and what will never be again,” he says. “But the future is not what it was. I wish it were. My family made a great living here. But it can still be great.”

Posted 8/9/2002