By KEVIN NEVERS

Forget the rumors. All of them. They’re not true.

The Lake Erie Land Company is not going out of business. Its president, Jerry Mobley, is not retiring or otherwise leaving the helm. And the relationship between Lake Erie Land and the Duneland Chamber of Commerce is just fine.

Indeed, although Mobley admits to being frustrated by the slower than anticipated development of Coffee Creek Center, Lake Erie Land is nevertheless fulfilling its threefold mission, he says: to attract business to Northwest Indiana; to “enhance the image” of its parent company, NiSource Inc.; and to make profits for NiSource.

As Mobley told members of the Chamber at its monthly luncheon Wednesday, interest in Coffee Creek Center among potential developers is extremely strong and the next year to two years should see some important projects come to fruition. Still, he said, Coffee Creek Center is a 20-year project and was never meant to be anything else. It’s a 20-year project, moreover, which was “delayed three years by frivolous lawsuits, Mobley said.”

The facts first. Lake Erie Land employs 200 and has a payroll of $4 million and assets of $68 million, Mobley said. It owns around 1,100 acres in the immediate area—some of them comprising a wetlands mitigation bank—owns another 1,200 acres throughout Northwest Indiana, and has an option on 1,200 more acres along the Little Calumet River, effectively “tying them up” so that they can’t be disturbed. And it’s developing a nine-lot industrial park in Porter which could be “on-line” next spring.

“I want to assure you that Lake Erie Land is a very healthy company,” Mobley said. “We’re here to stay. We’re not a dying company. We’re a growing company.”

Are Lake Erie Land and the Chamber feuding? No, Mobley said. “Our goals are not mutually exclusive. They are the same: economic development.”

Is Mobley leaving Lake Erie Land? No, he said, but he will be spending more time in Arizona. Mobley will nevertheless remain president of the company.

So the rumormongers are wrong. Yet Mobley, even granting the projected 20-year build-out of Coffee Creek Center, conceded that the pace of construction there has been vexingly slow. The Steel Family Health Care Center, the Hilton Garden Inn, the Enclave Apartments, and a couple of houses at Morgan’s Corner: nice product but sparse.

As Mobley emphasized, though, “we don’t build buildings. We sell land.” Around $13 million of it, at this point, he said. And interest in the land itself—never mind whether anyone will be building on it in the near future—remains strong. Mobley said that three separate parties have approached Lake Erie Land with offers to purchase all remaining acreage in the development.

Those offers came to nothing in the end, he noted, but “we do have interest.” And should Lake Erie Land sell the remaining acreage, Mobley reminded Chamber members, its use will always be restricted by the terms of the planned unit development ordinances enacted by the Town Council, “to ensure that it’s built out the way we planned it.”

Forget the land, though. What about buildings?

Various projects are at different stages in the “pipeline” right now, Mobley said. They include a 60-unit combined maximum- and minimum-care senior living facility; three commercial buildings; and a convenience store and restaurant near the Hilton Garden Inn. Every project, however, is contingent on the demographics: can the economy of Duneland—or of Porter County—support it? An executive conference center has long been a desired addition to Coffee Creek Center, Mobley said, but until a certain corporate threshold is reached, it will have to wait.

And any project, he added, has only about a 30 percent chance of ever making it out of negotiations and off the drawing board.

At the same time, Mobley said, Lake Erie Land has interests throughout Northwest Indiana, projects in the works in Hammond and East Chicago, and the fundamental goal not simply of attracting business to Coffee Creek Center but of attracting it to the region. “We are bullish on this area. We are very bullish on this area.”

Mobley then took questions.

Why the delay at Morgan’s Corner? That portion of the Second Addition, Mobley said, is having its “troubles,” most of them attributable to the difficulty of the property owner, Builders and Carpenters LLC, in finding a builder.

Is Lake Erie Land having a problem pricing land for the small retailer? The problem, he said, has nothing to do with prices but with sizes. Lake Erie Land doesn’t “sell land in pieces small enough for small stores.” Instead “we need to really build larger structures and house the rental community in those structures.”

Why doesn’t Lake Erie Land build? We’re either dumb or smart enough to know our limitations,” Mobley said. “We’re not good at building. . . . We’ve had that option but resisted it.”

The luncheon concluded with a comment from Jeff Trout, owner of Trout Glass & Mirror and a member of the Chesterton Plan Commission. “I would encourage everyone to be patient, because once this snowball starts down the hill it going to be a contribution to Northwest Indiana as well as Chesterton.”

Posted 8/30/2002