Developer and attorney Cliff Fleming has seen firsthand what happens when the area around a new hospital is developed willy-nilly, without plan or coordination.

It happened back in the Seventies in Merrillville, Fleming told the Chesterton Town Council at its meeting Monday night, and to this day the results are neither pretty nor functional, traffic’s a mess, and the properties are worth roughly what they were a generation ago without any increase in value at all.

It would be a shame, Fleming said, if the same were to happen to the area around the new Porter hospital when it’s built at the northwest corner of Ind. 49 and U.S. Highway 6 in unincorporated Liberty Township. And as the representative of the owners of 80 acres of property south of the Indiana Toll Road and in the new hospital impact area—the so-called Pope Farm, annexed by the town last year—Fleming voiced his hope for a rational approach to the development of that neighborhood.

That’s why, Fleming said, he will be attending the Dec. 1 meeting of the Porter County Commissioners, when Commissioner Bob Harper, D-Center, will call for the formation of a committee of all stakeholders with the charge of master-planning the area, which Fleming defined specifically as that rectangle bounded to the west by Meridian Road, to the east by Ind. 49, to the north by the Indiana Toll Road, and to the south by U.S. 6.

“We need to take advantage of the opportunity we have here,” Fleming said. “We need to plan very diligently what the future will hold. It will be beneficial for the property owners in the long term and at the end of the day the impact is going to be broadly felt.”

Fleming then invited the town to participate in the master-planning of the new hospital impact area.

The council wished Fleming well and asked him to report back with more information.

In other business, the council denied the petition of Vincent Barango for a waiver of two building permit fees for duplexes he wants to build on Jackson Blvd. Barango said that he pulled the building permits in 2007 but a delay in NIPSCO’s re-locating a utility pole put his project back by months and that when he was ready to put a shovel in the dirt he learned that the permits had expired.

Barango added from the floor that he had been told incorrectly that work did not have to commence for 18 months when in fact, under Town Code, it must commence within 60 days of a permit’s issuance.

For his part former Building Commissioner—now Fire Chief—Mike Orlich said that he was under the impression that Barango pulled the building permits prematurely in order to avoid paying the soon-to-be-enacted park impact fee. Both he and Town Engineer Mark O’Dell, Orlich said, “tried to tell Mr. Barango he wasn’t ready from the get-go.”

If Barango wants to proceed with his project now, he will have to pay both the new building permit fees and the park impact fees.

Also from the floor Paul Tharp had a piece of advice for staff: find a way to soundproof the meeting room against the noise of passing trains.

“Meetings are always interrupted by trains,” he said, “and I think the problem can be fixed efficiently and inexpensively. It’s gone on a long time and I think we should address it.”