Chester Inc. of Valparaiso has gotten the nod to do the architectural design of the new municipal building to be built on the site of the former United Tractor facility at 116 N. 15th St.

At Monday’s Chesterton Town Council meeting, a contract with a price of $102,900 was approved, under the terms of which Chester will blueprint the building as well as conduct inspections during construction and provide written progress reports to officials.

It was decided to construct a building from scratch on the 2.95-acre site after it became clear that the cost to build a new facility would be less than to re-model the old one. Chester was one of two firms to submit a proposal for a retrofit of the United Tractor facility but the price points of the proposals proved prohibitively expensive. Even so, department heads indicated that they rather liked Chester’s vision.

The building will become the home for the town’s engineering, stormwater management, and economic development functions and will also be used for the storage of equipment and vehicles belonging to the Utility and Street Department not currently in seasonal use.

Right now the Utility’s laboratory is occupying the 28,732-square foot facility, purchased by the Utility in 2005 for $375,000. The site is zoned industrial.

In other business, five bids to demolish the fire-damaged house at 1500 Maximilian Drive in Rose Hill Estates were taken under advisement. The bids:

•$13,914 from Tri Inc. of East Chicago.

•$12,899 from Apex Excavation Inc. of Valparaiso.

•$12,000 from R.V. Sutton Inc. of Chesterton.

•$11,380 from G.E. Marshall of Valparaiso.

•$9,385 from CHS Construction and Restoration of Michigan City.

Building Commissioner Dave Novak proceeded with the condemnation of the house after owner Sofianos Hasapis failed to comply with a demolition order in August. That order gave Hasapis 10 days to demolish the house, essentially destroyed by a fire on Jan. 30 which the Chesterton Fire Department determined to be incendiary in origin. Police said that Hasapis was in Illinois at the time of the fire.

Novak found the house to be in violation of the Unsafe Building Ordinance: namely, that it is uninhabitable, poses a danger to persons and neighboring properties, is a fire hazard, is structurally unsound, and is a nuisance.

In other business, Lorri Wells secured the vacation of a portion of unimproved Park Ave. between 18th and 19th streets, after a public hearing at which no one spoke in favor of her petition and no one in opposition to it.

Wells wants to build a sunroom addition to her home in the 700 block of South 18th Street but has only 15’ 6’’ of setback available while the Zoning Ordinance requires a setback of 25 feet from a platted roadway.

In another public hearing, no one spoke in favor of and no one in opposition to two additional appropriations: one of $600,000 from the Redevelopment Commission’s Miscellaneous account to its Capital Outlay account; the other of $18,000 from the Motor Vehicle Highway’s Miscellaneous account to its Overtime account.

Both additional appropriations were approved.