By KEVIN NEVERS

 Almost three years ago, in May 2001, a group of Chesterton officials and community leaders sat down, took a deep breath, and began a process which they intended to complete 12 months later: the revision of the Chesterton Comprehensive Plan, a document untouched since 1994.

Thirty months later the process continues, but may at last be drawing to a close. At a workshop Wednesday night, the rump of the Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee—whose members were originally comprised chiefly of department heads and members of the Duneland Economic Development Corporation—met in a workshop with the Plan Commission, as they put what they hoped to be the finishing touches on one of the key components of the document: the Future Land Use Map, whose purpose is to project not only Chesterton’s corporate limits a generation from now but also the possible uses of the land which may eventually be encompassed by those limits.

As provided by Indiana Code, a municipality’s comprehensive plan is part game plan and part crystal ball. On the one hand, it formulates policies by which officials hope to ensure the steady improvement of residents’ quality of life. On the other hand, it also looks in the future—20 years into the future—and offers a glimpse of how and where a municipality might have grown in two decades.

The question, then: how far to the south and east does the committee expect Chesterton one day to grow?

The answer: not nearly as far as members thought in the spring of 2001, when they projected the furthest possible expansion of the town, 20 years down the road, to be U.S. Highway 6 to the south and Porter/LaPorte County Line Road to the east.

At the workshop Wednesday, prompted by Plan Commission President George Stone, the committee agreed by consensus to retrench somewhat. His first suggestion was greeted with quick approval: to draw the southernmost line not at U.S. 6 but at C.R. 900N. As Stone noted, Chesterton has no real interest in adding to its tax base any of the residential subdivisions or mobile home parks which have already been developed along U.S. 6, while most of the land north of C.R. 900N is “a vast amount of empty space.”

Stone’s second suggestion, however—to draw the easternmost line not at County Line Road but at C.R. 400E—the committee considered to be insufficiently western in orientation. At the recommendation of Police Chief George Nelson, members agreed to draw the line instead at C.R. 300E.

As planner Frank Sessa remarked, “You don’t want people treating us like we’re NIPSCO.”

Sessa’s quip, jocular though it may have been, does speak to an important issue: the Future Land Use Map does not commit Chesterton to anything, not to annexation and certainly not to zoning. Rather, Nelson told the Chesterton Tribune, officials will use it merely as a guidepost to give their planning efforts direction and focus.

Stone broached one other issue Wednesday: the profound yellowness of the Future Land Use Map, yellow—as it happens—being the color arbitrarily chosen to represent residential use. Stone told members that the committee originally undertook the revision of the Comprehensive Plan as part of an economic development initiative, and to be niggardly in the projection of commercial use would be to defeat the whole purpose of the revision.

With that concern in mind, Stone accordingly made this suggestion: to re-color a chunk of the map purple, for “Business/Industrial.” His proposed chunk: an area bordered by Ind. 49 to the east, Meridian Road to the west, C.R. 1050N to the north, and the Indiana Toll Road to the south.

On this occasion, though, the committee thought Stone hadn’t gone far enough. In the end they empurpled the map a bit more, by adding one more chunk of land to the west of Stone’s proposed chunk: bordered by C.R. 1050N to the north, the Indiana Toll Road to the south, Meridian Road to the east, and Abercrombie Woods to the west.

Stone liked the idea, and said that the additional “Business/Industrial” designation along C.R. 1050N might act as a disincentive to the development in that area of “ad hoc” and piecemeal residential subdivisions. Eventually, Nelson added, C.R. 1050N will be widened and improved and come to serve as a major arterial between Ind. 49 and Ind. 149 and function as a gateway into town.

Once again, Nelson emphasized, the Future Land Use Map is not a Zoning Map and in no way makes a claim, official or unofficial, on any property owner’s land. It simply expresses officials’ preferences for the use of that land, if that land indeed ever does become a part of Chesterton.

The workshop ended far earlier than anybody had dreamed to hope that it might, with the committee generally pleased with its work. “With these suggestions,” planner Mike Furois said, “we’re 90 percent there.”

Posted 12/4/2003