By KEVIN NEVERS

The Chesterton Town Council’s decision to permanently close the intersection of South Calumet Road and C.R. 1100N has or will cost Round the Clock restaurant, and the owner of the property on which the restaurant is sited, $1 million.

So RT Clock Inc. and Kostis Christodoulakis claim in a tort notice filed against the Town of Chesterton on April 16 and received by municipal officials on Monday.

RT Clock owns and operates Round the Clock at 1607 S. Calumet Road. Christodoulakis owns that parcel and one immediately to the north. According to the two-page tort notice, the Town Council’s 3-2 vote on Jan. 4 to close the intersection has caused RT Clock “a permanent loss in the value of its restaurant business operation, and will cause a permanent and ongoing loss of revenues to its business operation at such time as the approved closure is actually implemented.” That vote has likewise caused Christodoulakis “a permanent loss in the value of said real estate and improvements.”

The tort notice concedes that the loss of each is “not presently subject to precise calculation,” so RT Clock and Christodoulakis are both asserting a claim of $500,000.

A letter covering the tort notice by the claimants’ attorney, David Appel, is slightly more informative than the notice itself. In that letter Appel makes the following claims:

•The right-turn only option pursued by RT Clock and Christodoulakis “is both feasible in terms of engineering design, and posed no threat to public safety.”

•The Town Council’s decision to permanently close that intersection was an “arbitrary action” which “has caused, and will continue to cause, substantial economic harm” to his clients.

•The Town Council’s decision “constitutes a wrongful taking without just compensation.”

‘Frivolous’

Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann was blunt in his assessment of the tort notice when reached Monday afternoon. “It’s a frivolous claim,” he said. “That’s all it is.”

Lukmann, noting that Appel makes no effort in the notice itself or in the cover letter to document any of the asserted losses to date—in fact that Appel explicitly characterizes those asserted losses as “not presently subject to precise calculation”—flatly rejects the contention that the Town Council’s decision constitutes an uncompensated wrongful taking. “They’re not losing a square inch of ground,” Lukmann said. “And if they did they would receive just compensation.”

In any case, he added, under Indiana law the Town Council has immunity for discretionary acts, such as the decision to close a public right-of-way from one direction. “The Town Council followed the recommendation of its professional engineers,” Lukmann said. “The reason for immunity in discretionary matters is that people have differing opinions.”

Philosophically too, he said, the tort notice is problematic. “What they’re saying is they have a right to unfettered access to their property. And that’s not true under the law. You can’t have, for example, as many road cuts as you want. The Town Council has the ability to close a right-of-way. What the Town Council wouldn’t do, and hasn’t done, is to cause no access to a person’s property.”

The Triangle

On Jan. 4, on the recommendation of the Redevelopment Commission, the Town Council voted 3-2 to permanently close the intersection as part of a package of improvements proposed for the South Calumet Triangle, bounded by South Calumet Road to the east, C.R. 1100N to the south, and C.R. 100E to the west.

The general idea of that package of improvements is to turn the South Calumet Triangle into the South Calumet Trapezoid: its western base C.R. 100E between Beverly Drive and C.R. 1100N; its eastern base South Calumet Road, which at its extreme southern terminus would become a private drive turning west into the First National Bank of Valparaiso; its southern base a new east/west connector road linking C.R. 100E and South Calumet and aligned with the ‘Round the Clock driveway; and its northern base a second east/west connector road linking C.R. 100E and South Calumet and aligned with Beverly Drive.

Among other things, the intersection of C.R. 100E and C.R. 1100N would be improved and signalized; a third lane would be added to C.R. 100E between Venturi Drive and C.R. 1100N; a number of private driveways on South Calumet could be closed and access to the businesses there consolidated; and access to and from St. Paul Lutheran Church on C.R. 1100N would become right-in/right-out only, with a pledge from the Redevelopment Commission to help the church construct a new driveway accessible from C.R. 100E.

Posted 4/26/2007