With neither a
cluck nor a squawk, the Chesterton Town Council has made it legal to keep
backyard chickens.
At its meeting
Monday night, members voted unanimously to approve the chicken ordinance on
final reading.
That ordinance now
allows folks who live on lots of a half-acre or smaller to keep chickens
under closely defined conditions:
* A maximum of four
hens--but no roosters--are permitted.
* They must be kept
in a securely enclosed rear yard, in a coop with a minimum area of 10 square
feet per chicken.
* They must be
provided with water and feed all the time.
* All supplies of
feed must be contained so as not to attract vermin.
In November, a
resident of the 2000 block of West Porter Ave., Marcus Key, asked the
council to amend Town Code, under which it had long been illegal for anyone
but 4-Hers to keep chickens in town on small lots.
As Member Jim Ton,
R-1st, noted on Monday, the ordinance was not written for slapdash
hobbyists. “Even a casual reader will realize (hen-keeping) is not a cheap
venture,” he said. “It would be an expensive venture. And we hope a humane
venture.”
Coffee Creek Center
PUD Amended, No. 1
In other business,
members unanimously approved an amendment to the planned unit development
ordinance governing Coffee Creek Center, under which certain changes were
made to its original signage, landscaping, curb, and elevation provisions to
facilitate the construction of a 7,750-square foot, 106-bed transitional
health-care facility, to be located on the east side of Village Point Drive
roughly 500 feet north of Gateway Blvd.
Mainstreet Property
Group is developing the project and has said that it will create 100 jobs.
A public hearing on
the PUD amendment was held last week by the Advisory Plan Commission, at
which Katie Rizer, executive director of the nearby Coffee Creek Watershed
Preserve, said that her Board of Directors supports the project.
The PUD amendment
came to the council with the planners’ unanimous endorsement.
Coffee Creek Center
PUD, Amended, No. 2
Members also
approved a second amendment to a Coffee Creek Center PUD, this one
permitting the installation of additional signage at 3100 Village Point
Drive, where Lakeside Wealth Management spent around $1 million to finish
work on the top floor of the Duneland Dialysis Building. The firm and its 40
employees now occupy that space, from which Lakeside Wealth Management is
hoping to expand its Midwest footprint.
The amendment
specifically allows the addition of two single-sided signs, each 62.4 square
feet in area, to be fixed to the building’s northeast and southeast corners.
Planners also held
a public hearing on this petition last week. No one spoke in opposition to
it. Rizer spoke in favor of it. Planners then forwarded it to the council
with their unanimous endorsement.
Council Member Nick
Walding, R-3rd, who is an employee of Lakeside Wealth Management, abstained
from Monday’s vote.