It’s been three years since anyone in Chesterton town government has publicly discussed the Dickinson Road extension, not since the first half of 2006 when the Redevelopment Commission briefly flirted with the project, going so far in fact as to retain two appraisers to value a piece of property needed to link Dickinson Road north to the intersection of Sand Creek Drive North and Michael Drive.

But it eventually became evident that the potential cost of the project, coupled with the enormous bureaucracy involved in seeking federal funds for it—not to mention the little matter of dealing with the CSX, whose railroad right-of-way the extension would have to cross, one way or another—made it a bigger bite than anyone wanted to chew at the time.

Now, however, the town appears ready to take another look at the project, at least Town Council Member Jeff Trout, R-2nd, is. At Monday night’s council meeting, Trout noted that this may be the right time—with federal stimulus funds beginning to flow through the pipeline—to get a plan of the Dickinson Road extension on the drawing board.

Trout told his colleagues that he and Town Manager Bernie Doyle recently had an informal chat with an engineering group with experience in railroad crossings. The upshot: “It became very apparent that if we want to move forward we need a plan in place,” Trout said. “Shovel-ready projects have a much better chance of securing federal funds if there’s a plan. This is the first baby-step in that direction. Maybe it’ll take two years or 10 years but we’ll need a plan if we hope to get any funding.”

The whole idea of the Dickinson Road extension—which happens to be one of the four projects officially listed in 2000 as rational for the creation of a tax increment financing district in the first place—is to provide a north/south alternative to Ind. 49, not only as a safety measure to relieve pressure on that heavily used route but also as a direct and easy link from the business district on Indian Boundary Road to the business districts on East Porter Ave. and at Coffee Creek Center.

Not everyone on the Redevelopment Commission at the time was altogether gung-ho in favor of the Dickinson Road extension. Member Sharon Darnell, D-4th, at one point voiced the concern that Outlot B of Duneland Cove IV—which extends south from the intersection of Sand Creek Drive and Michael Drive to the CSX right-of-way and would be the first leg of the extension—is currently zoned B-2 and that construction of a road right through the middle of it could open a huge new swath of retail sales. That likelihood, Darnell said at a meeting of the Redevelopment Commission in March 2006, could siphon trade from the Downtown.

As it happens, the owner of that piece of property at the time, Tom Roberts, even pledged to sell it to the town for a figure around $70,000, roughly $30,000 less than it had been appraised for, with the understanding that the balance would be used for an engineering study to get the ball rolling.

In the end, though, the Redevelopment Commission turned its attention to other matters—the South Calumet District project, now nearing completion—with the result that the Dickinson Road extension has languished in planning limbo since.

In other business, Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann had a bit of bad news for members: the estimated cost of re-designing and re-modeling the former United Tractor facility at 116 N. 15th St. for municipal use—according to the two proposals submitted by Berglund Construction of Chesterton and Chester Inc. of Valparaiso—is “very, very high.”

So high, in fact, that Lukmann advised the council to start thinking about the possibility of splitting off a component of the project for more immediate attention: the construction at the facility of a cold-storage building and a salt-storage building for the Street Department.

Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg told the Chesterton Tribune after the meeting that the cold-storage building would be used to keep off-season equipment like salt spreaders and mowers and would be pretty stripped down, no heat, just lights. The salt-storage building would be big enough to allow the Street Department to order much bigger quantities of salt than it can currently, given the smaller dimensions of the existing salt-storage building at 609 Grant Ave.

Lukmann had one other piece of advice for the council. “I would ask you to start thinking very hard about sources for funds for this project,” he said.

Meanwhile, Doyle told the council that he should soon have for its review an update of the 2007 parking plan prepared by former town economic development coordinator Dwayne Williams. Under Indiana Code, he told the Tribune after the meeting, any municipality in the market for acquiring property for parking must have a plan.

“I’m just going to update it,” Doyle said, “put a fresh spin on it, so we can have a parking plan in place for the obvious reasons: for development in the Downtown, anticipated growth, the Wizard of Oz Festival and the European Market.”

At the moment, Doyle added, there are only two purely public parking lots in the Downtown: at the Chesterton/Duneland Chamber of Commerce at 220 Broadway and off Lois Lane adjacent to Coffee Creek Park. The other lots are either technically private—like the bank lots—or quasi-public, like the three lots serving the Thomas Branch of the Westchester Public Library and the Library Service Center.

“If we’re going to have Downtown businesses open in the evening, we need to think about what’s available for the general public,” Doyle said.

While he was at it, Doyle took a moment to thank the Chesterton High School students who “got the word out” at the Homecoming Parade about the value of the 2010 census; and to thank the council for releasing him to attend the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns conference in French Lick, which proved to be “a very, very productive session for me.”

Posted 10/13/2009