Chesterton Tribune

 

 

Town to enforce code on abandoned house

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By KEVIN NEVERS

The Chesterton Town Council is taking steps to remediate the abandoned house at 507 Wabash Ave.

As Building Commissioner Mark O’Dell described it at Monday night’s council meeting, the house--owned by a company in Boca Raton, Fla.--is a “nuisance, it’s a blight.”

Windows are broken, the back yard is strewn with appliances and other trash, it’s been spray-painted with graffiti, and neighbors have been complaining for two years of drug use and other criminal activities in the house.

O’Dell accordingly asked for authorization to work with Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann to enforce the town’s Unsafe/Vacant Building Ordinance. Members voted unanimously to grant him that authorization.

“We’ve talked in the past about absentee property owners,” Lukmann noted. “This is a case in question.”

Lamar Sign

In other business, O’Dell announced that the billboard owned by the Lamar Advertising Company at the intersection of North Calumet Road and Indian Boundary Road is set to be replaced with a new LED sign on Monday, Sept. 16.

The Board of Zoning Appeals previously voted unanimously to grant Lamar a variance for the project.

O’Dell did say that an alternate location for Hooked on Art banner placed at that location will have to be found.

DLZ Donates

O’Dell also announced that the time which DLZ put into designing the “dead-man” concrete slab to anchor the control unit of the splash pad at Chesterton Park is on the house.

DLZ, O’Dell said, has agreed to donate that time--worth $4,000 in billable hours--to the town.

Members expressed their deep gratitude to DLZ for its generosity.

 

 

Posted 9/10/2019

 

 
 
 

 

 

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