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.