DEVELOPMENT ADVISORY COMMMITTEE

Regular Meeting
September 19, 2008

M I N U T E S

The regular meeting of the Development Advisory Committee was held on September 19, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. in the Porter County Administration Center, 155 Indiana Avenue, Valparaiso, Indiana.

Those members attending present were Kevin Breitzke, Joey Larr, Harvey Nix, Ray Joseph, Tim Cole and Robert W. Thompson Jr.  Also present was Toni Byers.

The following cases were heard by the Committee on this date:

Courts of Northwest Indiana developmental review.

Don Bengel stated that he is representing and accompanied by the petitioner in this matter, Mark Bengel.

Mr. Thompson stated that this is scheduled for the Plan Commission to be heard at their October 8, 2008 hearing and this is the first schedule for DAC.   It will also be heard at DAC on 9-25.  They were heard at the Board of Zoning Appeals at the August 20th hearing, in which they moved to approve some Variances for this site:  that landscaping will be worked out with Mr. Burns and the petitioner, with the understanding that they are required to build a berm along the edge along SR 49 and towards Highway 6; the height of the trees and bushes and the placement is to be located; they were going to eliminate the tennis court building from the petition at this time; when sewers become available on the property, they will be hooked up; with the retention pond to be made larger.   One of the things that it stated is that the berms are to be at least 15 to 20 feet tall.  This was worked out with Mr. Burns.

Mr. Bengel stated that the berm itself will be, the dirt will be at least 10 feet tall with 6-foot high trees on top of it.  He thinks that the UDO somewhere says it has to be 8 feet.  It’s always been their intent to put a berm there anyhow.  They will get it finished up in the next phase of construction.  As part of their agreement that they worked out, the new trees on top of the berm will be 25 feet, center to center and then they widen the berm out at the corner.  There the trees will be probably 12 feet apart.  They asked them to keep the berm up.  They were going to start dropping it a little bit toward the corner.  They are going to take it down to where the next contour is.  Once they get down in this area where the berm starts dropping off there are trees already there to shield the view from 49 and 6.  The one sheet that they have shows the trees…there’s trees that were planted by the developer on the South line that abuts the church.  They were planted in 2005 and 2006, and he revised it to go from 30 feet to 25 feet on top of the berm.  The berm will be 10 feet wide at the top.  And there’s a separate landscaping plan for the project itself.   The actual project here is for Pump it Up.  It’s a 12,000 square foot building that would be Southwest of the existing Courts building.  They show proposed landscaping and submitted a landscaping plan for the site itself.  The ordinance itself says that the bumpouts – those pieces in the parking lot that are marked LS, landscape bumpout areas, will all have a tree or two in them.  If you had visited this site, the existing islands and bumpouts…they don’t have any bumpouts – they have islands – the existing parking lot, they’ve all got two or three trees in them, so these will all have trees the same.  Plus, there will be additional landscaping.  They’ve got shrubs that they will distribute around.  The building itself is 12,000 square feet and, if you work through the formula for the parking, that means they would have to have 48 parking places for this building.  The folks that are going to lease it say they have to have 42, based upon experience, so they will be over that. Since they have to build this piece, they are going to put the whole parking in at one time. Then, when you come down  the one drive, you will turn and go back out the other.  They are not subdividing this.  The ground is going to be owned by The Courts, so this line that runs at an angle and looks like a property line, that’s just the limits for the site. Septic – he’s discussed with Kelly (Cadwell) what they’ve done so far.  They’ve been in consultation with the state Board of Health.  They have a very good system right now.  It’s due South of the Courts.  It looks like a landscape bumpout in the parking lot.  That’s where the septic tanks are, and right South of there is a pump that pumps the sewage up the hill and real sandy ground for the existing septic.  They’ve got to make a fairly small increase in that septic to handle the Pump it Up.  Right East of their building will be a septic and a septic tank, and that will pump up into the existing tanks for the Courts.  He hopes to have all that back from the state by the next DAC meeting.  They got a Variance for the drainage on the UDO, but they agreed to put in a larger pond.  If this thing ever develops fully there’s tons of room for a pond back in there.   The pond will be inside the trees; after it’s built, you won’t see it because they will keep a screened planting between the drive and the pond, and then before the pond they agreed to put in a forebay, so that will collect all the stuff from this road.  They will probably have another forebay when the North part develops.  They will run the water on the other side.  All this drainage, after it leaves the pond, will go through an existing wetland, and then goes out to 49 under an existing box culvert and heads Northwest.  They’ve had a temporary pond in there for two years and, as far as he knows, they’ve had no problems anywhere.  The wetland is intact.  They’ve got a big stand of woods in the Northwest corner that’s going to stay there for the foreseeable future, except where they put the pond in.  And, again, you won’t see the pond from any direction, because it will be behind the woods.   They hope to get the dirt work done within a month or so and try to get this building started and closed before the weather hits.   Occupation will probably be in the summer of 2009, and they stated in their agreement yesterday that they will have all their plantings in in that berm by November 1st.   To look at the existing Courts building, they’ve had no problems with anything there, the septic’s worked fine.  Traffic’s looked fine.  The number of parking places they had has served, as well.  There’s only been one or two times when the parking has reached its maximum, and they did have some overflow parking, so that’s not been a problem.  One time Liberty Bible Church used this facility for one church service for the whole congregation, which is huge, and there they used their own parking lots and had shuttle buses come over, so that also worked out well.

Mr. Nix asked, when this is going to be developed, is this area between the retention pond and that, is that seeded, right now?

Mr. Bengel stated, actually, there’s a lot of stone out there. It’s not seeded yet.    They got stone, concrete, actually, from 49, when they redid that, Superior made a deal with them, and then they crushed all that stuff up.  So there are still two piles left that have to be crushed, and they will use that for their base.

Mark Bengel stated there are all the grindings there now and it hasn’t been seeded.

Mr. Nix asked, will that be all seeded?

Mr. Bengel asked, to the South of the building?

Mr. Nix stated, it would be to the West and up in here.  The reason he asked that, just looking at the topo that’s on here, it kind of looks like the water is going to come off  the parking lot, and it doesn’t quite get into this swale; it kind of goes alongside of it, and then kind of goes down into what they are calling is going to be a lake area?

Mr. Bengel stated, right now, it goes into a temporary pond that they have.  They’ve been in those woods and there is no evidence of any problem from any direction.  The first 50-60 feet coming from the North is a nursery.  As soon as they get their grading done, all the dirt will be seeded.

Mr. Nix asked if all this will be seeded in here, too, then?

Mr. Bengel stated, right.

Mr. Joseph asked if they are going to connect the existing building with the new building.  Are they going to do sidewalks?

Mr. Bengel stated, yes, they show that on there.  At the East end of the new building, they’ve got a sidewalk that goes to the parking lot and then behind that they’ve got a 5-foot wall that goes up to the existing parking lot.   The sidewalk in front of the Pump it Up building will extend to the West line of the building, and that lines up with that handicapped space there.

At this time, Mr. Breitzke joined the meeting.

Mr. Joseph asked if the sidewalk will cut through the parking lot.

Mr. Bengel stated, wherever they have that cross-hatched, that goes through the new parking lot and then East out to the existing parking lot.  On Sheet 3 they indicate, there’s a volleyball setup.  There’s there courts there that is all sand.  And there’s a lot of sod around that volleyball area.

Mr. Joseph asked if there are going to be 75 parking spaces.

Mr. Bengel stated, something like that.   Forty-eight are assigned.  They worked out that formula the other day, 12,000 divided by 100 times 40 percent.

Mr. Joseph asked, are you going to submit a landscape plan for the parking lot?

Mr. Bengel stated, well, as we discussed yesterday, our islands will all have trees.

Mr. Joseph asked, will you have the 48 shrubs, not including the lot plans for the building?

Mr. Bengel stated that the building’s on its own for the landscaping, but we’ll put in the 48 shrubs.

Mr. Joseph stated, that it’s not indicated in here.

Mr. Bengel stated that they hate to put it on the North side, because they don’t know what’s going  to happen there yet.

Mr. Joseph stated, if I remember correctly, there’s a swale on the North side to bring the water West.

Mr. Bengel stated that they will bring up a plan for the shrubs and we’ll get with you on that.

Mr. Joseph asked, and the required islands or bumpouts, they’ll all work for the 75 spaces?

Mr. Bengel stated that they will.  Then they got the big islands at the end.  He doesn’t have it marked, but when you come off  the existing line where that storm sewer goes through, either that’s going to be a bumpout, or the one down…they haven’t decided if  they want the bumpout under the storm sewer.  They start out with a bumpout and then even 16 spaces they (inaudible).

Mr. Joseph asked if there will be bumpouts on the East side of the proposed parking lot?

Mr. Bengel stated, yeah, and there will be one in front of the building.  They may move that a little bit East.

Mr. Thompson asked, regarding the grading plan, he is assuming since they are showing the drainage arrows going to the South here, that a lot of this material from the berm is going to be going off the site there.

Mr. Bengel stated, yeah.

Mr. Thompson stated, so you don’t perceive having to truck in anything?

Mr. Bengel stated, no.

Mark Bengel stated, we have plenty of dirt.

Mr. Thompson stated,  the pond location they show, this is not the pond that they have currently out there?

Mr. Bengel stated, no.

Mr. Thompson asked if they are going to take the current pond  and make it more like the forebay or something?

Mr. Bengel stated, that’s going to be where the forebay is.  You aren’t going to see the pond when they build it, because it will be hidden in the woods.  They are not going to take down that strip next to the trees, next to the pond.  When that road goes North, there will be an area of trees between the pond and the road.   Then again, as he mentioned, the pond will probably increase to the North and they’ll have another forebay out there.

Mr. Thompson stated, he’s just saying, they show Building B and Building C.  They are just talking about Building B, correct?

Mr. Bengel stated, yeah, they’re just trying to show the proposed buildings in here.   The subject of this hearing is Pump it Up.

Mr. Thompson asked, did they work out the landscaping plan with Rick Burns?

Mr. Bengel stated, yeah.   He gave it to him, and he’s going to let him know if he wants any revisions.

Mr. Thompson asked, the berm and the spacing of  the trees and all that, as far as that goes, they’ve changed the elevation?

Mr. Bengel stated, everything  they talked about yesterday has been put on here.  The solid trees are the ones that have been planted already along the property line, and then the trees on the berm indicate 25-foot spacing.

Mr. Thompson asked if they are talking about having some shrubs in between the trees.  He did submit to DLZ just the water quality calculations, just to check the calculations.

Mr. Breitzke stated that it sounds good that they are going to leave the other pond for the forebay instead of doing more digging and moving and they have a delineated wetland before the outflow under the highway, too, so they have a little more storage in the end and a little more cleaning.

Mr. Bengel stated, and, you can see, it’s kind of natural, pre-extended pond and it will just go around the wetlands, so the wetland will be protected all the time.

Mr. Breitzke stated that he stopped by yesterday and talked to Mark, too.  Because the berm and the landscaping is going to be an investment, they just want to be very careful that the livestock can handle the conditions.    The sand and stuff might dry out with the roofs and affect the life of the shrubs and trees.

Mark Bengel stated that most of  the berm will be clay.

Mr. Breitzke stated that it’s something  they are going to have to work with a landscape architect or nurseryman to make sure they have good success.  Building C, Rick Burns he thinks, in his motion, made reference to  the elimination of the tennis court building.  Is that the tennis court building?

Mr. Bengel stated, no, that’s a big building up in the North.  Actually, that’s not the overlay zone. 

Mr. Breitzke stated that he’s sure Ray helped him with the parking rationale.  At the BZA there was concern that…they had to get approval at that meeting if they had to work out some agreement on the landscaping, and he said he was sure they could.   So, they got  the three Variances, no problem, and they spent a lot of time with Rick Burns and Ray working on this, so he thought it worked out well.

Mr. Breitzke asked how they held up this past weekend as far as the neighbors to the East side of them?  Did they impound any water on the East side of  the existing building?

Mark Bengel stated, no.  There are wetlands to the East of that, that woods.

Mr. Breitzke stated, and also on the East side of the building, Liberty Bible still owns all that.

Mr. Bengel stated, no, not all of that.

Mr. Breitzke stated, regarding lighting, are they checking those issues out?

Mr.  Thompson asked if they are going to have lights out on the parking lot?

Mr. Bengel stated, yes.

Mr. Thompson asked if he also submitted to Mr. Joseph what kind of lights they are going to be.

Mr. Bengel stated that it’s the same ones they’ve got.

Mr. Breitzke stated that there’s always ways to adjust and shield them.  He’s always concerned about the traveling public.   They are at a high point.

Mr. Bengel stated that he doesn’t  think there’ve been any problems with drainage at all.   There’s lights now on the South side of  the building.   They just installed four more now around the volleyball courts.

Mr. Joseph asked if there are going to be trash receptacles there.

Mr. Bengel stated that there are.

Mr. Joseph asked if the vinyl fence is going painted to match the building color?

Mr. Bengel stated that the building is going to be gray.

Mr. Joseph stated, well, it just needs to match the color of  the material on the building.

Mark Bengel stated that the building is concrete.   The new building may be colored concrete or stained or not painted.

Mr. Joseph stated that the color needs to blend in.

Mr. Bengel stated that if you put in a white vinyl fence, he thinks that looks pretty sharp.

Mr. Cole stated that he would have liked to have gotten all the plans that they got so he could see the pond and the forebay.

Mr. Bengel stated that he thought he did.  

Mr. Cole stated that right now he doesn’t have any problems with the lighting.  The Liberty Bible Church parking lot lights up everybody in the neighborhood.  They shine in every direction, and he wishes somebody would do something about it.   Lighting has not been a problem so far with the Courts. It could become one if  they’re not careful, of course.  The berm, the landscaping, he would have thought more of a decorative berm.  They aren’t limited by space, and he does want to see  the details of the landscaping and the berm.  It would also be nice if we had some kind of conceptual drawing of  the building.  He’s always worried about sidewalks that butt up against the parking lot without some kind of buffer of grass.  He would prefer removing the sidewalk a few feet from the parking lot so there is room to walk across the whole five feet.

Mark Bengel stated that otherwise, you have people walking between your planting between the sidewalk and the parking lot.

Mr. Cole stated, striping in the major portion of the parking lot where it crosses the parking lot, for  the protection of the pedestrian, maybe even some signs, maybe even some stop signs for pedestrian traffic.  He’d like to see that in the parking lot.  In the UDO, we talk about maximum parking lots, not minimum, so, if your business actually anticipates 42 parking spots being taken up at any one time by your customers, that is an amazing business.  However, you’re going to be needing this parking lot for future development.  That’s not a problem, but, do bear in mind, we talk maximum parking spaces. 

Mr. Bengel stated, and that’s what the computations are based on.

Mr. Cole stated, the pond and wetlands.  He just wants to see the details worked out, and, of course, he’s very happy that we’re asking DLZ to look into this because of the nature of  the sensitivity of the area, we’re looking at some extreme problems, although, with the heavy rains I did not detect a whole lot of water coming off this area into the property designated for the hospital. I’m sure there was considerable water, but not as bad as some areas of the County that I looked at.  This wasn’t so bad.  East of there, because of the configuration of  the parking lot for the church, essentially we left him with a big pond in his back yard.  That’s a shame.  I think that’s something that should have been looked at and discussed.

Mr. Bengel stated, I think that’s the church’s property, though.

Mr. Cole asked, Doyle’s back yard?

Mr. Bengel stated, yeah.

Mr. Cole asked, why, did they buy it?

Mr. Bengel stated, yeah.

Mr. Cole asked, when?

Mr. Bengel stated, within the last couple of months.

Mr. Cole stated that that drainage situation in that area needs to be resolved somehow, filled in or something, in Doyle’s.

Mr. Bengel stated, well, our water can’t get there.

Mr. Cole stated, I realize that.  I’m just looking at drainage in the entire area overall, because it all ends up in Damon Run, eventually, and it puts a lot of silt through several people’s back yards down by the Rhoda’s.  The concept of the building, the plans for the building itself, the forebay, the pond, the wetland and how that’s configured and the drainage off to the road – is this South property line, is that also the right-of-way for the highways?

Mr. Bengel stated, no.  It’s the church’s property.

Mr. Cole stated, the septic field area is going to accommodate both buildings at this time?

Mr. Bengel stated, yes.

Mr. Joseph asked, did you follow the pedestrian sidewalk across the parking lot into the existing building, is that sidewalk ADA compliable.

Mr. Bengel stated, yeah.   It’s an existing building.

Mr. Joseph stated, because it comes North, the proposed parking lot, then East and then just dead-ends there in the parking lot. Where does it follow after that?

Mr. Bengel stated, it goes straight across and then…

Mr. Joseph asked, that sidewalk’s handicap accessible?

Mr. Bengel stated that the whole area in front of the building is handicap accessible.  We did away with the curb.

Mr. Joseph asked, the Southwest corner of the existing building?

Mr. Bengel stated, no, not there.

Mr. Joseph stated that that would require people to cut up through the parking lot.

Mr. Bengel stated, we’ll take a look.  Maybe we’ll put a sidewalk when you go East and then maybe we can go North with a sidewalk up  to the front of the building, and then you can go across.

Mr. Cole  asked, the type of trucks necessary to bring these inflatables in and out…

Mr. Bengel stated that they’re not going to come in and out.  They’re going to come in and stay.

Mr. Cole asked, are people going to rent them?

Mr. Bengel stated, no, they come to the building for birthday parties and stuff like that.  And any use of that driveway next to the building that will be used in off times.

Mr. Thompson stated, it’s not like Chuck E. Cheese’s in the sense where they make the food and you go there and play around.  You have to schedule a certain time to go in there, they have the party there, and they will cater in the food, I believe – correct me if I’m wrong – that they will cater in the food?

Mark Bengel stated, yes.

Mr. Thompson asked, and they can have two or three private parties going on at the same time?

Mark Bengel stated, I think they can have four.

Mr. Breitzke asked if they are going to have a private kitchen or something, even if they bring in the food?

Mark Bengel stated, no, that’s all covered with the franchise.

Issues raised were landscape plan for the parking lot; submit parking lot lighting plan; conceptual drawing of  the building; striping in the parking lot; make sure sidewalks are ADA compliant; wetlands delineation.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:55 a.m.