After Gary’s Board of Zoning Appeals approved a plan for a tow operator last month, the Common Council disagreed even though they like the idea for the business.
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The reason: The property owner.
The council’s planning committee on Jan. 9 reviewed the request of Tremaine Hemingway, who wants to develop a towing company on a site in the 3700 block of Hayes Street. Hemingway said he has a two-year lease from the property owner, Andy Young, of Wadsworth, Ill.
Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson’s chief of staff, Dayna Bennett, said Young owns several properties across Gary where assorted code violations have been discovered. She said that as of Nov. 17, Young owes in excess of $16,000 of unpaid property taxes at the Hayes Street site.
The site, which has been vacant in recent years, is zoned for M-1 manufacturing use. To allow a towing company offering emergency roadside service to locate there, the council would have to approve a use variance. Officials likely will review the issue again when the full council meets Jan. 16.
Hemingway, who already has a towing business in Chicago, said having a Gary location with four to six tow trucks will help expand his business opportunities.
“That is an issue for us,” council President Ronald Brewer said. “This would be a slam-dunk for us to approve if it were a different (property) owner.”
Young said the council’s negative reaction does not surprise him, and he said he thinks they’re merely following the lead of Freeman-Wilson.
Rodney Pol, an assistant city attorney, said one issue that concerns the city is that if a use variance is granted for the site, the new zoning status stays with the property owner regardless of whether Hemingway remains at the site or tries to move elsewhere in the future.
While Brewer suggested the council could repeal the use variance in the future, Pol said the courts might look unfavorably on such an act. “The courts have frowned upon giving specific use of land to a person instead of to the land itself,” he said.
Brewer said he and other council members would be inclined to look favorably on the zoning change if Hemingway could persuade Young to get caught up on his property tax bill, an issue he said he was unaware of prior to signing the lease.
Young did not address the issue of back taxes owed to the city. But he said Thursday he believes the mayor and her administration are not friendly to business interests. “I don’t have a quarrel with the council. I get along with most of them,” he said.
Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.