The fix for a zoning dispute between the City of Crown Point and a former business owner appears to be a matter of semantics.
Hank Nyenhuis, the former owner of Helix Hydraulics, came before the City Council Monday night to implore it to grant a zoning change to a relatively small parcel of his 8-acre property at 1401 and 1493 N. Main St. At last month’s meeting, the Plan Commission unanimously rejected rezoning that parcel to the I-1 designation Nyenhuis requires instead of the R-1.
Nyenhuis told the council that when he’d bought the property from the American Legion in 1999, he thought it was zoned I-1 and ran his fabrication shop as such until he closed it and put it on the market in 2015. When he put it on the market, however, he was surprised to find out that an 80-foot parcel, which the Legion kept for parking in the back of the property, was zoned R-1.
Nyenhuis’s real estate agent told him the parcel was zoned R-1 when the city annexed Liberty Park, Nyenhuis said. Prior to that, in 2002, Nyenhuis said he went before the Lake County Planning Commission to get a height variance to build a cell tower.
Nyenhuis, who now lives in Florida and said he’s been paying $3,000 to $4,000 per month on the vacant property since it closed, now has a buyer for 5 ½ acres of the 8-acre parcel, he said. But the sale is contingent on the property having an I-1 designation on its entirety.
“The buyer’s extremely qualified — doesn’t need a bank (for a loan) and put his own skin in the game and hired (companies to test soil and other environmental conditions). They’re going to have an architect look at everything, too,” Nyenhuis said. “I have always operated the property as an I-1, so the city has the responsibility to have the R-1 changed back.
“Someone is putting us in harm’s way because of a city mistake, and that’s (they city’s) issue. But I have to have that I-1, or I lose the sale. Change it to make the building into a productive building.”
Councilwoman Carol Drasga, R-5, pointed out that the R-1 designation isn’t a mistake because all new and unused parcels that come into the city are designated as such, and have since before Nyenhuis purchased the property. If land purchasers want a different designation, they typically get a special use variance, she said.
Attorney for the potential buyer, Randy Wyllie, told the council a possible solution would be for the city to put restrictions on the I-1 designation if the council was concerned that an I-1 would limit the city’s control on what business can be built there. Councilwoman Laura Sauerman said the buyer getting a special use variance would achieve the same goal.
The council ultimately voted 6-0 to defer the matter to next month but told Wyllie to get Planning Administrator Anthony Schlueter information on the project by Tuesday so that the matter can get on the Board of Zoning Appeal’s next agenda.
In other business, chickens will not come home to roost in residential areas, at least for the time being.
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Council President Chad Jeffries said that resident Susan Trask, who’s asked for the city to change its ordinance to allow up to four hens in residential areas, made a “good case” for it during a July 31 Ordinance Committee meeting. But where they usually don’t have remonstrance at those meetings, Jeffries said they received calls from people against having the chickens.
“In our code, it’s not just chickens, and if we start tampering with it, where does it end?” Jeffries said. “It‘s chickens this time, but next time it could be a goat. We made no recommendation at this time.”
Trask, who attended the meeting, addressed the council and said she knows “change doesn‘t happen overnight.” She also read an email sent from Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas’s assistant, Lori Simon, that said so far, Valparaiso has seen “nothing that shows a negative effect on the community.”
“If I show that there are no problems with rogue chickens or dirty chickens, maybe it’ll change,” Trask said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.