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player ready...The Portage Redevelopment Commission is getting ready to issue a $15 million bond for a variety of construction projects, including at the site where the city hoped to build a stadium for the Chicago Bears.
The 20-year bonds would be repaid early, the commission hopes, when the 300-acre site on the city’s north side sells. The city hurriedly put together a pitch for the Bears, calling the site Halas Harbor until the Bears rejected the Hail Mary play in favor of Hammond.
Two of the projects to be funded with the bond are aimed at improving access to that site, extending Burns Parkway and building a bridge to extend the road over Burns Waterway.
The former Garyton School, which has been closed for years, would be demolished. Former Mayor Sue Lynch had hopes of turning the former school into a community center, but no private partners took the bait after a study for the project was dangled before potential stakeholders.
Kayak access to Salt Creek is also included in the bond, as are improvements to the intersection of Samuelson Road and Central Avenue.
“This is a very important process that we’ve begun,” Redevelopment Director Dan Botich said.
Extending Burns Parkway would open 100 to 125 acres for development on that 300-acre site where the failed Sport Resort was to have been built. In the next phase, about 200 more acres would become accessible.
“That extension is getting numerous amounts of interest for the developers,” Botich said.
Mayor Austin Bonta said the Burns Parkway extension and bridge are key to developing the site. “We are not interested in building a bridge to nowhere.”
With those critical pieces of infrastructure in place, the land will become much more marketable.
“The Hillcrest site on the north side of the city is just one of the best pieces of property in Northwest Indiana,” Bonta said.
After five or six years, any land sales from the north side property would be used to pay those bonds, Botich said. The land is valued at $125,000 to $145,000 per acre, so selling the entire property would bring an estimated $14 million, he said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.