Go west, say residents opposed to proposed U.S. 231 corridor route

By Joe Thomas, Journal and Courier

Engineers are recommending that the new U.S. 231 corridor run farther around West Lafayette's west side than a route suggested a decade ago, but not far enough west to please some Tippecanoe County residents.

HOPING FOR A MIRACLE: Rev. Ted Brust of Bethel Christian Life Center Assembly of God points out where a proposed route for the new U.S. 231 corridor would run through the church's property. He said the route would require a relocation for the church. "It'll take a miracle to find a place as nice as this." (Photo by John Terhune, Journal and Courier)

The new recommended route, which will be formally disclosed Thursday during a public hearing, runs from Horticulture Park's west side and heads northwest until it parallels the Kankakee, Beaverville & Southern Railroad tracks at an extended Cherry Lane, where it turns north.

And from there, it travels between Sherwood Forest's east side and McCormick Road and eventually uses McCormick to reach Cumberland Avenue, then connects with U.S. 231, northwest of West Lafayette.

Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission officials favor the route recommended by engineers with Merrillville-based Michael Baker Jr. Inc. Those engineers say the 3.2-mile road will cost an estimated $11.5 million to build.

But residents in two western subdivisions, Sherwood Forest and Wake Robin, plan to oppose the route.

"The neighborhood association is up in arms," said Phil Klinger, a Sherwood Forest resident.

Klinger prefers a route farther west. But the report Baker engineers submitted indicates that costs rise as the highway moves that way. Two proposed routes that rely on Jackson Highway would cost an estimated $18.1 million and $24.8 million to build, according to the report.

But Klinger persists.

"It makes absolutely no sense at all to put it in existing neighborhoods. It makes more sense to run it out west where no one has built yet," he said.

Citizens can comment on the proposed corridor during the hearing set for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Klondike Elementary School. Indiana Department of Transportation hearing officers will conduct the meeting.

West Lafayette Mayor Sonya Margerum worries a far-western route discourages drivers from using the proposed road.

She called the recommended route the best alternative, but she would not mind seeing it a little farther west to minimize impact on homes, while ensuring enough vehicles travel it to justify the project.

"I think it's the best route," she said. "If you go too far west, traffic counts won't justify a new road, and you're just contributing to sprawl.

"As you build the road, development will just jump over it to the other side. It will just force development further west, and I think we ought to develop in an orderly way."

The Baker report says the recommended route dislocates the fewest homes and business, does not bisect any neighborhoods, and keeps West Lafayette-bound traffic on Lindberg Road from the new highway on the Lindberg Soccer Fields' east side.

The report also says the recommended route meets the project's purpose and need and fits with transportation and land use plans developed by APC staffers, as well as transportation plans developed by INDOT and Purdue University.

The proposed corridor displaces 18 residences that fall within a 300-foot-wide footprint for the planned highway. The plan does not identify the affected houses, but the report said the project will displace the Bethel Christian Life Center.

The Rev. Ted Brust, who's been at Bethel Christian about four years, announced the prospects of being dislocated by the new highway to his congregation on Sunday, and he plans to attend Thursday's public hearing.

"We are 90 percent sure it's going to happen," Brust said. "We just hope the state helps us in finding a new home."

At that U.S. 52 site for about 18 years, Bethel Christian members purchased six acres just behind the main campus three years ago, boosting its property holdings to 11 acres. Serving a congregation of 400 members, Brust said church officials only discovered the details of the latest route about three weeks ago and had no notion that the 231 bypass would become a problem for them.

"We're not upset about it. But I told the folks on Sunday that we're in for a great journey."

Brindon Woods and Carrington Estates subdivisions also would get different entrances because McCormick Road will no longer have direct access to U.S. 52.

"Traffic bound for U.S. 52 will travel south on McCormick Road, which now serves as a frontage road, and then north on U.S. 231 to access U.S. 52," the report says.

"While this makes access more complicated, it provides a buffer between Carrington Estates and relocated U.S. 231."

The report said that Baker engineers rejected the no-build alternative for two reasons.

"The no-build alternative has the least amount of overall environmental impacts; however, this alternative has been eliminated as the preferred alternative because it does not meet the purpose and need of the project, and is the least consistent with local planning objectives," the report states.

The debate will continue as engineers finish up design work for the leg that will take U.S. 231 from South River Road and around Purdue University Airport.

Margerum said that project remains on schedule.

"They (INDOT officials) told us it's going to start in 2004," she said. "I've talked with a couple of people and they say the plans are progressing and that is still the date. If I were a betting person, I'd bet closer to 2005, but that's what they tell me."

What's next?

Citizens can comment on the new U.S. 231 corridor during a public hearing set for 6 p.m. on Thursday at Klondike Elementary School in West Lafayette.

Anyone wishing to comment who cannot make the meeting can mail comments to: Mary Wright, INDOT public hearing examiner, 100 N. Senate Ave., IGCN Room N901, Indianapolis, IN 46204 or fax them to (317) 234-1228.

Comments also can be made at the project Web site: www.relocate231.com/docfeedback.asp