VANDERBURGH COUNTY

REZONING BOARD

FEBRUARY 15, 2005

The Vanderburgh County Rezoning Board met in session this 15^th day of February, 2005 at 5:00 p.m. in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex with President Suzanne Crouch presiding.

President Crouch: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Vanderburgh County Commissioners rezoning meeting of February 15^th.

* The January 24, 2005 rezoning minutes were approved during the February 15, 2005 Commission meeting.

President Crouch: We have one item on our agenda, that’s a final reading, docket number VC-2-2005, petitioner, Madisonville West Properties, Inc. Mr. Shively?

Les Shively: Madam President, members of the Board of Commissioners, my name is Les Shively, representing the petitioner. This is nice to be able to have this available for your meeting. As you can see from the aerial photograph, we’re talking about a piece of property, it’s outlined in red, it’s somewhat of an irregularly shaped piece of property. It contains approximately just shy of 15 acres. The request for this particular rezoning is for multi-family, R-3. The property just to the north, actually to the northeast, where you see Pearl Drive, that is all commercial. South of us remains agricultural, mostly single family usage. I won’t read it in it’s entirety, the staff field report, but this is consistent, according to the staff, with the comprehensive plan, because this provides the appropriate buffer between the commercial and the R-1 residential. Or, I actually should say the Ag use as R-1 residential. Just to hit some of the points here, by the way, it did come before the Plan Commission earlier this month, and they recommend approval by a vote of nine, with one abstention. The big issue on this particular piece of property has to do with access. INDOT has jurisdiction up to this point because of the limits of their right-of-way. INDOT, we presented this letter, Madam President, I’ll give you a copy, this is a letter dated December 7^th, they have no problems with the access on this property.

President Crouch: Thank you.

Les Shively: We learned, however, at the Plan Commission meeting, this is not funny, but it’s kind of one of those comedy of error situations that occurs, we learned, even though we’d filed our petition back in November of last year, so we could have time to meet with, and we delayed any action so that we could meet with the Westside Improvement Association people, who you will hear from in a moment, Mr. Padget, we found out at the meeting on the 2^nd of February, that two days before our meeting that there is a lot that was sold in here, it’s going to be a physician’s office, Welborn Clinic, I believe, is doing that. Anyway, to make a long story short, they have an access point on Boehne Camp, in close proximity to our access point. All I can tell you right now is this project will have to go through two steps, site review and sub review will have to get that worked out. I don’t want to tell you that everything is worked out at this point, but Mr. Danny Leek, who’s our engineer on the project is here, he has been talking with the representatives of the leasing agent who is putting together this project for Welborn, and they’re working , trying to work this problem out. They are very open minded, and it probably will end up being what I think a lot of people would like to see, and that is a shared access that lines up better with that portion of Pearl Drive to the east of Boehne Camp Road. So, this might be an opportunity to actually make it a better situation for everybody. We’re not there yet. We’ll have to get to that point by the time we go to site review and sub review, because those are conditions of our permits. This will have to go back to you all when you put on your hats as the Drainage Board, because we’re talking about more than five acres. There will have to be a drainage plan submitted, adjacent landowners will have to be notified, just like you do in a subdivision situation. The Greenway committee met with us, and they have a long term plan of extending the Greenway out to the University of Southern Indiana. Their focus was the part of the property that’s closest to the Lloyd Expressway. They really don’t have anything worked out to the east, so, what we said we would do, we would give them a 15', reserve a 15' area on that part of the property where she’s marking with the little hand. So, we won’t build on that, we’ll kind of leave that unencumbered and when the, when and if they do get some access across the parking lots and those commercial lots on that commercial subdivision just east of us, we will work out something a little more permanent and some access roads. But, right now we’re just going to give them that 15'. I think you have a letter from Shirley James that says they are very pleased with that. Just to give you an idea, Mr. Allen Davis, who is one of the principals of the petitioners is here today, his company, this is their first multi-family venture in Vanderburgh County. They are the largest owner and operator of multi-family communities in the Hopkinsville-Madisonville area. There’s going to be three styles of multi-family units in this area. There are only going to be 100 units, that’s a low density, given the amount of acreage involved. There is three types of floor plans, and you will see, the second set of floor plans, and I’ll give a copy of this to the President, shows kind of a town house approach. The reason they’re doing this, is this is rolling hills, and such that are going to require a lot of excavation, moving of earth. This will minimize that and allow them to build units that will more aptly sort of blend into existing topography out there. But, these are very good looking facilities. They also, these all have garages. This is a high end type development. Not designed to accommodate the student housing situation, unless you are a very, very well-to-do student. As you can see by the layout, they don’t lend themselves to that. Again, I’m more than happy to answer any questions that you have at this time. Again, Mr. Davis is here, and Mr. Leek from Morley and Associates is here as well to answer questions you might have.

President Crouch: Questions? None at this time. Thank you, Mr. Shively.

Les Shively: Thank you.

President Crouch: Is there anyone that is here to remonstrate against this rezoning?

Fred Padget: Hi, I’m Fred Padget, and I’m with the Westside Improvement. We’re not here to remonstrate against, but we do want to talk about it a little bit with you. First of all, I guess, we compliment the Commissioners on their devotion to duty, having meetings today and being such a nice day outside. That would be tough to do, but anyway you’re here, so, that’s good. I would like to, first of all, thank the attorney, Les Shively, and Mr. Davis for bringing West Side Improvement into this project at a very early stage. We reviewed this, I guess it’s been a couple of months, three months ago now, and we appreciate their effort to keep us informed of what’s planned for the area. The few things that I do want to talk about, Mr. Shively’s already talked about, the access to the development, that’s an important issue, and with additional traffic, because of the Wal-Mart construction and potentially for Sears on the other side of the road and Kohl’s down the road, my feeling is that Pearl Drive, westbound, or eastbound, I’m sorry, westbound Pearl Drive will start to pick up a lot more traffic, which then lets it out onto Boehne Camp and either on to the Lloyd, or take Boehne Camp on down to Broadway. So, we see a lot of concerns with additional traffic loads in those areas. There was some discussion about ingress/egress to the area, we would like to see it lined up with Pearl Drive, which, of course is being worked on. That has to do with the access to the north that Mr. Shively was talking about. I’ve talked with most of the neighbors, at least the one’s I could either find a phone number or get in touch with. All of the neighbors that I’ve talked with do have concerns about drainage. They do have concerns about soil erosion, because of the terrain and the hilly terrain out there. One of the neighbors was pretty much opposed to the project. On the other hand, some of the things that we see in favor, number one, it’s in the comprehensive plan for residential. It’s been in the comprehensive plan that way for quite some time, and it’s also in this year’s comprehensive plan. We’ve talked before with other groups about commercial on the west side of Boehne Camp, which, of course, was never in the comprehensive plan, this would, for all practical purposes, stop commercial development on that west side of Boehne Camp, and we think that’s a real plus for this area. We like the idea of trying to keep the terrain, as much as possible, and leave the rolling terrain out there. We think that’s a good plan. We were also very interested in knowing that the developer agreed to a right-of-way for the Greenway passage, which kind of is in their, it’s in their long range plans right now. It isn’t going to happen immediately, but we think that’s a good plan, and one of these days we want to connect that up with USI, and then bring USI over to Burdette, which I think you talked about in your first meeting. So, that fits in with all of that. As far as the technical aspects, we leave that to site review, they know better than us, and they’ll get it resolved. I guess, the other thing is, you asked about, or we appear as a remonstrator, but we often come down to oppose projects, we often come down with problems, but, we think it’s also fair when something comes up that we can support, that we come down and tell you that also. We do support this project. Thank you. If there are any questions, I’ll gladly answer them.

President Crouch: Questions? Thank you, Mr. Padget. Is there anyone else in the audience who wishes to speak for or against this project? Seeing none.

Les Shively: I would just like to note for the record that exclusive of the cost of acquisition of the land, when completed the improvements will, are valued at seven million dollars, and there’s no tax abatements, so, when it goes on line it will produce tax dollars for the community based upon that valuation.

President Crouch: Thank you.

Commissioner Musgrave: So, you’re agreeing to the assessment of seven million dollars in advance?

Les Shively: You know, I knew, Cheryl, you were going to say that. But, you know, things change, it’s a moving target. What can I say.

Commissioner Musgrave: That’s not right. Move approval of docket number VC-2-2005.

Commissioner Nix: I second.

President Crouch: All in favor?

All Commissioners: Aye.

President Crouch: So ordered. There being no further business to come before this board, we stand adjourned. Oh, I am sorry, this requires a roll call vote. Commissioner Musgrave?

Commissioner Musgrave: Yes.

President Crouch: Commissioner Nix?

Commissioner Nix: Yes.

President Crouch: And I vote yes.

Les Shively: Thank you.

President Crouch: And now we’ll stand adjourned. Thank you.

(The meeting was adjourned at 5:10 p.m.)

         Those in Attendance:

         Suzanne Crouch             Cheryl Musgrave            Bill Nix

         Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.          Brad Mills                        Bev Behme

         Madelyn Grayson           Les Shively                     Fred Padget

         Others Unidentified         Members of Media

VANDERBURGH COUNTY

REZONING BOARD

Suzanne M. Crouch, President

Cheryl A.W. Musgrave, Vice President

Bill Nix, Member

Recorded and transcribed by Madelyn Grayson.