County To Look At 200-Acre Buy

By Shawn McGrath

LAPORTE -- County officials are expected to contact the state today about the possible purchase of slightly more than 200 acres near the Summit Farm boot camp.

In less than two weeks, the State of Indiana is divesting 202 acres along Johnson Road and south of CR-300N.
In a joint meeting between the LaPorte County Commissioners and County Council, officials agreed Thursday to have County Attorney Robert Szilagyi contact the state about the outright purchase of the property.

The property, being called Summit Anderson Farm by the state, is scheduled to be auctioned at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 14, at Holiday Inn Express, 100 E. Shore Court, LaPorte. The property is currently zoned for agriculture.

And while county officials agreed to that next step, opinions varied about what the property could be used for or if even they should buy the property.

“This would be an investment,” Commission Bill Hager said. “It isn’t going to lose value.”

County officials are faced with a few options:

Not buy the property, either at auction or outright

Buy the land and sit on it

Buy the land and lease it to an area farmer or farmers

Buy the land with the plan being to build a new county complex/courthouse sometime in the next several decades

“I’m not in favor of buying it,” Councilman Mark Ludlow said. “We should not be in the business of buying land.”
If the county doesn’t buy the property, then the thinking goes, a developer certainly will. Hager estimates that about 400 homes could be put in that area, meaning an extra 800 cars traveling on an already problematic Johnson Road.

Commissioner Barb Huston said the county could earn roughly $14,000 each year by leasing the land to crop growers.

Development on the land brings other concerns as well. Hager said six or seven drains transverse the property, including the Kabelin Drain, that empty into LaPorte’s Pine Lake.

“If we contaminate Pine Lake, we’ll be liable,” Hager said. “In my term the (developers) would never get it zoned (to residential) because of that Kabelin Drain.”

Elizabeth Barrett, communications manager with the Indiana Department of Administration, has said the property has been appraised, but declined to give the amount. But she did say the property has a ballpark value of $300,000.

Barrett said the auction of the Indiana Department of Corrections property is part of an executive order issued by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels in January 2005 to divest the state of underused and unused assets.
Despite the county looking into buying the property outright -- and avoiding going to auction -- Szilagyi is pessimistic the state will kill the auction.

“About as remote as snow in July,” he said.

County Council President Jerry Cooley said that he’s received several calls about the issue, mostly from people saying the county should buy the land.

Story posted: 10/6/2006