By DAVE SCHULTZ
The development plan for a church complex of nearly 18,000 square feet on Bluffton’s north side was approved Thursday evening by the Wells County Area Plan Commission.
The APC also approved the development plan for a new dentist’s office on Main Street, which will replace its current office.
iTown Church of Bluffton, which has been meeting at Bluffton High School since its founding, will build its own structure on Main Street/Ind. 1 on a 36-acre parcel. The building will be south of Lancaster Park and the church’s property will adjoin the park.
Ryan Rediger of Stoeppelwerth and Associates Inc. of Fishers presented the plans to the APC. He said the plans were revised to decrease the size of the complex. Rediger said conversations are ongoing with the Indiana Department of Transportation concerning deceleration and turning lanes in front of the church building. He also said the church’s construction plans are mindful of the planned PokaBache trail, which will go through the area.
The Bluffton campus will be the iTown’s third. It now has churches in Indianapolis and Fishers.
Brian McClelland, who lives just south of the church’s planned development on Main Street, told the APC members that he had concerns about drainage. County Surveyor Jarrod Hahn said the plans show stormwater will flow east and north from the church building and only a small amount should flow south where it could impact McClelland’s property.
The 11 members of the APC — Harry Baumgartner Jr., Tyson Brooks, Chandler Gerber, Hahn, Bill Horan, Kiera Lance, Jerome Markley, Tim Rohr, John Schuhmacher, Becky Stone-Smith, and Melissa Woodworth — all approved the development plan with some conditions. Among those conditions were approval from INDOT concerning the highway and entrance to the site and approval from the city of Bluffton for utilities.
Riverstone Dental has an office at 1429 Baker Place, but that office will be demolished and replaced by a new 3,700-square-foot building at the same location. Todd Bauer of ForeSight Consulting LLC said the current office will be used even as construction on the new office is underway.
The facility’s parking lot will also be expanded to 29 spaces.
Like the church’s development plan discussion before it, the dental office’s development plan was questioned by a neighbor concerned with drainage. Tony Terhune, who owns property adjacent to the dental office, was concerned about where stormwater will go when it drains off the property. One of the chief concerns was the intersection of Baker Place/Main Street/North Sutton Circle, which floods “every time it rains,” one person said during the discussion.
Hahn said that as far as he knew, there was no record of what drainage is currently in place for the site.
Bauer said the dental office, owned by Molly Sigler D.D.S. and Blake Taylor D.D.S., intends to use the same utility taps that the current office uses — if that’s possible.
The development plan — filed by Apollonia Real Estate, which owns the property — was approved on an 11-0 vote, pending approval of the utility connections with the city.
A request for a minor subdivision was approved on an 11-0 vote without much discussion after a definition was cleared up. Several neighbors were concerned that when they read the word “subdivision” that it meant a housing development would be constructed at the northwest corner of Meridian Road and Wells County Road 1050N. The road is not paved and they did not want additional cars kicking up dust.
However, in this case, owner Kathleen Kowal was asking for a parcel of 9 acres to be split off of a larger parcel of 33.54 acres. The matter was cleared up when Kowal said there would be only one house on the 9-acre tract after the property was subdivided.
Another petition, for a rezoning request, was not considered after no one showed up to discuss the matter for the third straight month. According to APC rules, the request must be refiled.
The petition concerned property at 1131 S. Morgan St. in Bluffton. The request was to change it from R-2 to R-3, which would alter the density of the dwellings.
daves@news-banner.com
