Several Wayne Township residents who live next to vacant land that could be annexed by the city of Columbus and re-zoned for industrial use have expressed concerns that they may end up being “sandwiched” in an industrial park.
The residents live next to 18.97 acres at the northwest corner of State Road 58 and County Road 300W near the Woodside Northwest Industrial Park. A request for annexation has received initial approval from the Columbus City Council along with rezoning from “agricultural: preferred” to “industrial: heavy” with some restrictions on the types of facilities that can be built on the property.
Of the 18.97 acres that would be annexed, 16.83 of them are owned by the Deckard Family Trust. The annexation would include 2.14 acres of right-of-way on State Road 58 and County Road 300W, city officials said during the Oct. 15 city council meeting.
If the annexation is approved, trust representatives have told city officials that they also would seek to annex and rezone an additional 76-acre property that is located just west of the 16.83-acre property.
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Residents are in negotiations with the prospective buyer of the vacant land and have received offers to purchase their properties for 150% of their appraised value, said Mark Pratt, president of Breeden, who is representing the Deckard Family Trust.
Pratt said the offer has been extended to five or six adjacent residential properties, and he has received responses from most of the property owners, but the parties have not yet reached an agreement. The offer, however, is contingent upon all of the residential property owners accepting.
“We’re still negotiating,” Pratt said on Monday. “We haven’t settled on anything. The responses have been taken under advisement by the prospective buyer.”
Pratt declined to disclose who the prospective buyer of the property is.
Jennifer Beck-Miller, who said she has been living at 6830 S. County Road 300W for eight years, said the buy-out offer they have received wouldn’t allow them to purchase a comparable property in Bartholomew County with similar amenities to what they currently have.
Her current property includes a barn and two acres of fenced-in pasture, she said.
“We would hope that (the prospective buyer) would purchase our property for a fair price so we could at least replace our property and still stay within Bartholomew County because this is where we live,” Beck-Miller said after the city council meeting.
Beck-Miller’s husband, Trevor Miller, said the quick pace of the annexation process has made some of the neighboring residents “feel like we’re kind of getting steamrolled.”
“You can’t replace what we have for what we’re being offered,” Miller said after the city council meeting. “We want a win-win. We don’t want to hold up the guys from doing their progress, but we also have animals and a small farm and that’s why we live in the country.”
“We only have a little bit of mortgage left, and now all of a sudden, to replace what we have, to have animals, to do this, we’re looking at another mortgage and another 30 years,” Miller added.
Dana Greathouse, who said she has lived at 6950 S. County Road 300W for more than 20 years, told the city council on Oct. 15 that she feels the owners of the neighboring residential properties are being “bamboozled.”
“We are all wanting to sell our homes,” she told the city council. “We do not want to be an island in the midst of an industrial park.”
The land across the street from the Greathouse residence is zoned for industrial use, according to public records. If the city ends up annexing and re-zoning the property owned by the Deckard Family Trust, the south and west sides of the Greathouses’ property also would brush up next to land zoned for industrial use.
After the meeting, Greathouse and her husband, Burt, said they “want the project to go through” but are concerned that they may end up being “sandwiched” between industrial sites and have struggled to get an appraisal on their property.
“We’ve been denied appraisals,” said Burt Greathouse. “They don’t want to get involved. They’re afraid of lawsuits and stuff. They said it could get ugly.”
Pratt said “no appraiser has been agreed upon” at this point.
City officials said they cannot dictate the terms of any potential agreement between the parties and have encouraged conversations between Pratt and the prospective buyer and the nearby residential property owners.
“The city is not part of the negotiations between those neighbors and the potential buyers of the property,” said Columbus and Bartholomew County Planning Director Jeff Bergman. “The (Columbus) Plan Commission did, however, actively encourage Mark Pratt and the buyers of the Deckard (Family Trust) properties to have conversations with the neighbors.”
The city cannot dictate the terms of any potential agreement between the parties, Bergman said.
The proposal was initially brought before the plan commission in July, according to public records. Several residents of the adjacent residential properties attended the meeting, according to the meeting’s minutes. The plan commission also discussed the proposed annexation and re-zoning during its Aug. 14 meeting.
On Sept. 11, the plan commission voted 9-0 to issue a favorable recommendation to the council for the proposed annexation and re-zoning of the property.
City councilman David Bush, who also is a voting member of the plan commission, said the commission encouraged Pratt and the prospective buyer and issued a “continuance” to allow the parties to continue discussions.
“We did (a continuance) for two months to allow them to have that conversation. Once we were satisfied that the conversation had been had and everybody in the know, so to speak, we went ahead and recommended approval,” Bush said.
The commission’s favorable recommendation included commitments to prohibit certain types of industrial activities on the property, widening County Road 300W, requirements on the placement of vehicles and loading areas on the property and other provisions designed to “minimize impacts to immediately adjoining homes.”
One of the provisions includes a 150-foot-long buffer zone that would include an elevated strip of land that is at least 8 feet tall with “a staggered row of evergreen trees that are a minimum 5 feet in height,” according to a staff report by the Columbus Planning Department, which also made favorable recommendations for the annexation and re-zoning of the property.
The prohibited industrial activities would include sewage treatment, hazardous material production, waste disposal, operating a truck stop or travel center, among several other activities, the staff report states.
On Oct. 15, the city council gave initial approval to two ordinances that would annex and re-zone the property. The council is expected to make a final decision on Nov. 6, Bergman said.
If the city council passes the two ordinances, state law would require a 30-day waiting period before the annexation is effective, Bergman said.
During the 30-day period, people can only file objections in court to challenge how the city calculated the contiguity of the property with the current city limits.
State law requires a property to be at least 12.5% contiguous to the current city limits in order to be annexed, Bergman said. The Deckard Family Trust property is 13.36% contiguous.
If no objections are filed by the end of the 30-day period, the property would likely be annexed on Jan. 1, Bergman said.
“This is somewhat of a challenging situation in that the (city’s) comprehensive plan recommends that the long-term use of this area be industrial and would seem to support the re-zoning request, and you have, complicating that, the presence of these residential property owners and the concerns about any industrial development with their homes,” Bergman said.
