Jeff Parrott|South Bend Tribune
SOUTH BEND — The South Bend Common Council Monday night unanimously approved a rezoning that American Electric Power needed to build a service center southwest of Adams Road and the U.S. 31 bypass.
But council members noted that under Indiana law, the electric utility didn’t need their approval for its plans to also build a substation at the site, a project that has sparked more controversy with some neighbors. People who live nearby say the appearanceof transmission lines and structures that will carry the lineswest from the substation will lower their property values.
“Just to point out for the public record, the substation is not something the council can approve,” council member Lori Hamann said at the meeting. “It’s going in under eminent domain and will occur regardless of what the council chooses to do. This has been a very emotional undertaking for the folks that live out in this area.”
The city annexed the site in the mid-2000s in preparation for a "Portage Prairie" mixed use development proposed by Holladay Properties. City Zoning Administrator Angela Smith said Holladay had envisionedthe property, along with landeast of the bypass, to be similar to Heritage Square northeast of Cleveland and Gumwood roads.
But that vision, which washotly contested by German Township residents at a series of council meetings in 2007, never came to fruition, partly because of the 2008-2009 Great Recession, but also because state and federal officials would not fundHolladay's request to build an interchange at Adams Road. A bridge still carries the road over the bypass, and land east of the bypass has largely been developed for industrial and distribution businesses.
Logistics and distribution: Portage Prairie business park adds new firms
AEP said the service center will contain an office building, storage facility and service garage, andwill replace the company's existing location at Bendix Drive and Lathrop Street near South Bend International Airport. AEP expects to break ground next month on the 115,000-square-foot building.
"At the new location, I&M crews will be able to respond faster to customer outages and concerns given direct access to U.S. 31 and surrounding key roadways," the company said in a statement Tuesday.
Several neighbors spoke out against both AEP projects planned for the site at an Oct. 25 meeting of the council’s Zoning and Annexation Committee.
Deborah Green, who lives on Righter Lane, south of the site, said Adams and Orange roads, already “crumbling,” won’t be able to handle the increased traffic that the service center will generate, especially when semi-trucks carry utility poles.
One of the most emotional pleas at that committee meeting came from Wendy Wolfe, who owns six acres on Orange Road directly west of the site and south of The Carriage House Restaurant & Gardens. She said AEP plans to run the lines and towers through a two-acre piece of “buildable” land that she owns between her home and her horse barn.
“Now this home that I’ve spent 25 years landscaping, grooming, keeping my horses, having a little farmhouse (VRBO) business to share with kids and families, they’re going to take a wire and take out these trees and everything,” Wolfe said, crying. “It’s wrong on every level. I have a beautiful place. It’s kind of hard to believe that I’m going to have that condemned here in the next few months and have it taken away from me, but that looks like what’s going to be happening.”
At Monday’s meeting to consider rezoning for the service center, Wolfe said she was satisfied with the revised plan the council approved. AEP had agreed to move the service center building east, closer to the highway, and to leave standing a row of trees along the site’s western border.
AEP, which operates locally as Indiana & Michigan Power, needed to change the site's zoning from "neighborhood center" to "industrial" to build the service center. It did not send a representative working on the substation project to either meeting, and none were immediately available for comment late Monday night.
But in terms of the substation project, Wolfe said she planned to fight the company in court for as long as possible.
“Am I going to go down without a fight? No,” she said after Monday night’s meeting. “Am I going to lose? Maybe. But I don’t have to make it easy for them. That’s what my attorney said. I can tie them up in court for years over this.”
