BY ROBYN MONAGHAN, Times of Northwest Indiana
rmonaghan@nwitimes.com
VALPARAISO | Porter County leaders are ready to hand back $5.5 million in federal road money if that's what it takes to smother urban sprawl in southern Porter County.
When the conversation runs to southern Porter County roads, talk takes a U-turn at County Road 100 South, where rapid development has followed recognition of the route as a handy link between Ind. 2 and I-65. With a new plan to run the Illiana Expressway through Porter and Morgan townships, some officials see southern Porter County on the road to ruin.
"People move from Lake County to Porter County to get away from bumper-to-bumper traffic and houses on top of one another," said County Council President Dan Whitten said. "They don't want a speedway in their backyard."
The $5.5 million in question is federal highway money, administered by the state, that U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., secured three years ago for an Ind. 149 extension to U.S. 30. When the price tag for the Ind. 149 project quadrupled original estimates, it was shelved. The money was earmarked for widening and improving County Road 100 South, Porter County Commission President Bob Harper said.
"Just because Pete Visclosky hands us some money, I don't think our way of life is for sale," Whitten said.
Harper is ready to hand the money back rather than pave the way for what he fears will be run-away development and commercialization.
"People will call me an obstructionist, but my first duty is to the people who live here already," he said.
About 1,000 residential lots in at least nine new subdivisions on County Road 100 South "will change the character of the landscape of Porter Township. It gives some insight as to what the Illiana Expressway might do," said Porter Township Trustee Bob Wichlinski.