Dust to dust

As of Tuesday afternoon the demolition of the old Donnelly building had ripped up the front part of the concrete pad and made and impressive pile of ground up cement.

 Here is the view from the west end.

 Over the weekend I was surprised to find the house at 408 E Oak had been demolished. I do not recall what it looked like.

 I was hoping to see the demolition of the house at 705 W Clark but it happened very quickly and today not only was the house gone but the debris had been carried away. All that remained was hole in the ground surrounded by mud from the impressive storm that rolled through last night.

The addition of this property, which was purchased with funds from the Rex Blacker Trust, will add almost one half acre to Brookside Park.

On Monday night the Jasper County Planning Commission met with two items on its agenda. The first was a zoning change from A1 to A2 in Walker Township so a house could be built. A neighbor was concerned that the change might affect his property taxes (it would not) and might obstruct a deer path. The change passed.

The second item was the interesting item of the evening because it was the result of a lengthy discussion at the October Commissioner's meeting. (See here, pages 4, 5, and most of 6.) The property in question is a 9.9 acre track about a quarter mile north of the intersection of SR 14 and US 231. Last year a request to rezone from General Commercial (GC) to A1 was denied, but this year the request was to rezone from CG to A2, which the discussion at the Commissioner's meeting suggested was the more appropriate change.  The proposed use of the land is the same, as a farrowing operation for less than 200 hogs. The applicant came with his lawyer and a consultant from Livestock Engineering Solutions. There was a lot of discussion of the technicalities of what the various zoning allowed. For example, there is a difference in the rules between keeping animals and raising animals. The Commission was split, with one group suggesting that people who build residences in the country should not be surprised when adjacent land is used for agricultural purposes. The other side was more sympathetic to the concerns about odor and one suggested that the best use of the property was commercial. After much discussion, the Commission split 3-3 on the proposal. They were uncertain if they needed do take another vote or not, but they did, voting to send the proposal to the Commissioners with no recommendation.

The next meeting of the Planning Commission will be a week earlier than normal, on March 20.

The closing of SJC has spiked my blog traffic. January of 2017 had, according to Blogger stats, 29623 page views, surpassing the 28751 page views of June 2015, a month in which Rensselaer set a number of records for flooding.