Pictures 08-12-2015

Today (Thursday) was new student move in day at SJC. Many athletes and other students were already on campus. They probably did not get greeted by the guy in the Puma costume.

Various tables and booths were being set up in front of Halleck Center. The Chamber of Commerce had its tent and was preparing its signage when I passed by.

Rensselaer Schools have been in session since Tuesday. On Wednesday morning I took this picture of band practice. The students were without instruments, so they much have been practicing the marching routines.

The entrance to the track/football field has a new coat of asphalt. I do not remember this much paving.

Not yet paved is the new addition to Drexel Avenue. This is the view looking south. In a few days it should be quite different.

The fire station is rising above ground. Work there is proceeding rapidly.

I noticed three new soccer fields, all quite small, in the old Monnett School property. If I had been able to attend the Park Board meeting on Monday I would know more.

Finally, I saw the Hoosier State on Wednesday morning and took a picture of the Iowa Pacific equipment that is now in service. It is hard to get good pictures early in the morning or late at night because you have to shoot into the light. This is a picture of the train leaving the station. The engine that you see here was at the end of the train. The train had an engine at either end.

TV cable is doing a switchover in service today and my Internet connection has been off and on. I have not connected the new box. If I understand correctly, it will now cost extra to get the capability to record shows. That seems to me to be a step backward.

Addendum: There is a good article about Uber service in Rensselaer in Thursday's Rensselaer Republican.

3 of 5

Monday night had an unusually packed meeting schedule: 5:30 Board of Public Works, 6:00 City Council and Library Board, 7:00 special meeting of the BZA, and 7:30 Park Board. I thought I could make four of the five but I was wrong. I only made three.

Board of Public Works meetings are usually very short and the business is mostly approving payment for city projects. In Monday's meeting payment for services regarding the St. Gasper Drive project, planning for the I-65 water service extension, and planning and studies of the sewage plant and the proposed wet weather treatment plant were approved. The contractor thinks that paving of the Gasper Drive extension may take place Thursday and Friday.

Before the City Council meeting a new police officer, Nick Enyeart, was sworn in.

Highlights of the City Council meeting included a bond ordinance for the wet weather treatment plant, a new gas tracker, and opening of bids for the I-65 water extension. The bond ordinance was passed before bids because that could get the project running about twenty days earlier. The ordinance, prepared by some outside law firm, authorizes borrowing up to $8 million, more than the expected cost of the plant. Financing will come from a grant from the USDA and a loan, but initially the city will borrow short-term from the Indiana Bond Bank and will repay those loans from the proceeds of the USDA grant and loan. The council suspended the second and third reading of the ordinance and passed it for all three readings.

The gas tracker will show a four cents reduction per hundred cubic feet for August.

There were six bids for the I-65 water main extension and each bid had a base bid and a bid with deductions (which I assume means a slightly smaller project). Base bids ranged from a bit over $1.2 million to a bit over $1.6 million. The bids will be referred to the consulting engineer for a recommendation.

In other items, the hours for Halloween trick-and-treating will be 5:30 until 8:00. The city will again put the old Monnett School building or Admin building up for bid. It is appraised at $130,000 and the bid will be conditional on rezoning or granting of a variance. The Council agreed to have the Park Department manage the land that it owns where the now demolished Monnett School once stood.

The third meeting of the evening was a special BZA meeting regarding a truck-wash and transfer station that Rose Acres wants to build on the site of the old Carson Inn at the US 231/I-65 interchange. Since this item had been on the agenda of two earlier BZA meetings, I expected a very short meeting. I was wrong--the meeting took 75 minutes.

The purpose of the Rose Acre project is bio security. Recently a Rose Acre farm in Iowa was infected with Avian flu and they had to kill 3 million chickens. The trucks from the Rose Acre farms would enter from the north and offload eggs into a transfer facility. Trucks taking the eggs to market would enter from the south. The trucks would be kept separate from each other. The project would consist of a 110' by 240' transfer facility and a 80' by 116' truck washing building. Water from the truck washing building would be used to irrigate land to the north, though that plan still needs IDEM approval. The land currently is owned by one of the Patels but Rose Acres has an option to buy subject to certain conditions, which included the granting of the special exception and the variance.

The members of the BZA had a number of concerns. They worried about dust. They wondered how the northern trucks could be considered "clean" when they were coming through the entrance that also serves the truck stop. They did not understand why two buildings needed to be close together when it seemed a fence would accomplish the same goal. They wondered how bio-secure the facility would be because there might be geese on the adjoining pond. They commented that Rose Acre was not always a good neighbor--there have been issues with their spreading of manure on fields. Rose Acre was represented by a lawyer and for this hearing they should also have had an architect or someone who really understood exactly what they were planning and why. In the end both the special exception and variance were approved, though the variance had one opposed and on the findings of fact the chairwoman had to break a tie.

I decided I did not want to walk into a Park Board meeting fifty minutes after it started, so I went home. However, the Park Board meeting should be interesting now because various thing are coming together.

In other news, the new Doggers restaurant is open. It seems that they made minimal changes to the interior, but it has been a restaurant for its last two uses.

An important news story that is affecting some Rensselaerians is the closure of the northbound lanes of I-65 because of problems with the bridge over Wildcat Creek. There is no estimate of how long the lanes will be closed. How are local people who have to travel that route adjusting?

Recently I was reading some of the blog posts of a bicyclist on his way across the county. The fellow is a friend of one of my sons and stayed overnight at my daughter's place in the middle of nowhere. I was especially interested in how he got through Utah and Nevada, places where there is a lot of empty road and few services. He finished his trip so I was surprised to see a post yesterday about how he had stopped in Rensselaer.

Have a happy Mother's Liberation Day, aka the First Day of School.

Lots of pictures, 08-08-2015 (updated)

On Friday I was passing through downtown and a couple of the MainStreet Rensselaer ladies gestured to me to come and see the new flower pot being installed in the Hanley mini-park. It matches the bench.

 They also mentioned that there were new benches installed in Potawatomie Park, and later that day I checked them out. I suspect these are benches that are part of a fund-raising effort by the Park Department or the Park Corporation.

Down the street from the Hanley mini-park, the old Bub's BBQ place has its windows blocked so no one can see what is happening inside. The report from Visit Rensselaer is that it will be a new restaurant.

 On the other side of the street a building that had been empty for quite a while is now the home of a beauty shop.

 The door was open on what will be the new home of Ayda's so I peeked in and took a picture. The floor tile has been installed and a lot of the interior decorating in finished. This project turned out to be more involved than the owners anticipated but it should be very nice when it is finished.

 The old sign that said, "Furniture Carpets" is flaking off and under it old lettering is appearing. I do not know if you can make out the word "SERVICE" in yellow and what appears to be "FOUNTAIN" before it. Before the building was a furniture store, it manufactured ice cream and apparently sold it as well.

 In late July I noticed that there was some kind of work going on with the railroad near the Amtrak station. Tie plates had been put on all the ties. However, because of other commitments, I did not get back to see what was going on.

 On Friday I finally did. It appears that one of the rails on the curve has been replaced. You can see the old one lying to the right. Both the old one and the new are continuous--the various sections are welded together to form a single rail.

 The Cullen Street crossing has been torn up and will be redone.

 There were a lot of maintenance of way machines parked on the siding by the elevator.

 I thought this machine was especially interesting. You can see it has a track, but it also has railroad wheels. I do not know if the rail wheels can be removed and if it can then move on its track.

 Finally, I visited the construction site of the new fire station on Friday and was very surprised to see that much of the foundation had been poured. The long boom allowed pouring of sections of the basement. If you look closely you may also see that the outline of the part of the building that will hold the vehicles has concrete footings. The building is closer to the front of the lot than I expected it to be.

Update: A MetLife blimp flew over Rensselaer late Saturday morning, traveling east to west.

A splash park and other things

On the way back to Rensselaer from Indianapolis Thursday morning, I stopped by Remington's Community Park to see their new splash park. I had never been to this park and until recently did not know that it existed. It is northwest of Remington. You head west out of Remington and turn north on CR 630 W, go past the Sacred Heart Cemetery, and you will see the soccer fields on your right. The park also has a baseball field and what appears to be a softball field or perhaps a tee-ball field, tennis courts, and a basketball court.

The new splash park will open on Saturday after a ribbon cutting.

 A splash park is like playing in the water sprinkler but on a much bigger scale. The park hours are 9:00 am until 10:00 pm and the park has a timer to only allow water on during these times. (The baseball field is in the background.)

 There is a sign on the building (I am not sure what the building is for) that refers to a pool. There is no pool. The water runs to a central drain and is recycled. There is another sign that has the rules and regulations for the area.

Remington's splash park will be opening shortly before Rensselaer's LaRue Pool closes. The last regular day will be Monday the 10th, with an extra weekend for the 15th and 16th. The closing of the pool is determined by the opening of school. First day of classes are Tuesday. I would not be surprised if a lot of Rensselaer people visit the new splash park in the next month or two. (The Facebook page of Remington Community Park is here.)

I attended my first and the season's last free movie at Fountain Stone Theaters. The film was the second Spongebob movie and I doubt if anyone can give a quick summary of the plot, which involved time travel, interaction between the cartoon world and the real world, a pirate that seemed to belong in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and dolphins that escaped from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Before a drawing for a free bike, the audience was asked to show hands to indicate from whence they came. I was surprised at how many were from Newton and Pulaski counties. (I had a young guest, which is my excuse for going to a kid's movie.)

On Tuesday night there was a Business After Hours event at SJC. I met a few familiar faces that were at the College when I was there and some new people who have arrived since. SJC is projecting about 300 new students with more than usual number of foreign students. There will be eight new faculty members plus a variety of new administrators. I noticed a couple of changes a few days previously. The hall of the Core Building has a purple stripe and the tennis courts have been resurfaced.

On Wednesday night the Airport Authority met at the airport. There was nothing big on the agenda. (The big pending item is a grant from the FAA to build a new fuel farm.) The meeting discussed if the airport should have model airplane policy (model airplanes can be a way to attract young people to aviation but operating them at the airport may interfere with regular airport operations), a terminal building area archeological study (needed for erecting buildings in new areas and once done will not have to be done again), website development (the new website will be jaspercountyairport.com and the site is active but still without content), and an invitation to put the recently purchased snow plow truck in the antique truck show for the Fall Festival. The airport manager reported that attendance at the EAA 828 Fly In was very good with displays from Fair Oaks Farms, Civil Aviation Patrol, Vincennes & Indiana State, and StatFlight (the medical helicopter). He was also happy with traffic going to a big air show in Oshkosh, WI, with 54 guests from 13 states stopping by, mostly to refuel. Finally, a budget was approved for submission to the County Council, probably at their September meeting.

Ceremonial groundbreaking for Comfort Suites

I did not expect to make it to the official groundbreaking for the Comfort Suites today because of a prior commitment, but traffic on I-65 was not congested and I arrived at the I65/SR 114 interchange a few minutes before 1:00. (That would not have happened if the bridge over the Wildcat Creek had been closed as it was on Wednesday, completely disrupting traffic.) The ceremony was delayed from June.

The new motel is being opened by the Patels, the family that still owns what is now the Interstate Motel that was formerly the Knights Inn. Some readers may remember Jatin Patel, who graduated from RCHS in 1999. He is the main owner. He currently has two other motels, one at the Lowell exit of I-65 and the other at the Remington exit. He said that this motel will be the nicest. Comfort Suites is a step up from Comfort Inn. There will be 75 rooms and each will have a pull-out bed. The front of the building will face west and there will be parking on three sides: north, west and south. There will be a swimming pool on the north side and also parking for trucks.

Mr Patel recalled how he was working the desk of his parents motel when he was eight years old. He said that when his parents left, they hired a baby sitter to take care of him and he took care of the motel. His three-year-old son posed with the ceremonial shovel in the picture below and then had fun digging in the sand after the posing was finished.

Actual groundbreaking occurred a few months ago. The site has been leveled and trenches for the foundation were being dug at the south end. The outline of the building had been marked in orange paint.

 The hole for the foundation had been completed at the north end. Soon a slab will be put down and then people will see actual construction.

 I asked Mr Patel why he chose to build at this intersection. He said the availability of sewer and water was key. The city built the sewer line last year and is preparing to install the water main. He said that there was plenty of demand for four motels at the intersection from traffic between Indianapolis and Chicago. However, he also consulted with the athletic director at SJC about how to make the conference room attractive to visiting sports teams and incorporated his suggestions. I asked if he expected to get traffic from people visiting Fair Oaks Farms and he did not think that would be big.

Speaking of Fair Oaks Farms, I saw a link to an article about the founder of Fair Oaks Farms on Facebook, though I do not recall whose feed it was. In the article was this sentence: "They also broke ground on a small chicken egg-laying facility, a combination of enriched and cage-free housing, in the first week of June."

On the way out the groundbreaking, I noticed that 4 County Supply has had a facelift. It looks much better.

In other business news, Visit Rensselaer posted on Facebook that there will be a new eatery soon in downtown Rensselaer. It will be located in what was Bub's and will be called the Dogger. It will sell hotdogs, hamburgers, and gyros.

Also, check out Visit Rensselaer's calendar of events. It is the most complete calendar of local events I know of.

I will try to post on some other happenings and on the Splash Park in Remington tomorrow.