Valpo halfway house plan tweaked, awaits zoning OK
After feedback from residents at two public meetings, a proposal to build a halfway house on the 300 block of Union Street in the College Hill neighborhood of Valparaiso is being tweaked for possible presentation to a city board that approves variances in October at the earliest, Respite House board President Mitch Peters said.
“What we’re in the process of doing is getting final plans and a stake survey for the purpose of preparing our request for the Board of Zoning Appeals,” he said.
Respite House, which already has a facility on Chicago Street and provides services to men overcoming addiction, wants to combine two vacant lots and build a two-story structure to house 24 clients and three employees.
At meetings in late June at the Porter County Sheriff’s Department and recently at Recovery Connections, not far from the proposed site of the halfway house, neighborhood residents said they are concerned about both the size of the structure and the number of people it will house.
Peters has said Respite House will not be a burden to the neighborhood and will provide much-needed beds as Porter County grapples with an opioid drug epidemic.
The facility would be located at what is now 305 and 307 Union St., on the north side of the street between Morgan Boulevard and Valparaiso Street.
According to the minutes of a June 5 Site Review Committee meeting on the plan, the Board of Zoning Appeals potentially could require variances for the halfway house for both the number of residents and the size of the building, as well as for the lot width, among other variances, though Peters said, “I don’t know if it will need all of those.”
Officials also said at that meeting that combining lots requires going before either the city’s plat committee or Plan Commission, and they requested a long list of other details, including landscaping plans and an internal plumbing plan.
“I hope to be on the BZA (agenda) by October, but I have to have the plans, and I have to have the survey,” Peters said.
He has an agreement with Project Neighbors to buy the lots but has not purchased them yet. Respite House chose the neighborhood because the lots could be bought at cost, Peters has said.
“If I’m not able to build a halfway house on it, it’s going to go back to Project Neighbors, and they’re going to build duplexes, multiple duplexes, and that’s the agreement,” Peters said.
Tyler Kent, the city’s planning director and an attendee at both meetings, said property owners within 300 feet of the lots would be notified about the Board of Zoning Appeals hearing on the proposal once Peters submits the required documents. The board meets the third Tuesday of each month.
If the board approves the project, Respite House can proceed, but if the board nixes the proposal, Respite House has a few other options, Kent said.
“They can modify their plan. They can build it to meet code. They could wait a year and resubmit it, per state statute,” Kent said.