This and That: A midweek edition
A pair lawsuits looking to overturn rezoning for SK hynix a step closer to combining into one. TSC looks at $11.7M post-GLASS renovations. Second round coming on WL's metered parking. And more.
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This and that, sitting here midweek ..
MOTIONS FILED TO COMBINE WL RESIDENTS’ CHALLENGE OF SK HYNIX REZONING: Following a suggestion by a judge a week ago, motions were filed this week to consolidate a pair of lawsuits aiming to overturn a decision to rezone 121 acres in West Lafayette to clear the way for SK hynix’s $3.87 billion facility to assemble high-bandwidth memory chips.
The May 6 rezoning decision by the West Lafayette City Council is being challenged by West Lafayette resident Lora Marie Williams in one case and West Lafayette residents Karl Janich and Sean Sasser in the other. Williams’ case was filed June 4 in Tippecanoe Circuit County. Janich and Sasser’s complaint was filed June 4, too, a few hours after in Tippecanoe Superior Court 1.
During a June 30 scheduling hearing, Circuit Court Judge Sean Persin suggested that the cases were similar enough that it would make sense to have one judge consider the complaints lodged against the city, Purdue Research Foundation, Area Plan Commission and SK hynix.
The complaint from Lora Williams, a nurse at a local hospital who said she frequently cycles or travels near the proposed SK hynix site, contends that the city council overstepped its authority, ignoring warnings from local experts about health, environmental and other concerns in its vote. Her lawsuit contends that she has been “experiencing shock and increased anxiety, stress and depression due to the rezoning decision.”
Ahead of the June 30 hearing, Williams added a constitutional challenge to the rezoning, claiming that the city council’s rezoning decision was “arbitrary, capricious and/or unreasonable,” “enacted outside the scope of the city council’s authority” and violated her “rights to substantive and procedural due process.”
Sasser and Janich raised similar issues.
The key question in both lawsuits deals with where SK hynix will put its planned 340,000-square-foot R&D and manufacturing facility, expected to open in 2028 and eventually employ 800 to 1,000 people.
Williams filed a response indicating she was amenable to combining the cases. A filing this week by Purdue Research Foundation indicated that the attorney for Sasser and Janich “does not object to a consolidation.”
Here’s more on the lawsuits and what they’re aiming to get done:
TSC CALLS FOR BIDS ON RENOVATION PROJECTS AHEAD OF THE END OF THE GLASS COOPERATIVE: Work is expected to cost $11.7 million to renovate two buildings as Tippecanoe School Corp. prepares to take on early education and alternative education once the three-district Greater Lafayette Area Special Services cooperative winds down after 50 years, consultants told the TSC school board Wednesday afternoon.
The school board agreed to call for bids in the coming month, aiming for construction starting later this year and finishing on an early learning center and alternative learning center before the 2026-27 school year.
One part of the project includes renovations on the Scholer Corp. offices at 111 Walter Scholer Drive, just off Old U.S. 231 South in Lafayette. TSC is in the process of buying that building as a future home to TSC’s pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds. Now, TSC has about 225 preschoolers at the GLASS program at Lafayette School Corp.’s Linnwood Elementary.
The other part has TSC converting its Operations Center on Old Romney Road for the district’s alternative learning center. The GLASS alternative learning program for K-12 students who have been expelled or otherwise can’t be in classrooms in their home schools is at Lafayette’s Durgan Elementary.
TSC, Lafayette and West Lafayette school corporations signed a dissolution agreement for GLASS in April, formally starting a year of sorting out details about how physical therapy, occupational therapy and other services will look like when the three districts take those on themselves.
The move followed a notice in fall 2024 from TSC, which announced to the GLASS board that it intended to end its participation in a partnership that extends nearly 50 years with Lafayette and West Lafayette school corporations. The agreement that formed the cooperative required an 18-month notice for any of the three school corporations to leave GLASS. Hanback has said the district had grown to a point where it was in a position to run its own programs for approximately 2,200 TSC students who have Individualized Education Programs, or plans that lay out special education services and instruction at school, of some sort.
PHASE 2 OF WEST LAFAYETTE’S METERED PARKING PLAN ROLLING OUT LATE-JULY: West Lafayette officials said this week that a second phase of the city’s metered parking plan will launch in late July in the blocks tucked between Purdue’s residence halls and main academic campus, typically referred to as “The Island.”
The streets covered by the ParkMobile meter system:
First Street
Fourth Street
Fifth Street
Sixth Street
Russell Street
Waldron Street
Here are maps of the areas covered by the new metered parking:
The first blocks of West Lafayette’s metered parking plan rolled out this week along Brees Way in front of Wabash Landing, Brown Street, Airport Road and the Discovery Park District just west of Purdue’s campus. Instead of spaces offered with hourly time limits, metered parking covered by a ParkMobile app will be used to manage spots in those areas.
The West Lafayette City Council agreed to the system in 2024, calling it a way to guarantee more turnover in spaces near shops and restaurants and a way to break up what amounted to long-term vehicle storage in some parts of the city.
According to the city’s ordinance, parking would cost no less than $1 an hour and no more than $3 an hour.
ParkMobile, which will manage the system, already covers metered parking in several Purdue campus locations. For more information about the ParkMobile app and other questions about the parking plan, go to: www.westlafayette.in.gov/our-city/parking/parkmobile.
OTHER READS …
J&C reporter Ron Wilkins had an account of a man brought into Tippecanoe Superior Court 5, shackled and handcuffed, for a Wednesday hearing was able to get into a position to try to stab a deputy prosecutor in the back with a small pencil. The incident had Prosecutor Pat Harrington asking about courthouse security. Here’s more: “Defendant suspected of attacking Tippecanoe County deputy prosecutor inside courtroom.”
J&C reporter Jillian Ellison had this about the Indiana Attorney General looking to suspend a Rensselaer doctor's license to prescribe controlled substances, less than a month after the FBI searched Dr. Patrick Sheets’ offices. Here’s more: “Indiana AG: Rensselaer doctor traded prescription drugs for sex, prescribed to addicts.”
ICYMI, SEE THE DAYLILIES UP CLOSE, TOUR THIS FARM SATURDAY: The Art Museum of Greater Lafayette will host A Daylily Stroll from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, July 12, at Gregg and Linda Sutter’s farm, 10547 U.S. 52 South, Clarks Hill. Before you go, here’s Q&A in last week’s BiL with the Sutters and how their obsession with daylilies blossomed into acres and eye-popping acres along U.S. 52, south of Lafayette. Details about the tour are in there, too.
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
Wouldn't it be easier to prevent car storage by simply banning overnight parking?
Any word on whether business has been slowed with the introduction of metered parking at Wabash Landing? Might be hard to tell in summer, but I wonder how many people pull up, see the signs, and just don’t have time to download an app and set up an account.