Gary/Chicago International Airport's expansion plans continue to face hurdles, with the latest in the form of a scrap yard that will have to make way for a railroad relocation.
A plan to cut the cost of moving railroad tracks that sit at the end of the airport's main runway means the tracks will have to run through the property of Western Scrap Corp., a business just north of the airport, Airport Director Chris Curry said Thursday.
That means the airport will have to pay for some or all of the scrap yard's land, Curry said. If the latter is the case, it also would have to pay to move the business.
"It appears this is a lot simpler plan, but let me tell you, nothing at the airport is simple," Curry told seven members of the General Assembly's Northwest Indiana Transportation Study Commission as it met at the headquarters of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission, in Portage.
The cost-cutting plan was devised after the estimated price of an earlier Federal Aviation Administration-approved plan escalated to $100 million during sensitive negotiations with three railroads.
The new plan to move the tracks owned by Canadian National Railway is still costly at $50 million. And the FAA would only pick up $18 million to $20 million of its costs, as compared to half the cost of the earlier plan, Curry said.
Still, the new plan would reduce the local share of the project's costs to about $26 million as compared to about $50 million in the earlier plan, Curry said.
The airport already has been in discussions with Western Scrap's owner, and he has been "quite cooperative," Curry said.
In response to a question from state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, Curry said there is still work to do on determining the environmental condition of the Western Scrap land.
The airport already has bought 160 acres of land for the airport expansion.
In another sticking point for airport expansion plans, the airport authority is making a last-minute offer to the Gary Community School Corp. for 103 acres of environmentally rare dune and swale habitat, Curry said. The airport needs the land to offset 40 acres of the same type of rare habitat that will be plowed under by the runway expansion.
The Gary Board of Public Works in June authorized its lawyer to bring eminent domain proceedings against the school corporation over the land, after the school corporation rebuffed the airport's $375,000 offer. The school corporation said its own experts value the land at $3.75 million to $6 million.
The two sides are due to face off in court next Thursday.
Airport put business on the move: There is precedent for the airport helping businesses to relocate. Two years ago, the airport bought the Truck City of Gary property on West Chicago Avenue for $820,000. The airport worked with the city of Gary to help the truck dealer move to a 20-acre site just off the Borman Expressway at 25th Avenue and Taft Street. In turn, Truck City spent $5.5 million on a new state-of-the-art facility at the new location.
