St. Joseph County could still build a highway department garage near the corner of Beech and Anderson roads in Granger, despite strong opposition from the site’s neighbors, but those plans are in limbo while county commissioners look for other property in the area.
That’s where the controversial situation stood Wednesday, according to County Commissioners President Carl Baxmeyer and parks board President Larry Catanzarite.
Baxmeyer said it was clear to him after the April 27 town hall meeting at Granger Missionary Church that commissioners needed to look for a different site than the land owned by the county parks department. After the meeting, Baxmeyer told WVPE that it was now up to the parks board to consider whether to sign a memorandum of understanding to give the highway department part of the Anderson Road land to build a maintenance garage.
But he said he has since softened somewhat on that stance.
“It’s not off the table,” Baxmeyer said. “It’s just, they wanted us to take it away, essentially rescind the memorandum of understanding. I told the park board, please don’t take any action. I’m not asking you to do anything one way or the other. We’re going to see if we can identify a viable alternative and that’s what we’re in the process of doing. I don’t want to say the Anderson Road site is dead until we have a viable alternative.”
At the May 16 parks board’s meeting, a man told the board that commissioners had approached him about buying his property on Bittersweet Road. He did not identify the location.
Baxmeyer on Wednesday declined to identify properties he’s looking at.
Commissioners have offered the parks board $2.7 million in American Rescue Plan money to develop the park and address some emergency needs across the park system, mainly some new roofs on buildings. Catanzarite said commissioners have asked to use $1 million of that federal grant to buy another highway garage site in Granger, and would later repay the parks department that money to be used for the Anderson park.
“We’re waiting to see if they can find alternate locations,” Catanzarite said. “We’re aware that they have a couple sites that they’re in conversations with the owners. My understanding is they’re industrial. From a parks standpoint, we’re just in a holding pattern right now.”
Nearby residents are worried about a repeat of what happened at the now-closed Cleveland Road highway garage, where, during the 1980s and 90s, underground fuel storage tanks and road salt piles that were kept outdoors contaminated the drinking water wells of homes in the nearby Juday Creek Estates.
But Baxmeyer noted that he still thinks the Anderson Road site is environmentally safe. This time the county plans to store fuel in above-ground tanks, in double-walled containers with a containment vessel underneath in case of spills.
Catanzarite said he thinks the neighbors’ environmental concerns have been overblown. He said Crane Industrial, which operates next to the site, already has a 10,000-gallon diesel fuel tank. And he said the farmer that rents the land now from the parks department probably poses a bigger risk to the area’s groundwater with nitrates from pesticide use.
The park would have its own maintenance building with fuel, he added. But he said he also realizes that housing a highway garage on park land is not in the parks department’s mission.
“My ultimate hope is that we get a garage built somewhere else and we get the money for the park,” Catanzarite said, “and everyone gets a win-win.”
