Sand Creek and Coffee Creek - opportunities lost

Once again Sand Creek Country Club is in the news, with parent company NiSource looking to sell the club and parcels of land to yet another buyer. Didn't we just go through all this a couple years ago?

The timeline (correct my memory, I'm driving while typing and will update)

• I believe that US Steel owned Sand Creek originally and sold the country club and surrounding land to NiSource 15 years ago
• NiSource formed Lake Eerie Land Company to hold these properties and buy additional in that same area for economic development. They invested heavily in the country club and really created the region's best golf course (IMHO)
• Lake Eerie went through a flurry of activity, consultants, designs and ideas to eventually complete the lion's share of the housing at Sand Creek as high-end private and gated custom homes. They separated the southern area and renamed it Coffee Creek and shot for the moon by projecting a Neo-Traditional model that was way ahead of it's time.
• Lake Eerie sold a big chunk of Coffee Creek to the Carpenter's Union investment fund for an amount that later came into controversy because it was valued far above anything the market would bear, a few people even did jail time because it appears an inside deal was cut to get the union to pay too much.
  
• The carpenter's union bought partially developed Coffee Creek, with streets and sidewalks, but the utilities weren't complete. The lots were very small, holding to the neo-traditional designs ... a few small builders tried their hand, but the activity was spotty at best.
  
• As controversy swirled, NiSource about five years ago began a contract buy-out with Illinois developer James Gierczyk. I don't know the details but basically the developer took over control and needed to make annual payments over a long period of time.
  
• These annual payments came in the form of the developer selling off parts of the project. Now the story gets hazy, because many of these deals were contract deals as well, involving payments over time. Let's be honest an out of town developer, with little at risk except name, selling to out of town builders on contract probably wasn't the best plan for moving these lots in a recession.

I'll stop there because I'm sure others will have details I don't. But to put it bluntly, this project has now at least twice spent too much money trying to recruit out of town developers and builders to do something that frankly could always have been down locally. Builders like Coolman Homes are committed to this kind of development, developers like former LEL attorney Cliff Fleming know these kinds of projects inside and out.

If I were the Town of Chesterton and NiSource, I'd highly recommend that a team be assembled of local talent ... heck I'd even be willing to work on a project with this much potential. Build what the market wants residentially, recruit businesses for a hi-tech park using the personal property tax exclusion passed last year, and make this a NW Indiana success story! If NiSource wants to maximize their investment, dumping at firesale prices is the worst way to go, and the worst result for the citizens who live there now.