Area Plan Commission approves TSC's rezoning request, families leave meeting more informed

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Earlier this month, families living near Harrison High School were notified that the Tippecanoe School Corp. filed a request with the county’s Area Plan Commission board to rezone almost 100 acres of land from agriculture to residential use.

For many of them, this notification was received with confusion, specifically wondering what the school board had planned for the property and why it needed to rezone the property.

This specific property is located at the northeast corner of Tippecanoe County Road 500 North and Tippecanoe County Road 50 West which is near Harrison High School and behind many of the family’s neighborhood.

This confusion led to families filling up the seats at this month’s Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission hoping and expecting the school district to provide them with an answer of what the district had building plans.

Mark DeYoung, the district’s attorney explained to the Area Plan Commission’s board and the families in attendance, that in order for the district to move forward on any future school development plans, the property needed to be rezoned for residential use.

“This rezone would support potential use and development of the site for (residential)1 uses, including school uses. Under the (Unified Zoning Ordinance), schools are not permitted uses in the current (agriculture) zone,” DeYoung quoted from the Area Plan Commission’s staff report.

When it came to the district’s plan for the property, DeYoung emphasized that the Tippecanoe School Corp.’s leadership currently had no development plans for the property and were waiting on the rezoning to be completed before they determined how to use the land.

At the October Tippecanoe County Commissioner meeting, the commissioners approved the $1,850,000 sale of the property to the district. Tippecanoe County Commissioner Tracy Brown expressed his approval of the sale and explained how the sale made sense with the district's growing population.

“Obviously they are a growing school corporation, one of the fastest growing in the state, and (there’s) a lot of development in the northwest part of the county,” Brown said at the October meeting. "So, it does make perfectly good sense they will need land at some point, and we have it.”

During the public hearing portion of December’s Area Plan Commission meeting, a resident shared his concerns about the school district potentially turning around and selling the property once it was rezoned for residential use, but DeYoung reassured the audience that the district would only be using it for school development.

No other resident spoke up against the rezoning.

After the meeting families talked about how they received the answers they were looking for and saw no need to speak against it during public comment.

Although several highlighted how they wished the school district would have been more transparent with their decision-making and would have done a better job explaining to the residents why they needed the property to be rezoned.

Many families hoped that the district would learn from this meeting and moving forward be more transparent with the neighbors about future developments.

The Area Plan Commission unanimously approved the district’s request for rezoning. The final decision will be determined at January’s Tippecanoe County Commissioners meeting.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Area Plan Commission approves TSC's rezoning for future development