Senior staff writer
The path of I-69 along the Indiana 37 corridor is beginning to sink in with home and property owners in Perry Township.
Hundreds of interested residents showed up at Perry Meridian High School to obtain information Monday night during an Indiana Department of Transportation open house.
No decision will be made on the three alternatives for interchange and overpass designs or exact amounts of right-of-way and land to be used for the expansion of I-69 from Martinsville to I-465 on the Southside until an environmental impact study is completed early next year. Then the study must go through a public hearing in 2018 before a decision later that year.
“It will take a lot of money to move me,” said a homeowner who lives near Thompson Road and I-465, near the location of a new interchange to be built as a direct link to I-69.
Charlie Robertson, owner of R.H. Marlin Crane Rental, 2202 W. Thompson Road, is smack in the path of the new I-465 interchange. “We will be removed,” said Robertson, adding that the relocation would be difficult.
The company moved its business office to the Thompson Road location in 2008 when the Indiana Legislature had banned the expansion of I-69 into Perry Township. That ban was rescinded several years later by the same body.
Several residents interviewed by The Southsider Voice were there on behalf of relatives.
Sheryl Sherman said she has a daughter who lives near Harding Street and Bluff Road, which may not be affected. However, Sherman expressed her concern about increased traffic along east-west streets, in Perry Township, interruption of school bus routes, decreased property values and potential flooding.
Jim Keller of Mooresville owns property several miles west of State Road 37, but he has family that lives on the eastern edge of Southern Dunes.
“Their back yard faces 37,” said Keller who said if they don’t have to move they would definitely hear the noise from an adjacent I-69.
Retired Southport High School teacher Dick Chew said that he has relatives who own historic family homes dating back to 1820 and 1850 on Wicker Road. The homes, according to two of the three INDOT alternatives would be safe, but the third alternative has an access road coming through the properties.
Previous estimates that the state may need to buy up to 279 homes and 96 businesses.