An 83-foot-tall concrete-mixing silo could be coming to a property in Fortville where CLM Pallet Recycling operates.
Mitchell Kirk | Daily Reporter
FORTVILLE — A company wants to erect a concrete-mixing silo that’s over 80 feet tall on Fortville’s southwest side, leaving nearby residents with concerns over potential detriments to themselves and their neighborhoods.
Town officials plan to study the matter more before determining whether to allow the project to proceed.
The location in question is CLM Pallet Recycling, located at 3103 W. 1000N. Fishers-based AC Matt Holdings recently bought the site.
Adam Zaklikowski, Fortville planning and building director, said at a town board of zoning appeals meeting Thursday night that one of AC Matt Holdings’ representatives also owns a concrete business and wants to add an 83-foot-tall concrete-mixing silo as part of a proposed concrete batch plant on the property’s south end.
The site’s industrial zoning designation allows for concrete mixing to occur there, but only after the zoning board grants a special exception.
Zaklikowski noted part of the criteria when granting a special exception is determining that it won’t be dangerous, injurious or noxious.
“We simply don’t know the answer to this question at this time,” he said.
He said he’s received concerns from nearby residents about dust, truck traffic, aesthetics, noise and negative impacts to property values. He added he’s also received information prepared by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about potential health and environmental effects from concrete-mixing plants.
“I would say that this type of operation, it doesn’t come before boards and committees that often,” Zaklikowski said. “I think in my whole 18-year career this is the first time I’ve seen something like this. I think especially on the health effects it’s important to know what those potential issues are.”
Zaklikowski recommended that the zoning board wait to proceed on the project until obtaining more information about the potential effects and proper recommended spacing between concrete plants and residential areas, which board members voted to do.
Don Fisher of Indianapolis-based Insight Engineering, who is developing plans for the proposed concrete plant, said it would provide concrete for projects like roads, basements, floor slabs and driveways.
“That’s the kind of business that the owner is in,” he said of his client.
But that owner currently has to buy concrete and haul it to job sites, Fisher continued. Having a plant at CLM Pallet Recycling would improve efficiency by providing concrete closer to where work is occurring, he added.
Fisher said stormwater management and dust mitigation are part of the design process that’s typically not done until after zoning hurdles are cleared, but that he and his client are amenable to pausing to provide time for addressing questions and concerns.
Several residents of Fortville and Fishers to the north of the site expressed concerns at the meeting, including how dust from the concrete plant could affect asthmatic relatives and heavy concrete trucks tearing up roads.
“It seems like Fortville’s kind of up and coming and wanting to be a nice area,” said Steve Rutter, a resident of the town. “We’re attracting neighborhoods and families. Main Street has been beautified with the storefronts and the restaurants and all this. Why would we want something like this right there at that place? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Larry Hartmann lives in Fishers’ Arbor Pines neighborhood across County Road 1000 North from CLM Pallet Recycling.
“A tower 83 feet high is going to create dust, and it’s not going to look very pretty,” he said, adding he worries what effect dust would have on nearby cropland.
Lindsay Konopa, also of Arbor Pines, said she traveled to the temporary concrete plant that Greenfield-based Irving Materials, Inc. put in off the west side of Mt. Comfort Road north of Indianapolis Regional Airport, and said it was loud.
“I really think that that is going to bother a lot of the homes that are in closer range to where this is going to be,” she said.
Fishers resident Andrew Hipskind, a civil engineer who works in construction, said the effects of the proposed plant would be noxious not just from mixing concrete, but also from the process of having aggregate delivered and dumped onsite.
The Fortville Board of Zoning Appeals plans to revisit the matter at its next meeting, which is at 6:30 p.m. May 26 at the Fortville Community Center, 400 W. Church St.
“After we get more information, we can make a more logical decision,” said board member Rick Jacobs.
