By Rod Rose/The Lebanon Reporter
Lebanon — Economic and utility issues are likely to delay construction of a rural Boone shopping center for one or two years.
The Boone County Commissioners Monday approved rezoning for a 57-acre shopping center at U.S. 421 and County Road 300 South. The change from agricultural to planned business zoning will be effective after the ordinance is published in a newspaper.
Excavation for the project at the southeast corner of the intersection may not begin for “the next year or two,” developer Bob Harris of Harris LLP said.
Water and sewer lines operated by Clay Regional Waste now extend only as far as the Interactive Academy, 3795 U.S. 421, said Harris LLP attorney Michael Andreoli.
A gasoline station could be one of the center’s tenants; so could a wine shop.
County Attorney Eileen Sims questioned “the issue of liquor” because liquor sales are banned at Union Center, a shopping mall across the street from the Harris project.
“You are not going to see what you traditionally see with liquor stores,” explained Andreoli. “It would have to be something much more of a boutique type of usage.”
Sims asked if the store’s sales could be 75 percent wine and 25 percent hard liquor.
“You’re not going to be able to do a traditional liquor store at all,” Andreoli said, because of restrictions the developers have themselves imposed on the project.
Nearby homeowners who use water wells and septic systems have been worried about possible leaks from a proposed gas station.
The gas station’s storage tanks will have double walls, with pumps and alarms to warn of leaks, said John Franklin, president of Allied Petroleum Equipment, Indianapolis. Federal regulations require double-wall construction for gasoline storage tanks built after Jan. 1, 2009.
There is more of a risk of contamination from farm chemicals and arsenic leaching out of bedrock, Commissioner President Marc Applegate said he had been told by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
