A traditional neighborhood in the making: Above an artist's rendering shows the facade of the six two-story buildings on which Drake Builders of Valparaiso expects to break ground late this year or early next year at Coffee Creek Center. At bottom is a bird's eye view of the project, located at the northwest corner of Dickinson and Sidewalk roads, which shows the concealed parking lot behind the buildings, a buffer of vegetation on the north and west sides, and a courtyard in front of a recessed building on Sidewalk.
The Lake Erie Land Company has long been marketing Coffee Creek Center as a preeminent example of the New Urbanism: as a return, that is, to the traditional neighborhoods of old, where stores and homes mixed easily, shopkeepers lived in walk-ups above their businesses, and a person could stroll to work or the grocery on sidewalks and along streets scaled not to automobiles but to pedestrians.
To date, though, the commercial projects which have come to fruition at Coffee Creek Center-or those which are still working their way through the pipeline-have had, strictly speaking, little of the quaint or retro about them: the Steel Family Health Care Center, the Hilton Garden Inn, the Lakeshore Bone & Joint Institute, a 370,000-square foot shopping center under development by Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust of Southfield, Mich., and a fueling center slated for the northeast corner of Ind. 49 and Gateway Blvd.
Each of these projects has its own virtues, yet none of them, to be fair, really speaks to the New Urbanist vision. They may be job engines, they may broaden and deepen Chesterton's tax base and fill the coffers of its tax increment financing district, they may become synergistic magnets for further economic development, but they do tend to dwarf not only the neighbor but the neighborhood itself, such as it is.
Now, however, Lake Erie Land is poised to make good on its promise to put the neighbor back in neighborhood. Drake Builders of Valparaiso, a specialist in custom residential construction since 1976, expects to break ground within the next two to three months on an 18,000-square foot office and retail project at the northwest corner of Dickinson and Sidewalk roads. That site-located just west of Morgan's Corner and south of the Estates of Sand Creek and nestled among the Enclave Apartments-says a lot about the sorts of businesses which Drake hopes to attract, because it says a lot about the clientele to whom Drake hopes to cater: to begin with, at least, the built-in-and continuously growing-market of people who live only a stone's throw away.
As Paul Sharpe, vice-president of sales for Drake, told the Chesterton Tribune, "This is a product with great appeal for the small business owner, who really has very limited choices in this area. We think this is a great entrepreneurial opportunity for small-business persons, dental offices, real estate offices, and neighborhood-scaled retail users."
Kevin Warren, director of land development for Lake Erie Land, concurred with Sharpe's assessment. "This is the most direct, clearest example of what we've been talking about and looking for," he said. "It's pedestrian oriented, right in the heart of a residential neighborhood. . . . It absolutely nails one of the fundamental concepts of Coffee Creek Center."
The project will consist of six two-story buildings fronting both Dickinson and Sidewalk, with the westernmost building on Sidewalk overlooking the Coffee Creek Watershed Conservancy. "It's designed to become a key component at the main intersection in this neighborhood," Sharpe said. "Its architecture blends with the residential character of the neighborhood and at the same time introduces commercial uses within an easy walk from the homes."
On-street parking will be limited to around 12 spaces, with a lot of 60 or so more spaces concealed behind the buildings. Linda Smith, president and chief financial officer for Drake, said that plans include a courtyard in front of one of the buildings and "green screen" around the parking lot in the rear.
Meanwhile, the interior has been designed to be adaptable and flexible and can be divided or subdivided to meet a specific user's needs, with space available in lease, sale, or condominium packages.
Who would Sharpe and Smith like to see set up shop in the neighborhood? Specialty retailers, of course, but also young professionals-attorneys, say, or engineers just hanging up their shingle-who, Sharpe said, may like the idea of a live/work arrangement in "a brand-new state-of-the-art building with plenty of parking, a nice environment, a readily accessible location, and a great view."
"It's a wonderful spot" for a bistro, Sharpe added. "It's perfect, perfect, for fine dining."
But Drake has its eye on a slightly different market as well, of which Warren said he's heard "murmurings in Sand Creek": the commuters who are tired of the drive or the ride into Chicago every day and have been toying with the idea of establishing an office nearer to home, or as the case may be just down the road from home.
But Duneland businesspeople who might want in should probably hurry. Drake has not yet begun to market the project and already has commitments in hand for 40 percent of the 18,000 square feet. Sharpe and Smith declined at this point to identify those tenants, with one exception: Lake Erie Land will be taking some of the space for what Warren called a sales office but may look more like a coffee shop when all is said and done. "What we recognized is the need to model the type of uses and relationships typical of a traditional neighborhood," he said. "But we also want a place where the story of Coffee Creek Center is told. We want to think of it as a corner coffee shop where you can get information about land, homes, and opportunities."
When the story of Coffee Creek Center is told, it will likely touch on the challenge of building neighborhoods from scratch. As Warren observed, there's something of a chicken-and-egg puzzler inherent in the process which New Urbanists have not yet fully solved: which comes first, the residential or the commercial? Traditional neighborhoods grew organically and incrementally, with a few homes here, some apartments there, and shops and offices along with them as entrepreneurs saw a need for goods and services. In this case, however, commercial usually lags well behind residential and emerges only after a certain threshold of residential units has been reached: 400 being the oft-cited magic number, Warren said.
Traditional neighborhood projects like this one, moreover, almost always have to be undertaken locally. "The larger national developers have such blinders on that their models and formulas really can't account for mixed-use settings," Warren said. Thus the importance of Drake's being willing to take the plunge. "It will have a lot of impact and momentum for other developers."
The concept itself has been on Drake's drawing board for some time, Sharpe said, and represents something of a departure from its usual product. "We just drifted in that direction. We would come in and bounce ideas off Lake Erie and they would bounce ideas off of us."
Drake may have drifted into the project, but Sharpe and Smith did their legwork first, with numerous field trips to the northern suburbs of Chicago, the East Side of Milwaukee, and wherever else they could find "old-style mix use adapted to modern circumstances," Sharpe said. From those excursions they drew inspiration and ideas which have found their way into their own design.
In the end, though, Sharpe said that the project all came down to location: a crossroads with "more traffic than you would think" simply begging for entrepreneurial activity, just across the street from the Coffee Creek Watershed Conservancy, next door to the Enclave, and hard on Morgan's Corner. "It blends those four corners together. It's a wonderful spot, and we're thrilled to death."
