West Lafayette News

Authorities are investigating three early morning robberies between Sunday and Monday mornings.

Pottery studio earns monthly honor All Fired Up has been selected as the Small Business of the Month winner for February by Greater Lafayette Commerce. Located in Wabash Landing, a retail complex at 308 E. State St. in West Lafayette, the paint-your-own pottery studio has been owned for the past four years by the husband and wife team of Sean and Annie Hanas. With 11 employees, All Fired Up offers pottery experiences for individuals as well as parties and group events. Painted items are fired in kilns and usually can be picked up in less than a week. The business provides community support that includes Almost Home Humane Society and American Cancer Society events, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Lafayette, Lafayette Transitional Housing, various activities at Purdue University, 4-H clubs, schools and scout troops. A reception honoring All Fired Up as the small business of the month was hosted recently by Lafayette Savings Bank. Portfolio Dr. Richard Carson has joined the general surgery department at Indiana University Health Arnett. He will continue to offer services at his current location on the IU Health White Memorial Hospital campus at 810 S. Sixth St., Suite F, in Monticello. Carson received his medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine and completed a residency in general surgery at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital. He has practiced general surgery for more than 30 years and has been in Monticello since 2004. Achievements Soller-Baker Funeral Homes in Lafayette and West Lafayette participated in the recent Operation: Cookie Drop sponsored by the Girls Scouts of Central Indiana. While taking cookie orders, Scouts asked potential customers if they would purchase a box of cookies and donate them to the military. Soller-Baker Funeral Homes donated 125 boxes that will be distributed to men and women deployed overseas from Camp Atterbury. Since the program started in 2005, more than 400,000 boxes of cookies have been shipped. Short takes The Lafayette chapter of Business & Professional Exchange will meet at 8 a.m. Monday in Room 110 in the Ivy Tech Corporate Learning Center, 823 Park East Blvd. in Lafayette. Pam Windler from Automated Payroll Systems will speak on the topic 'Selling Yourself.' BPE is a nonprofit group that brings together business professionals seeking employment or a career change. Call Chris Waymire at (765) 807-0883. -- Staff and wire reports

Purdue University 's West Lafayette campus has announced a move to a year-round trimester calendar, and Indiana University campuses are slashing tuition 25 percent on all its campuses to bolster summer enrollment.

Speaking of Community of Choice, Greater Lafayette's campus town self-examination that started this month, here's the first assignment in what shapes up as a classic battle between what we are and what we want to be. Is the edge of the Purdue University campus, right across from Mackey Arena, ready for a new concept, as thick with housing geared for the walk-first student as it is thin on available parking? The argument for it: All that parking people say is needed? Nothing but wasted space, developer Marc Muinzer says. He's spent nearly a year pumping social media not only with a case for his six-story, $50 million project with 250 apartments and 600 bedrooms, but also with what-we-want-to-be visions of a new, car-light student experience at Purdue and in West Lafayette. That all comes to a head Wednesday, when his project and planned development request finally go to the Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission for a public hearing. There it will be greeted by a cold-water splash of what the county's professional planners say is necessary, what-we-are reality. Until there's enough parking -- The Landmark's plans come with roughly a third of the typical spots-to-bedroom criteria -- county planners say, the recommendation should remain the same: Denial. No matter how the Area Plan Commission, a board that will make only a recommendation in this case, votes Wednesday, the West Lafayette City Council will get a final say, possibly as early as the first Monday in March. Rather than negotiate more with county planners -- to either scale back the number of apartment units or find other ways to bump up the number of parking spaces to meet existing expectations -- Muinzer says he's ready to take his case, negative recommendation in hand if necessary, to the city council. All of which sets up a straight-up Community of Choice debate on parking standards, the self-contained housing/retail model that Muinzer says should be the wave of the future and what West Lafayette intends to do to make it all blend in with existing neighborhoods. loadEmbeds(); Everyone seems to agree on one thing: The block bound by Northwestern Avenue and Evergreen, Dodge and Allen streets could use a developer's touch. So what stands in the way? Muinzer says: 'These kids understand why they live in this sort of place, right across from campus, where they don't need to bring a car. It's simple. It's a totally different ballgame. ... I need to show the city that that's the case for the kind of students who will want to lease what I'm building.' Ryan O'Gara, Area Plan Commission assistant director who has been running point on the planning staff side, says: 'What (Muinzer) is asking people to do is believe he can force people to change their habits -- to get students to not bring cars. From a planning standpoint, that's a big risk. And I'm not sure that's going to happen.' Ann Hunt, president of the West Lafayette City Council and whose district takes in The Landmark property, says: 'Parking is the whole concern, as far as I'm concerned. It's the only concern.' The first one has the project. The second one has the recommendation. The third one has a vote. It's not lining up well for Muinzer. Parking and how it spills out of new developments is an old-school issue near campus. Muinzer says he'll make his case in a community letter -- one that likely will come later today or Monday. There's something lost, though, in all the heat generated by The Landmark -- a project that was once dreamed at 15 stories, was eventually presented at 10 stories with a wacky, off-site parking concept, and now is scaled to six stories that will essentially match the height of Mackey Arena's dome across Northwestern Avenue. Near-campus work is going on all around. The reality is redevelopment projects aimed at the Purdue population have been done -- including more work on the multistory Chauncey Square, which Muinzer owns and calls 'The Noodles Building' for the business at the most visible corner -- and others are in the works. Those include a commercial/residential project in the draft stages for the corner of State Street and Northwestern Avenue, the site of a Smoothie King, the Where Else? bar and a Subway restaurant. Work is expected to begin soon on Purdue Research Foundation's Wang Hall project, a commercial and academic facility that will take a block along Stadium Avenue. There's more coming, too, O'Gara said. 'That's going to be the trend,' O'Gara said. 'I'm all for it, philosophically, as a planner. It concentrates commerce and it concentrates people and it concentrates all of that energy. It makes for an exciting place.' None of those projects comes with the same sort of faith required for Muinzer's Landmark math. Consider that in the blocks roughly between The Landmark's footprint and West Lafayette High School four blocks away, West Lafayette police issued 13,314 parking tickets between May 2007 and the end of 2011, according to figures provided by Hunt. That's an average of 242 tickets a month, not factoring in summer, winter and spring breaks on campus. The Hills & Dales and New Chauncey neighborhood streets have a lot of pressure now, as residents have been saying in the runup to The Landmark public hearing. The Landmark project includes 295 parking spaces. Of those, 50 to 80 will be used for the retail portions. The number set aside for retail, O'Gara said, meets APC standards. The rest doesn't come close to a typical one-spot-per-bedroom standard. O'Gara said Muinzer was offered the chance to bring that ratio down to 0.75 spots per bedroom, if ZipCar-style vehicle-sharing concepts and other alternatives were found. That conversation, O'Gara said, went nowhere. 'It's time for new thinking,' Muinzer said. 'It's just time.' Muinzer is right. The showdown he's gearing up for might not be the best way to get West Lafayette there. But it is time for new thinking. His argument will hinge in part on what he says is happening in other Big Ten markets. His claim: West Lafayette is way behind the curve when it comes to development that beefs up essential amenities -- groceries, drug stores and the like -- close to campus, and encourages students to park their cars and walk. The APC report anticipates that argument, laying out typical zoning codes in other Big Ten communities that planners say are similar to standards in West Lafayette. The comparisons will matter, particularly at a time when Greater Lafayette is setting itself side by side with four of those Big Ten communities -- Iowa City, Ann Arbor, Madison and Bloomington -- in the Greater Lafayette Commerce's Community of Choice survey. Eventually, something will go at the bend in Northwestern Avenue. ('This site will be highly desirable, no matter what happens now,' O'Gara said. 'From our standpoint, sometimes it's better to wait for a better project.') Whether he wins or not, Muinzer is bringing the debate at the right time -- right when West Lafayette needs to be thinking about Community of Choice questions on commercial growth, how the campus and its fringes look, and what's being done to cut down on daily traffic near campus. The Landmark case wraps it into one giant package, ready to open Wednesday. Bangert is a columnist for the J&C. Contact him at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter @dave bangert.

The Wayne County Soil and Water Conservation District will host its 32nd Conservation Farming Workshop on Feb.

John and Linda O'Connell of West Lafayette and Don and Martha Osten of Monticello announce the engagement of their daughter, Lauren Anne Osten of West Lafayette, to Joseph Daniel Ratcliff of Lafayette. Parents of her fiance are Steve and Connie Ratcliff of West Lafayette. A wedding is planned for Nov. 10 at First United Methodist Church, 1700 W. Indiana 26, West Lafayette.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Some West Lafayette residents and Purdue students spent the morning "freezing for a reason" as they took the plunge for Special Olympics Indiana.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - MCL Restaurant and Bakery might be a delicious place to go for breakfast, but Saturday morning, people gathered for another reason too.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Friday was the last day for Indiana candidates to fill out their paperwork to be on the ballot for May's primary.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Two Republican candidates are running to unseat the longtime Democratic State Representative in District 27, Sheila Klinker.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - This year looks to pose a big hike in property taxes on farmland across the state.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Two separate West Lafayette drug investigations net more than $12,000 cash overnight.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Lafayette drug enforcement investigators believe perhaps a handful of other businesses in Tippecanoe County are selling synthetic marijuana, better known as K2 or spice.A But because it's now illegal, it's moved to the back rooms and behind closed doors.

GARY, Ind. - That laid-back, slow motion atmosphere on college campuses during the summer months is about to shift.

INDIANAPOLIS - If you are interested in the Indiana Supreme Court and who may be its next justice, you can still attend interviews of the applicants today - if you are willing to be quiet and listen. Eight applicants had a 20-minute public interview on Wednesday with the seven-member Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission in the Statehouse. The seven others will have same-length interviews today. The one for West Lafayette attorney Rebecca A. Trent starts at 9 a.m. Ten of the applicants are Indianapolis attorneys; four of them are judges. The others are either practicing attorneys or judges elsewhere in Indiana. The applicants are seeking to fill the seat on the five-member high court that will be vacated in March by Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard, who has served on the state's highest court since September 1985. Shepard heads the nominating commission. Three members also are attorneys, and three are citizens. The process is open to the public and media, provided that those attending follow certain rules to avoid distractions during the interviews in Room 319 of the Statehouse. The rules include: • Enter and exit the room only between interviews. • Set up tripod and other equipment for video and still cameras between interviews. • Refrain from moving about the room during interviews. • Only use ambient lighting. Artificial lighting, such as flashbulbs and frezzi lights, are not allowed. • Only commission members can ask questions of the applicants during the interview process. • The audience in the interview room will be requested to refrain from any distracting activities. After the interviews, commission members will deliberate in private, considering the applicants' legal education, legal writings, reputation in the practice of law, physical condition, financial interests, activities in public service and any other pertinent information. The commission will then select semifinalists in public after today's private deliberations conclude and will interview them again on Feb. 22, choosing the names of three finalists to send to Gov. Mitch Daniels. The governor will select the state's 107th justice. Sometime after March 4, the commission will choose who will serve as chief justice. Shepard, 65, chief justice since 1987, is the longest-serving state court chief justice in the nation. He was a Vanderburgh Superior Court judge in Evansville, when he was appointed to the high court in 1985 by Gov. Robert D. Orr. Justice Steven H. David is the newest of the high court's five members, chosen in October 2010 by Daniels. He had been a Boone Circuit Court judge in Lebanon. Justice Robert D. Rucker, appointed in 1999, was a judge on the Indiana Court of Appeals. Justice Frank Sullivan Jr. was practicing law and had been state budget director from 1989 to 1992 when he was appointed in 1993. Justice Brent E. Dickson was practicing law in 1986 when he was appointed.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- A Purdue University agronomist says Indiana's winter wheat crop is healthy and on track despite wet weather at planting time last fall.

Susan Crosley helps her children, Jack and Anna, build a bluebird house Wednesday at Lilly Nature Center in West Lafayette.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - An attempted robbery on the Purdue University campus ends with the suspect in the hospital.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Youth football players could soon be forced to sit on the sidelines to protect their health long term.A A A A A A Purdue researchers say football players can take as many as 1,100A hits to the head in one season.

The former Lafayette Councilman plans to officially make the announcement Wednesday night at five at Puccini's Resturant in West Lafayette.