Hammond advocacy group, mayor continue to fight over future of Briar East Woods
Seven years after Hammond residents began advocating for a histori forest, they are continuing to fight against city officials.
A group of Hammond residents are working to save Briar East Woods, a 4,000-year-old forest in Hammond's Hessville neighborhood that is one of the last surviving remnants of the High Tolleston Dunes, according to Just Transition Northwest Indiana's website.
Briar East Woods is the location of the proposed Governors Parkway, an overpass that would link 173rd Street and 169th Street between Parrish Avenue and Grand Avenue. The overpass will reduce travel time for motorists and emergency response vehicles.
'Once it is built, Hessville will be able to conduct normal business, despite the constant stopped trains that typically paralyze traffic without the bridge,' Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott said in a text to the Post-Tribune. 'As a result of Governors Parkway, public safety times will dramatically improve as well, which will save lives in the process.'
Some residents have continued advocating against the project, such as through speaking at Hammond City Council meetings. Residents have also hosted events to advocate for the forest, including a showing of a 'Save the Briar East Woods' documentary at Purdue University Northwest on Feb. 25.
'The mayor has refused to work with us, and the city council has refused to get a group meeting with us,' said TJ Gaertig, Hammond resident and organizer working to save Briar East Woods. '(Council members) have met with me personally, one-on-one, but it ended up not changing anything because they still voted in favor of Governors Parkway.'
In 2023, a ProPublica article found that Hammond children would climb over or under stopped trains to get to school. Residents have criticized that the project doesn't prioritize pedestrian access, according to Post-Tribune archives.
In April 2018, Hammond was awarded $6.7 million from the Indiana Department of Transportation for the proposed $14 million project, which has not yet started.
Anne Sedlacek, a member of Save Briar East Woods, said Friday that the city lied on a grant application and said the bridge would help pedestrians. The proposed bridge is about a mile away from Grand Avenue, where pedestrians were regularly crossing trains.
'It's totally ineffective,' Sedlacek said. 'It's the most expensive option studied based on a 2023 presentation that they shared with us at the public hearing.'
McDermott acknowledged in May 2023 that the project still falls short, but it 'solves 80% of the problem,' according to Post-Tribune archives. He was then looking into the possibility of building an additional pedestrian bridge tot help students.
Both Gaertig and Sedlacek said their group is advocating for a bridge closer to Grand Avenue. A bridge proposed on Grand Avenue was a cheaper option, Gaertig said, but it wouldn't have included a residential development like the overpass through Briar East Woods has planned.
'Now, they're talking about supplementing Governors Parkway with an additional pedestrian bridge on Grand Avenue,' Gaertig said. 'We know there's a better route. They can take on Grand Avenue — that's what we want them to do. We know there's a solution, and they can take it.'
Construction was supposed to start this spring, Sedlacek said, but it is still awaiting approval from the Federal Highway Administration, so she doesn't think it can start soon.
Sedlacek believes it's encouraging that the project still hasn't received approval, but she still doesn't know if resident concerns are being heard.
'That could be a good sign, but there's been zero transparency,' Sedlacek said. 'Yes, it's encouraging, of course, that it's on pause, but I don't know what they're going to decide.'
Despite some resident concerns, McDermott has continued to publicly express support for the project.
'I'm not sure what else I can say that I haven't already said publicly dozens of times over the last eight years,' said a Friday text from McDermott. 'That is how long we've been planning this bridge, and we finally lined up our state and federal partners who are going to finance its construction.'
The city has 'held numerous public meetings,' sent two surveys and had a municipal election during the process, McDermott said, and a majority of Hammond residents support the bridge.
At a Feb. 10 meeting, the Hammond City Council passed a resolution sponsored by McDermott in support of the overpass project. The resolution said a survey with 600 responses found that 75% of respondents were somewhat or strongly in favor of the overpass.
Hammond resident Ken Rosek, who also founded Hessville Dune Dusters, said the survey was 'extremely manipulative' and didn't center on public safety hazards. He also claimed the survey only had about a 10% response rate.
'They asked silly questions in the beginning like, 'Well, we have this huge train population, so how would you like the city and the government to solve the problem?'' Rosek said. 'Of course, 75% said yes. They took figures in those misleading questions and found a way to make it seem like Governors Parkway bridge had 75% support.'
McDermott said at the council meeting that the public has been approached numerous times, and the resolution is 'a final check to make sure we're all on the same page.'
The Feb. 10 council meeting is available to view on YouTube. Gaertig said about 100 Briar East Woods supporters were barred from entering the meeting because the room was filled to capacity with city employees and others, meaning no one from the general public could enter.
'If you are telling me to say no, I think it's a humongous mistake,' McDermott told the council at the meeting. 'I think generations will laugh at this body if we say this is a bad idea.'
Construction will result in the relocation of 300 trees, McDermott said, but the city has agreed to replant two trees for every tree that is eliminated.
McDermott claims concerned residents and advocates are the loud minority against the proposal. He's spoken against them at public meetings and on his podcast, 'Left of Center.'
'A group of some Hammond residents, but mostly out-of-towners, keeps following me around from meeting to meeting, following the city council around from meeting to meeting, trying to pressure us to turn down the 100% fully funded bridge,' McDermott said in the Feb. 11 episode of his podcast.
In the Feb. 4 episode, McDermott said he will listen to protests, but he is 'still going to do this bridge.'
McDermott has also been critical of Rosek, who had said at a previous Hammond meeting that McDermott had threatened violence against him on the podcast.
In the Feb. 4 episode, the mayor called Rosek a liar and said he could sue for defamation. He claimed the statement Rosek believed was about him was out of context.
'Obviously, I mean, I'm sure I was trying to be funny,' McDermott said in the Feb. 4 episode. 'I said, 'We could beat the (expletive) out of him, but that would be against the law,' and quite frankly, I don't even know if I was talking about him.'
Rosek said he's helped connect residents with experts, including professors and naturalists, to explain why Briar East Woods is important for Hammond and Northwest Indiana. He's noticed residents have expressed more distaste in the project once they learned more about how it would impact Briar East Woods.
Rosek has also been critical of the lack of transparency between city leadership and residents.
'There has been no transparency from the get-go,' Rosek said. 'They're not showing us the design, making claims that were untrue as far as what this was going to solve.'
It's frustrating to see how McDermott has criticized local advocates, Sedlacek said, calling it an abuse of power.
'It's really unprofessional and uncouth for a public official who has been elected, who is supposed to serve their constituents, to be talking of them in such a disparaging way,' Sedlacek said. 'He's totally ignoring the intense push by the people against this project. It is out of spite, in my opinion, to pursue a project for his own personal ego benefit.'
Although it's discouraging to have the city not listen to residents, Gaertig said he's not surprised. He's attended multiple public hearings and said there's been massive outcry against the project, which is why it's been delayed.
'I think a lot of residents just feel like the government doesn't actually care about what people want,' Gaertig said.
Going forward, members of Save Briar East Woods plan to continue advocating and educating residents, Sedlacek said. The group will continue showing screenings of the documentary and tabling events to have their presence known.
They also plan to survey Hessville and Hammond residents to see if responses are different from McDermott's findings.
'People deserve to have a dune woodland, to have a green space they can enjoy for leisure, for quality of life, but also for air quality and noise pollution absorption,' Sedlacek said. 'It's just the right thing to do. On the environmental side, it's extremely valuable, and it's a historical ecosystem. There's so much wildlife that lives there — there's so many reasons to save the woods.'
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