Originally published in The Vidette-Messenger of Porter County on March 6, 1976.
‘Learned The Hard Way’
First Woman Planner Recalls Formative Era In Past Of Valparaiso
By MARY HENRICHS
MRS. PAUL C.F. VIETZKE was the first woman appointed to the Valparaiso Plan Commission and she served for 17 ½ years during which the number of community residents and businesses mushroomed.
The City Plan Commission was organized in 1948 with Dr. Alfred H. Meyer, chairman of the Valparaiso University Geography and Geology Department, as president. A master plan was published in 1951 while Elden Kuehl was serving his first term as mayor.
In January, 1952, newly-elected Mayor John Wiggins appointed a new commission, retaining only Alfred W. Rader, who represented the City Council and who was immediately elected Plan Commission president.
Mrs. Vietzke was one of Wiggin’s appointments and she served until June, 1969, when she resigned because of other public service obligations she had undertaken.
PULLING OUT some well-kept scrapbooks of newspaper clippings from her early years on the commission, Mrs. Vietzke laughingly recalled the community row over the proposal to build a municipal parking lot on the northeast corner of Franklin and Jefferson.
Discussions began in October, 1952, when the city wanted to offer a $60,500 bond issue for purchase of the property and construction of the lot; and the Plan Commission was asked to rezone the land for parking.
“It was a big thing because it was the first proposal for a city lot and $60,500 was a lot of money then,” commented the 1956 Porter County Woman of Distinction as she paged through letters-to-the editor and new reports of heated meetings.
Litigation halted progress until June, 1954, when the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the city could legally issue bonds for a parking lot. In the meantime, a municipal lot had been opened on the northwest corner of Lincolnway and Michigan where the City Water Department once stood.
ANOTHER MAJOR confrontation occurred in 1952 when the late Justin Shauer asked for rezoning which would allow him to construct the city’s first outdoor movie theater on U.S. 30 near Lincoln Hills. Although many residents in the area objected to the project, the Plan Commission recommended that the Board of Zoning Appeals allow the varianceーa recommendation which the board rejected. Shauer later sought similar zoning on Campbell Street near Cooks Corners and was also turned down before he was eventually able to build the present 49er Drive-In Theater.
During the early 1950s, “I was the token woman vice president of the Plan Commission, and those men were so surprised that I was able to preside when Al Rader was absent,” chuckled the former president of the American Association of University Women and of the Valparaiso Woman’s Club.
The “token” label certainly didn’t last. She was elected first (and, so far, only) woman president of the commission in January, 1960; and she served as first woman member and president of the Board of Zoning Appeals from the mid-1960s until her resignation from both planning units.
Returning to memories of the early 1950s, Mrs. Vietzke spoke enthusiastically of the late Milfred Eggerding, VU geography professor, who “gave us a continuous course in planning”. Eggerding advised his fellow commissioners on individual zoning decisions and led them in producing the 1954 revision of the master plan without the help of paid consultants.
ACCORDING to Mrs. Vietzke, Eggerding urged the commission not to allow Lincolnway to become entirely business east of Morgan Boulevard. Planners wanted to preserve some of the stately old houses lining the thoroughfare; “but the houses became unkept and businesses began to crop up.” She recalled that the used car lot at the southeast corner of Lincolnway and Valparaiso was presented to the commission as proposed private parking for a neighboring business but was never used that way after rezoning was approved.
Mrs. Vietzke also noted that rezoning at the northwest corner of Lincolnway and Locust was sought for a photography studio but a gasoline station was built. From those two cases, “we learned the hard way that we must consider the worst possible uses which would be legal under a particular type of zoning” before approving rezoning.
The East Lincolnway business district beyond Roosevelt Road was annexed to the city in November, 1953, and Mrs. Vietzke recalls that the Plan Commission felt frustrated in trying to assure orderly development of the area. “The businessmen fought setback lines” and the city did not have authority to issue building permits as it does now.
Another heated battle involving the Plan Commission, the City Council, and the public occurred in 1954 when, after five months of volunteer study and work, the Plan Commission presented 18 zoning proposals to the Council which quickly rejected 12 of them. The commission was trying to establish zoning areas before requests for specific uses were made.
IN THOSE DAYS, “we spent most of our time trying to correct problems and dealing with immediate requests. We were trying to establish some good advance community planning.” We lost many battles but we won some,” smiled the lady whose scrapbook indicates that many sharp verbal exchanges took place over the above incident.
Subdivisions were just beginning to appear around Valparaiso in the late 1950s. Forest Park additions had only started north of Northview Drive, for example. Because of population growth, the city planners encouraged the county to organize its own plan board. However, once the County Plan Commission was operating, it took away the two-mile jurisdiction over which city planners had had control beyond the city limits. Mrs. Vietzke remembers. Still looking indignant in 1976. Valparaiso’s first woman planner said, “The city should have something to say about areas it will eventually annex.” The Valparaiso Plan Commission has never regained jurisdiction over border areas.
A big boom in apartment construction occurred during the 1960s, after many years on which no apartment had been built in Valparaiso; and Mrs. Vietzke said the commission, while feeling that the community needed such housing, tried to be strict with developers and to have orderly growth.
TWO MAJOR ISSUES of current interest to the community were also of concern during Mrs. Vietzke’s tenure on the Plan Commission: “We had a man speak to us about the Indiana 49 by-pass in the 1950s”; and the Porter County fairgrounds came before the commission for rezoning in 1968.
On the latter question, the Fair Board asked the commission to change the fairgrounds zoning to commercial, feeling that such zoning would increase the value of the land. The planners, however, favored the more restrictive zoning already in force because they hoped that a lower price might enable a public agency to purchase the fairgrounds. Both Plan Commission and City Council rejected the rezoning request. After Mrs. Vietzke left the Plan Commission, the fairgrounds was rezoned, “it was appraised at a high price, and nobody has bought it yet.”
At the time Mrs. Vietzke resigned from the plan Commission, she was president of the Porter County Family Service Association, an organization she helped found in 1968 and one on whose board of directors she still serves.
She is also current president of Church Women United, a member of the Visiting Nurses Association board, and a member of the countywide Community Development Study Committee which serves as a clearing house for ideas and proposals on community needs ranging from the Youth Services Bureau to highways and ambulance services.
