The Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission appears poised to approve new rules governing where self-storage facilities may be built and what happens inside of them.
The APC will consider a proposal at a meeting this week which would bar such facilities from being built on land currently zoned for agricultural use.
County Commissioner Tom Murtaugh helped spearhead the ordinance and says it comes out of a permit denial for land next to a creek on the far eastern edge of Lafayette.
The new rule also says the units can’t be used as homes or for illegal activity, which Murtaugh says local lawmakers wanted outlined specifically.
“I’m not sure it’s happened in Tippecanoe County," Murtaugh says, "But there’s been times where these units have been rented and used for drug activities and that type of thing. So I’m sure that that’s probably put in there for that purpose.”
Murtaugh says anyone wishing to build a self-storage complex on what’s now agricultural land can still apply for the property to be re-zoned, so long as the new facility meets other requirements for being far enough away from homes and other types of property.