INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A Metropolitan Development Commission hearing examiner recommended Thursday that a warehouse planned on the southwest side would be an inappropriate use of space.

The recommended denial of rezoning for a warehouse on 121 acres along Camby Village Boulevard had some residents on cloud nine.

But, the developer and some residents are holding onto hope.

When the examiner issued the recommendation Thursday, residents chimed in with excited screams to let everyone else in the City-County Building know just how they felt about the decision.

“I think happy,” said Pat Andrews of the Decatur Township Council. “Very happy. We can’t afford to have warehouses across Kentucky Avenue.” 

In May, the Decatur Township Civic Council voted to oppose the plan.

Decatur Township Trustee Steve Rick said he lives next to a warehouse and doesn’t want the same fate for others.

“Those buildings keep us awake at night,” Rick said. “They keep us from sitting on our decks. And it’s not that the noise is so loud. It’s just constant. It’s ‘beep, beep, beep.’ There’re trucks banging the door. They back into the dock. Their headlights are right in the back of my house.”

The recommended denial does not mean the developers have given up hope just yet. 

Under the plan, Core 5 Industrial Partners proposes three separate warehouses that would cover 1.75 million square feet of land and have more than 400 loading docks for semitractor-trailers. 

“I do feel like a salmon that’s swimming upstream a little bit on this one,” said Joe Calderon, an attorney for the developers. “But, some (proposals) make it because they’re pretty determined, and we’re pretty determined.”

They’ve modified the proposal after hearing complaints from residents about lights, sounds and just the lack of a need for a warehouse.

Gregg West with Decatur Township Partnership for Prosperity described some residents’ reaction to the warehouse plan.

“When they see a warehouse, they look at each other and they start going ‘beep, beep, beep,’ and they say ‘You know, that’s going to be day and night. We’re out of here!’” 

Despite the decision Thursday, the commission’s hearing examiner warned opponents that the space will be developed into something at some point, so they need to choose wisely.

The residents said they want something that benefits the people living there.

“There’re things that we need that everybody else has,” Andrews said. “That gets lost a lot of times. But, the hearing examiner understood that, and we are trying to move forward proactively by working with the (Mayor Joe) Hogsett administration on a couple of things to help spur that sort of development that we need.”

The Metropolitan Development Commission could make final decision on the warehouse proposal at its meeting set for 1 p.m. July 3 at the City-County Building.