By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

SCHERERVILLE, Ind. — For the first time in more than 40 years, there will be no Christmas at a northwestern Indiana family tree farm, where the first of 750 upscale homes could start going up in the spring.

Luers Tree Farm in Schererville has been purchased by Drapac Capital Partners, an Australian real estate investment firm headquartered in the United States at Atlanta, Ga. Under the purchase agreement, the tree farm could have continued until the ground started being developed.

Doug Luers, the main operator of the farm, said he and his four siblings are “getting up in years” and felt it was time to move on, especially with the hard work involved in running the operation. “We’re all getting older and time marches on. It’s got to happen sometime, I guess,” he said.

In 1976, his father, Arnold ‘’Bud’’ Luers, planted the first tree on the farm that started with just a few plots before the population of the community, once rooted in agriculture, shot up to more than 30,000 people. He went from selling trees out of an old RV trailer to having 50 acres of six varieties harvested, once they were mature enough to go to a home for Christmas.

Later came Sweetie’s Christmas Shoppe with its homemade pastries, Christmas cookies and other goodies, along with Santa Claus to pay a visit to after Thanksgiving. Bud Luers was 92 when he died in 2011.

Max Cookes, a spokesperson for Drapac Capital Partners, said a time frame for ground breaking has not been decided. He said a better idea on the start of moving dirt should be known after meeting with local builders, engineers and other industry professionals in the coming weeks.

On paper, the subdivision has room for 750 homes, but just how many are built and over what period of time depends on factors like the economy, he said. The homes will be priced from $350,000 up. Plans include a farmers’ market, community garden, walking trails and athletic facilities.

Recently, the town finished annexing the entire development site to allow for the extension of water and sewer lines to where the new homes will go. The farm was already in the town’s corporate boundaries, but much of the 700 acres of surrounding land was not.

Annexation followed a rezoning of the entire parcel from agriculture to residential planned-use development, said Schererville Town Manager Robert Volkmann. Cookes said approval of the final drawings and construction permits are all that’s needed before a groundbreaking.

He doesn’t anticipate any last-minute snags because of how cooperative town officials have been in a process that began more than a year ago. “They were very easy to deal with and understood what we were trying to achieve,” he said.

Cookes said his firm was drawn to the site because areas of northwestern Indiana including Schererville, Crown Point, Valparaiso and St. John rank high in market studies for being able to support new upscale housing.

“We looked at everything from a development and building perspective and thought that it made a lot of sense as a potential home market to focus on,” he explained.

A half-century ago, farms were a common sight in Schererville, which is now a major residential and commercial area particularly along U.S. highways 30 and 41. Some may wonder if any of the farms still here will be around a generation from now because of continued migration from areas like Illinois to take advantage of Indiana’s lower property taxes.

Volkmann, a 40-year Schererville resident, said much of the development has been on land passed down to children of farmers selling the property, that only a developer with deep pockets can afford.

“Those kids have gone to school and they’re all in different careers, and the property is too expensive for somebody who wants to farm,” he added.

One concern about the new subdivision is adding traffic to already heavily traveled highways and some of the major connecting arteries – once lightly traveled country roads. Volkmann said the increase will be gradual because it’ll take 10 years or longer for all of the homes to be built.

He also said traffic flows pretty well except during afternoon rush hour or when a bad crash on Interstate 94 several miles to the north causes detouring traffic to spill onto local highways. Volkmann also said many occupants of the homes will likely be older families with few driving-age children still at home.

As with any new development, though, Volkmann said studies will be done to determine how to successfully absorb the extra traffic into the local road system. “It’ll cause us to do some improvements, but it’s not something we’re not accustomed to.”

Doug Luers, 56, described the decision to get out of tree farming as ‘’bittersweet’’ but one that had to be made considering the hard work involved and passage of time. After graduating from Purdue University, he left the farm to work as a production supervisor at Indiana Packers in Delphi.

He was at Hormel Foods in Minnesota before returning to the farm 20 years ago. “We got tired of doing it. I’m worn out; I’m ready to retire,” he explained.