After 57 years of business, a Muncie recreation area will be sold to the highest bidder tonight and could be used for intense industrialization.
Don and Barbara Irving, owners of Muncie’s Water Bowl, are auctioning off the nine-acre water bowl and surrounding 160 acres.
While the location has been used as a way to cool off during the summer, the 169-acre site was zoned for intense industrial since 1973.
Although the area is technically zoned for intense industrial use, that doesn’t mean it will be industrialized, said Marta Moody, executive director of the Delaware-Muncie Metropolitan Plan Commission.
“The zoning sets forth a lot of different permitted uses,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that there are plans to industrialize it.”
The zoning is “intense industrial,” which means it can be used for commercial or industrial use. According to the City of Muncie Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance Article XXIV, the Intense Industrial Zone was created to accommodate “heavy manufacturing uses.”
This includes slaughtering and food processing, manufacturing of chemicals, storage of petroleum products, fat rendering and fertilizer manufacturing.
“We’ve got two industrial zones,” Moody said. “Limited industrial would allow commercial use as well as industrial use, but the industrial use would have to be all enclosed. With intense industrial, it’s the same situation where you can have commercial use as well as industrial use, but the industrial uses can be more open.”
So far, most of the interest regarding the land involves the farm ground and not the Water Bowl itself, said Mark Smithson, an agent with Schrader Real Estate and Auction Co.
He said it would be nice if someone stepped up and kept the historical recreation site running.
“There’s nothing else like it in the area,” Smithson said.
The public auction will be at 6 tonight at the Delaware County Fairgrounds.
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