News Reports about Prairie Parkway

Aurora Beacon-News
June 2, 2007

State gives go-ahead, sets route for Prairie Parkway

• Route selected: Highway will cut across Kendall down to Minooka

By HEATHER GILLERS
STAFF WRITER

YORKVILLE -- The planned Prairie Parkway will curve through Kendall County, connecting residents to jobs and spurring economic growth, state transportation officials said Friday in a long-awaited announcement that pleased most local town governments but disappointed some farmers and environmentalists.

The decision, which follows six years of studies and hundreds of public hearings, determines the scope of a two-part, $1 billion transportation project.

Pending federal approval and sufficient funding, the state committed Friday to build a 37-mile parkway beginning at Interstate 88 near Kaneville, swinging east near Yorkville, and ending at Interstate 80 near Minooka -- and also to widen a 12-mile span of Illinois 47 from Yorkville's southern boundary to Interstate 80.

Only about a quarter of the necessary dollars have been earmarked for the project.

Support and opposition

The parkway route announced Friday won state approval over a more direct alternative running from near Kaneville straight south to near Morris -- and also trumped a third option of building no parkway at all.

"It's going to a be a great business corridor," said Plano Mayor Bill Roberts, who along with officials in Kendall County, Grundy County, Yorkville, Sandwich, Minooka, Sugar Grove, Millington and Channahon signed off on a statement supporting the chosen route.

Illinois Department of Transportation studies anticipate the parkway and the Illinois 47 widening project will attract a combined total of nearly 30,000 new jobs to the six-county region, and put about 30,000 more within a one-hour commute.

That's not necessarily good news in rural areas, though.

"We have always taken pride in the fact that we can't get pizza delivery where we live," said Judy Maierhofer, who raises sheep on a 15-acre Kendall County farm squarely in the parkway's chosen path. "People come out to the farm and are like, 'You've really got a piece of paradise here.'"
Bob Rodney, village president of rural Kaneville, called the announcement Friday a disappointment. Voters there and in Big Rock opposed building the parkway in a nonbinding referendum earlier this year.
Citizens Against the Sprawlway, a local opposition group that supports strengthening existing roadways, also condemned the choice, as did Openlands, a Chicago-based conservation organization concerned about protecting wildlife habitats.

Funding in question

The project announced Friday does not include widening the clogged portion of Illinois 47 from Interstate 88 south through Yorkville, officials said, because they expect the state to address that project on a quicker timetable. Both the state and federal governments have made moves toward footing the $25 million cost.
Funding is less certain for the parkway and the southern portion of Illinois 47.
Only $207 million in federal funds and $10 million in state monies are earmarked for the project, and the state must cough up another $46 million before all the federal money can be used.
Moreover, U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Yorkville, who earmarked most of the existing money in the 2005 federal transportation bill, lost the chance to remain speaker of the House late last year after Democrats won a majority of seats.
Completion of one segment of the parkway, the stretch connecting U.S. 30 west of Sugar Grove to Illinois 71 southwest of Yorkville, could be just four years away, since officials expect to begin the two-year construction process as early as 2009.

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But the majority of the $954.7 million project remains unfunded and it could be another 20 years before the long-awaited project is complete, IDOT engineer Rick Powell said at a media briefing held at the old Kendall County Courthouse in Yorkville.

"At the end of the study, we'll have to come up with a funding plan, identify funding sources," Powell said. "We haven't done that yet."
About $10 million in state and $207 million in federal funds - secured two years ago by U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert - have been allocated to the project thus far.

Also known as the Outer Belt, the regional highway will be built in phases, with construction beginning as soon as 2009, Powell said. It will reduce traffic congestion and bring 58,000 more jobs to the area by the year 2030, according to IDOT estimates.

But the Prairie Parkway also will result in the relocation of 22 homes and the destruction of 1,665 acres of prime farmland, according to the state's own environmental study.

That's why members of a grassroots group have long opposed the project. An overwhelming majority of Big Rock and Kaneville township voters said in an April advisory referendum that the expressway should not be built.

"We believe (the funds) should be applied to improving Illinois 47 instead of building an entire new highway with all its environmental costs and loss of thousands of acres of prime farmland," said Jan Strasma, president of Citizens Against the Sprawlway.

IDOT officials are pursuing that project separately from the Prairie Parkway. Route 47 will be widened from two to four lanes regardless of whether the parkway is built, Powell said.

Route 47 would be widened between the Reagan Tollway and I-80. There is no timeline for that project.

Local government officials had expressed support for the B5 over the B2. IDOT narrowed a list of more than a dozen possible routes to those two in 2005.