News Reports about Prairie Parkway

Aurora Beacon-News
November 29, 2007

On the road to reality

Revised plans for the Prairie Parkway could get construction under way as early as 2009

By HEATHER GILLERS
Staff Writer

Kaneville residents long unhappy about plans for a new highway near their town learned Wednesday that the Prairie Parkway could come even closer than they once thought.

"Rather than being 1,500 feet away on the north end, it will now be less that 1,000 feet," said Village President Bob Rodney. "That's a little over three football fields."

The change was one of several modifications finalized Wednesday by the Illinois Department of Transportation as it moves toward a 2009 construction start date on the $1 billion road connecting Interstate 80 to Interstate 88. The revised route, reviewed at public hearings this summer, attempts to limit the parkway's impact on groundwater and farmland and circumvent pipelines.

The changes directly affect 221 properties by recording a new corridor-protection area that gives the state control over development and property improvements in the right-of-way. IDOT also has the right to make a first offer on the protected land and can purchase it at any time.

The state has already conducted six years of studies and hundreds of public hearings on the 37-mile highway that would begin in Kane County near Kaneville, swing east near Yorkville in Kendall County and end in Grundy County near Minooka.

The modifications IDOT registered Wednesday with the three counties shift the path of the proposed road at roughly five locations. IDOT Secretary Milton Sees signed off on the final changes to the route earlier this month.

The revised route places 127 additional property owners in the parkway's path and removes 94, said IDOT engineer Rick Powell. A total of 224 properties overlap with the parkway.

Environmental concerns gathered in discussions with residents, interest groups and other government agencies fueled many of the revisions to the route.

Changes near the Kane-Kendall line will reduce overlap with Big Rock Creek and lower the impact on aquatic life, Powell said. In Kendall County, shifting a bend in the road 2.5 miles north moves the highway away from property slated to remain farmland and into an area Yorkville hopes to develop.

But the changes are not enough to keep the proposed highway from endangering waterways, forests and animals, according to Stacy Meyers-Glen of the Chicago-based Openlands Foundation.

"Whereas they have done some things to try to mitigate some environmental harm," she said, "there's still going to be a lot of problems that are going to be caused by this road."

While the state plans to start construction on the segment of the parkway near Yorkville as early as 2009, it is much less clear when the project could be complete.

IDOT has acquired less than 10 percent of the properties needed to build the highway, and only about a quarter of the necessary dollars have been earmarked for the project. Officials have said land acquisition will be a priority in 2008.