State settles on parkway route

June 7, 2007

By Heather Gillers, Beacon News 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 Route 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 Route 47 widening project will attract a combined total of close to 30,000 new jobs to the six-county region, and put roughly 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 non-binding 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 Route 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 Route 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 of the federal money can be used.

Moreover, U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert of 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 Route 30 west of Sugar Grove to Route 71 southwest of Yorkville, could be just four years away, since officials expect to begin the two-year construction process as early as 2009.

The hundreds of millions of dollars needed to finish the project — which officials guess could wrap up sometime between 2016 and 2030 — are both a hurdle for its supporters and a comfort to its opponents.

Said Marvel Davis, who has spent six years trying to keep the parkway off her Big Rock farm: “Everything hinges on funding.”

Sun-Times News Group