Is the parkway driving the growth?

 When the Prairie Parkway was unveiled in 2001, public opinion split along two transportation philosophies.

There were those, like U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who supported an alignment west of Route 47 that could eventually connect Interstate 80 in Grundy County to Interstate 88 in central Kane County all the way to Interstate 90 in northern Kane County as an outer thread of Chicago's expanding transportation web.

But opponents of the plan at the time, including the chairmen of the Kane and Kendall county boards, saw the western alignment as interfering with farmland protection plans, neglecting improvements to existing roads and encouraging sprawl.

Former Kane County Board Chairman Mike McCoy and Kendall County Board Chairman John Church diligently promoted a more eastern route, but the plan received no support from the towns, which led McCoy to draw one conclusion:

"I think its primary purpose was for economic development in Kendall County," McCoy said.

Hastert himself partially agrees with this assessment, having talked about the expressway's economic development potential since he took federal office in the 1980s.

But he doesn't believe that the Prairie Parkway — or even the promise of a parkway — is driving Kendall's growth or property values, which "we've seen coming through DuPage and through Kane," spokesman Brad Hahn said.

"It's a very tough argument that the Prairie Parkway is what's driving this growth," Hahn said.

Nonetheless, opponents of the parkway long have maintained that the 36-mile outer beltway through Kane and Kendall counties will encourage suburban sprawl.

Members of "Citizens Against the Sprawlway" have gone so far as to criticize Hastert at public meetings for purchasing property a few miles from the parkway's proposed route. Hastert sold some of that land last December for more than three times the original price, making a $2 million profit. The Sunlight Foundation, a congressional watchdog, alleged last week that Hastert obscured the sale of the property by putting it in a trust, though Hastert's lawyer said the implication was libelous.

Parkway supporters contend the growth is coming anyway, so the region better be equipped with the transportation and commercial infrastructure to handle it.

So what comes first, the parkway or the sprawl?

The answer is more complicated than a protester's slogan or a politician's sound byte.

Parkway increasing pace?


Though the growth is certainly coming this way, the pace of development could be quickened by the parkway.

Sugar Grove expected to develop the area west of the Aurora Municipal Airport on Route 30 over the next 20 to 25 years, according to Perry Clark, executive director of the village's Economic Development Corporation.

But with the advent of the Prairie Parkway and a Route 30 intersection, that corridor is more likely to develop in the next 10 years, Clark said.

"It would be a lot slower process developing that manufacturing area without the Prairie Parkway," Clark said. "As soon as the parkway opens up, the developments will open up."

At the same time, the existence of an intersection doesn't necessarily translate to immediate development. The Farnsworth Avenue and Route 59 intersections of Interstate 88 have existed for decades, but Aurora Community Development Director Bill Wiet noted that development has only caught up within the last five to 10 years.

"History has said that it takes a while for development to catch up with an interchange," Wiet said, though he added: "Throwing this out of whack is the North-South Tollway (Interstate 355)."

Bolingbrook, for example, has seen a rash of commercial development at interchanges along I-355 within the last 10 years, though the tollway has only been open since 1989.

Developing the parkway


For some towns, a prospective Prairie Parkway interchange — and the economic benefit — couldn't come soon enough.

Officials in Plano and Minooka were delighted when the Kendall County Board approved a resolution last month endorsing the construction of interchanges at Galena Road and Grove Road.

A Galena Road interchange could be the difference between local-use retail and big-box retail at that location, according to Whitney French, executive director of Plano's Economic Development Corporation.

Though the Illinois Department of Transportation has no plans for the interchange, and the Kendall County resolution commits no funding to such a project, French raised the possibility that developers at some point could pay for the improvement through sales tax recapture agreements with the city.

According to IDOT, an interchange would cost upward of $15 million, but consider that, if a developer wanted to build 150 acres of retail, the interchange would cost $100,000 per acre. In parts of Kendall County, major end users have been willing to pay as much as 10 times that for prime real estate.

"The comparable land commercial values are up for grabs," French said. "I've seen acreage go for everywhere from $40,000 to $1 million along the Route 34 and Route 47 corridor by the end user."

Though the prospective parkway could be influencing Plano's pace of growth, a more tangible factor is that the city plans to expand its wastewater treatment plant and has been asking developers to commit to projects in order to guarantee there will be enough demand for the added capacity, French said.

That could explain why an investment company, Unicorn Investments LLC, purchased in 2004 about 800 acres for $16.4 million where Galena Road crosses the parkway corridor. The same goes for a project a few miles west on Galena Road that is being developed by the Robert Arthur Land Company. That project includes the land Hastert sold in December.

Minooka seeking access


On the south side of the county, Minooka isn't growing as fast as Plano, but village officials have endorsed the Prairie Parkway on the condition that IDOT provides some kind of local access.

Minooka included an interchange at Grove Road in its comprehensive plan update in 2002, though the area remains "corn fields for a couple miles around," Village President Jason Briscoe said.

The village has had some preliminary conversations with developers about the area, and officials foresee the intersection generating highway commercial such as gas stations and big-box retail banded by office research work complexes, factories and big-box distribution warehouses.

Most of those plans rely on some kind of local access, but in IDOT's current plans, the closest expressway interchanges would be at Route 52 on the Prairie Parkway or at Brisbin Road on Interstate 80.

"The more entrances and exits you have, the more accessibility you have to residents," Briscoe said. "From an economic standpoint and transportation standpoint, it doesn't make sense not to have them."

Feeding off each other


In the final assessment, there is no doubt that growth is already coming to Kendall County, regardless of the Prairie Parkway.

At the same time, concerns about the pace of development increasing seem justified based on the way towns are eyeing the expressway's economic development potential.

Lynn Dubajic, executive director of the Yorkville Economic Development Corporation, agrees that the area west of Yorkville will develop in a more timely fashion because of the parkway, though she said getting the rooftops there is the primary factor in the equation.

"Having the Prairie Parkway is going to get the rooftops there," Dubajic said. "They will feed off of each other."