One of the biggest obstacles developer Vincent A. Solano Jr. faced with plans for the 300-acre Royal Fox golf course community in St. Charles turned out to be a patch of trees.
Despite the experienced track record by Solano`s Robin Hills Development Co., the tree controversy somewhat bushwhacked the Wheaton-based firm. ”It caught us completely by surprise,” said Solano, a partner of Robin Hill with Ron Berns. ”It turned out to be a major problem.”
The resulting controversy over the trees, in fact, would take many months of debate to resolve. For a while, it would even bring the project to a standstill.
But Solano and company knew their community of 291 homesites on Kirk Road was a quality project and would be recognized as such. It eventually was.
In January, the St. Charles city council gave Solano and Robin Hill Development the go-ahead for Royal Fox, nearly a year after the developer first presented the project to city fathers.
”(The site) is a very large parcel and until the city (officials were)
satisfied that they covered all the bases, they were simply not going to accept it,” commented Solano. ”We found St. Charles to be very responsible, which is the reason we originally targeted the area for the development.”
When completed, Solano said, Royal Fox-located on the city`s northwest side, east of the Fox River-will be a ”natural, beautiful community that will blend in with the overall development taking place in St. Charles.”
In addition to the golf course and club facilities, the site will offer cluster single-family homes on smaller lots aimed toward the empty-nester as well as an upper-end townhouse product, attached single-family homes.
The philosophy behind Royal Fox, said Solano, is simply ”lifestyle.”
”We feel that a subdivision with no lifestyle is simply not competitive in the marketplace anymore,” he said. ”In this case, the lifestyle is a golf club community with open space and different types of housing. The home is really secondary to the way you live. It`s a unique concept for someone who is able to afford it.”
Price-wise, townhouses are expected to range between $175,000 and $200,000. Single family homes will start at a minimum of $250,00 and may run as high as $700,000. Many of the homesites are located on the golf course, which was designed by Dick Nugent Associates.
One-third acre lots are priced from $59,000 to $79,000, while half-acre and one-acre lots range from $90,000 to $160,000.
Memberships to the coed golf club, meanwhile, will run $15,000 a year (it is not mandatory for residents to join the club).
The project is the latest of Robin Hill Development`s luxury communities. Other recent developments include Arboretum Woods and the Glendale Lakes golf course community. The company also has completed projects in Tallahassee and Marco, Fla.
Royal Fox, Solano admitted, has been the firm`s ”highest-profile project ever” because of the months of controversy, most of it centered around the patch of trees.
The battle of the trees started a few months after Solano unveiled the Royal Fox plans. It seems that there were residents of the area who felt a section of woodlands on the site-about one-tenth of the property-was a unique piece of forestry and should not be disturbed.
”They asked us not to touch 38 acres of land on the site,” said Solano. ”That`s about $1 million in real estate.”
Solano and Robert Olson, president of the Balsamo/Olson Group Inc., land planners for the project, had worked hard, in fact, to make the best use of the open land in the project.
”One of the magic things that takes place when you develop a golf course with a housing project is that you can do a lot with open land,” explained Olson. ”In this case, we were able to set aside about 50 percent of the site as open space.”
In addition to the golf course, Olson said, the community would offer a small park as well as a small wetland area.
Solano and his associates, meanwhile, tried to prove that the woodlands in question were just your everyday run-of-the-mill trees. ”We brought in evidence that showed the woodlands was a low-quality woodlands,” said Solano. ”It had been previously grazed.”
The debate over the site carried through dozens of public meetings. Tempers and accusations flew when Solano cut through the roadway on the site with bulldozers. Residents said Solano was destroying the woodlands. Robin Hill Development officials were dubbed preservation destroyers.
For a while, it seemed that the tree proponents were winning. First came a rejection by the St. Charles planning commission and then a rejection by the city council late in 1987.
The result was the project became dormant.
While Solano and company debated taking the project to the nearby cities of Wayne and West Chicago or Kane County, St. Charles officials considered ways of further protecting the trees.
In the meantime, a study by the Illinois Department of Conservation was conducted on the site. The study was based on the standards the state uses for statewide classification of woodlands.
The results of the study, Solano and Olson said, were at first suppressed by the opponents to Royal Fox. But at the 11th hour the report reached St. Charles officials.
”(The report) said that (the woodlands) was a nice bunch of trees but it wasn`t anything that was terribly unique or outstanding,” commented Bob Hupp, director of planning for the city of St. Charles. ”That report was part of what led the council to reconsider its denial.”
By January, the planning commission and the council were convinced to approve the project.
”In addition to reconsidering the tree issue, they thought about the possibility of the project going somewhere else,” said Olson.
With the controversy over the project now behind him, Solano is turning his interests toward the development of the land.
He expects to break ground soon on both the residential lots and the golf course. Construction of homes at the site, he added, may began as early as late spring. The golf course, meanwhile, will be ready for play in 1989.
Regarding the buying public`s response to the project, Solano said: ”The market acceptance has been wonderful.” In the first weekend of business, he said, more than half of the Royal Fox lots were reserved by potential tenants. Solano chalks up much of the response to the controversy and publicity surrounding the project.
”It has helped a great deal,” he explained. ”People took a hard look at the project under a microscope and wound up very much liking what they saw.”
