A recently completed study commissioned by a group of environmentalists and open space advocates takes aim at the proposed Fox Valley Freeway, strip shopping centers and other development that the group says could trigger unsightly and expensive sprawl in the county.
”Choices for the 21st Century: Suburban Sprawl or Managed Growth” was sought by the McHenry County Defenders and written by Ders Anderson, an Evanston consultant and independent planner for Bull Valley and Lakewood.
”We acknowledge that growth will occur, and there are a lot of benefits of growth,” Anderson said in a recent interview, ”but that growth should not have a bad effect on the county.”
The study, funded by a $5,000 grant from the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, identifies sprawl as willy-nilly development of such things as strip shopping malls that aggravate traffic congestion on major arterial roads while sapping the economic strength of existing suburban downtowns.
Sprawl also takes the form of isolated housing subdivisions that force municipalities, school districts, the county and other taxing jurisdictions to extend themselves unnecessarily to provide water and sewer services, police and fire protection, snow plowing, school busing and the like.
And certain things encourage sprawl, such as big retail malls, corporate complexes that concentrate thousands of workers in one place, and new freeways and tollways, according to the study.
The consequences can include visual blight, traffic congestion, loss of open space, tainted water supplies, overcrowded schools and, especially, higher taxes.
Because of their proximity to agricultural land, the study said,
”Woodstock, McHenry, Huntley, Bull Valley, Algonquin, Prairie Grove, Sunnyside, Fox River Valley Gardens, Lake In The Hills, Oakwood Hills, Fox Lake, Island Lake, Lakewood, Wonder Lake, Ridgefield, Johnsburg and Lakemoor are the critical communities that will make or break suburban sprawl in McHenry County.”
The Defenders` study echoes those by the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC), which also has warned of the consequences of sprawl in rural McHenry County as well as Kane and Will Counties.
NIPC has estimated that the six-county Chicago area lost 422 square miles of farmland between 1970 and 1990, 23 percent of the region`s agricultural land. Land consumed by development increased by 45 percent, while the area`s population grew by only 4 percent, NIPC said.
”We want to show that suburban sprawl is not inevitable. There are things people can do to stop sprawl,” said Jerry Paulson, executive director of the Woodstock-based Defenders, who added that the group has not yet formally taken a position on the study.
McHenry County today may be at the point northwest Cook County and Du Page County were in the 1950s, Paulson said.
”Looming over all of this is the Fox Valley Freeway,” he said. ”Though there are clearly powerful political interests backing this highway to generate more land speculation and tax dollars, there`s equally powerful citizens opposition to all that primarily because of the fear it will lead to more sprawl.”
But not everyone in McHenry County accepts all of the study`s recommendations.
Milton Faurot, village administrator for Lake In The Hills, called
”ludicrous” the idea of stopping the Fox Valley Freeway without at least offering some alternatives to deal with the county`s growing traffic.
”I`ve seen it happen in Lake County, where they stopped major traffic-handling facilities from being built, and you get gridlock,” Faurot said.
”Now, I`m not convinced the Fox Valley Freeway is the way to go-money may be better spent by having the Illinois Department of Transportation improve the present roads-but anybody who says the Fox Valley Freeway is a dead duck had better come up with alternate solutions,” Faurot said.
As for the suggestion that no new regional shopping centers or strip malls be permitted, Faurot responded, ”Do they suggest we build an electrified 12-foot fence along the Fox River to keep them out? . . . Let the private sector make that decision.”
The study specifically recommended no new shopping malls larger than 500,000 square feet, or corporate centers with more than 1,000 employees,
”because of their role in creating growth pressures beyond what would otherwise occur and their negative impact on local community-scale retail centers and roads.”
The study also proposed that to preserve the ”small-town countryside”
character of much of McHenry County, communities agree to open space buffers, annexing up to a certain point and leaving undeveloped space between them and neighboring municipalities.
Publicly owned open space in the county should end up accounting for 10 to 15 percent of the land, the study said. Combined with privately owned, undeveloped land, the proportion of open space throughout the county should end up exceeding 50 percent.
Each municipality also should take care, when awarding building permits, that its contribution to growth does not cause the county to overshoot a projected 2010 population of 234,000 people, a 28 percent increase over the 183,241 residents counted in the 1990 Census, the study said.
As for the argument that limiting growth denies landowners top dollar for their properties, Anderson said, ”When that attitude predominates, then you know you`re dealing with proponents of sprawl. The idea that every parcel in the county will be developed is just not true.”
”One perception is that anything you do to control growth treads on private property rights,” Paulson said. ”My response is, the Constitution says you can sell your property to the highest bidder . . . but it does not guarantee you`ll make windfall profits from speculation.”
Paulson acknowledged that communities squeezed for revenues in these fiscally unsettled times ”may have the hardest time accepting or even considering the recommendations in this report.”
But, he added, ”Sprawl is a pocketbook issue.”
”The cost of sprawl will hit taxpayers . . . and will just add fuel to the fire of the taxpayer revolt,” Paulson said. ”Our challenge is to make sure that people understand they`re paying for all this sprawl, and it isn`t necessary.”
