After months of bitter feuding over who has control of 45 acres of coveted undeveloped land, village leaders in Lake Zurich and Kildeer have agreed to work together on a settlement and avoid a showdown in court.
The 11th-hour settlement talks apparently will head off a threatened lawsuit by Kildeer, but they also derail for the time being a plan to construct a shopping center on the land.
Specifics of the villages’ agreement will be hammered out on Wednesday at a rare joint meeting of both village boards.
The dispute centers on a parcel of ordinary woods and wetlands on the northeast corner of Cuba Road and U.S. Highway 12 that offers few attractions other than location.
The controversy erupted when Minneapolis-based Dayton-Hudson Corp. petitioned Kildeer more than a year ago for annexation of the property, which was in unincorporated Lake County, and proposed building three stores, including a Target Greatland.
The project would include up to 260,000-square-feet of total retail space, said Forrest Russell, a spokesman for Target Stores Inc., a subsidiary of Dayton-Hudson.
When Kildeer received the petition from Dayton-Hudson, village leaders asked for input from Lake Zurich, said George Welch, Kildeer village president.
But in May, Kildeer officials were angered when the Lake Zurich Village Board voted to annex the land. They accused Lake Zurich of violating a gentlemen’s agreement to work together on development outside each others borders and threatened to take Lake Zurich to court over the annexation.
Lake Zurich village leaders oppose the development, said John Dixon, village administrator, because they believe it is too big for the site and would severely hinder traffic on already congested U.S. 12.
Wednesday’s joint meeting of both village boards will finalize an intergovernmental agreement regulating development of the parcel and setting out revenue sharing and land-use guidelines. If all goes well, it could be finalized at a Saturday meeting, Welch said.
The proposed agreement between the villages includes concessions from each side.
Under the terms of the proposal, Lake Zurich will de-annex the property and, in return, Kildeer will no longer give priority to the annexation petition from Dayton-Hudson.
If Lake Zurich had not agreed to the talks, Welch said, Kildeer was prepared to move ahead with its lawsuit against Lake Zurich. The village’s Plan Commission already had given preliminary approval to the petition from Dayton-Hudson.
Lake Zurich leaders say that Dayton-Hudson should have been working with Lake Zurich as well as Kildeer from the beginning, because Lake Zurich controls sewer and water in the area.
“We’re really all partners in this, whether the developer understands that or not,” Dixon said.
It appears that the villages’ truce will, temporarily at least, scuttle Dayton-Hudson’s plans.
Once land is de-annexed from a municipality, it reverts to unincorporated Lake County. As such, the land automatically becomes zoned as countryside, allowing only agricultural uses or 5-acre residential development, said Robert Mosteller, deputy director of the Department of Planning and Zoning and Environmental Quality.
