When Amanda Anderson and her husband plunked down more than a quarter of a million dollars for their house in the upscale Lake Zurich development of Chestnut Corners two years ago, she didn’t think she would be living near a minefield of sinkholes, some big enough to swallow her 2-year-old son.
The plans she saw called for her back yard to slope down to a retention pond where golden Alexanders, prairie milkweed and common ironweed would thrive.
She also thought that two years after she moved in, Lexington Homes, the company that built the development of 285 homes, would have finished putting a lawn in her back yard and that her deck would overlook the pond and not the still, cattail-filled bog tha she said had become an incubator for mosquitoes.
That’s why she and some 65 other homeowners who signed a petition are more than miffed that the Village Board on Monday will consider allowing Lexington to replace its $400,000 letter of credit with a lower-value maintenance bond. Although the bond would be only $26,000 less than the than the original letter of credit, it would release Lexington from responsibility for any repairs for the public roads, sidewalks and other public areas in 2 1/2 years.
Anderson said she’s afraid the company will wait until the end of the maintenance period to repair the pond and sidewalks. By the time any defects appear, Lexington or Cambridge Homes, the company that is buying the Arlington Heights-based developer, will have been released from its financial responsibilities for Chestnut Corners, she said.
“We want things fixed now,” Anderson said.
Lake Zurich Village Administrator John Dixon said development is proceeding along the lines of the plans that the board approved. He said some of the complaints are the results of exaggerated promises agents may have made to individual homeowners that they’d be near a pond. But the plans call for a retention pond/wetlands, and the “slash wetlands” is what allows for the mucky pond.
“It’s an infant wetland,” Dixon said. “It has to mature. That takes about two years.”
Dixon also said the board will consider requiring Lexington to post two additional cash bonds in addition to the maintenance bond. A bond for $5,000 would guarantee additional trees and plants for the retention pond. A $100,000 bond would ensure the company would repair cracks in the development’s main road, Pheasant Ridge Drive.
Efforts to reach Richard Van Schaardenburg, Lexington’s president, were unsuccessful Tuesday.
