A boundary agreement between Mokena and Orland Park will help quicken the pace of development in the Interstate Highway 80 corridor, Mokena Mayor Robert Chiszar said.
The agreement, which sets Mokena’s northern boundary at I-80 and moves Orland Park’s southern boundary past 183rd Street, eliminates wrangling over disputed territory and allows the towns to proceed with joint planning for economic development along both sides of the highway, Chiszar said.
Orland Park and Mokena are members, along with Tinley Park, Country Club Hills and New Lenox, of the I-80 Regional Corridor Planning Council, a group formed to coordinate a regional response to growth in the area bordering the roadway.
The development of the “I-80 corridor is going to happen,” Chiszar said. “All (a dispute over territory) could do is delay development.”
If development in the Mokena-Orland Park section of the corridor is held up by a land dispute, development “could leapfrog right over us” to New Lenox, he said.
Besides the land south of I-80, land on three sides of the I-80 interchange at La Grange Road is under Mokena’s jurisdiction, the mayor said.
Much of the land now under Orland Park’s jurisdiction already has been annexed by that village, Mokena Village Trustee Frank Fleischer said. Fleischer, who along with Trustee Ed Gross negotiated the agreement that was approved recently by the Mokena Village Board, said Orland Park was able to offer landowners north of I-80 quicker connection to water and sewer lines.
