The former owner of a 1,826-acre industrial site at the old Joliet Arsenal said he intends to do nothing with an adjacent 370-acre farm he owns that might conflict with the development plans of the site’s new owner or that might hurt Elwood.
“There is no way that I would put a quarry, nor an incinerator nor a landfill on that property,” said Dan Kohrdt, president of Transport Development Group. No way, he said, provided the new owner’s plans for the arsenal property are not stymied the way Kohrdt’s were.
Kohrdt said that if the industrial site’s new owner, CenterPoint Properties Trust, of Oak Brook, is allowed to develop the Deer Run Industrial Park the way it is contemplating, his plan is to capitalize on the park with “complementary” development on the adjacent farmland.
Kohrdt was forced to drop his controversial plan for a major commercial landfill, and he has been effectively blocked from excavating a commercial quarry on the federally owned land. Speculation has swirled over Kohrdt’s intentions for the 370-acre farm.
Transport Development Group, or TDG, acquired the farmland in January for $5.3 million.
Known locally as the Steffes property, named after the family that sold the farm to TDG, the unincorporated parcel is adjacent to Elwood and bridges the village’s western corporate limits and the eastern boundary of the arsenal industrial park.
Kohrdt bought the property, he said, to assure the annexation of the arsenal industrial park to Elwood.
As part of a pending deal with CenterPoint, Kohrdt said, the Steffes property and the Deer Run Industrial Park site would be annexed to the tiny village, as he promised earlier this year.
Faced with what he contends was unabated bureaucratic and political resistance to his development plan, an admittedly bitter Kohrdt said he felt compelled to sell his rights to the arsenal property, if only to see it developed as he had planned.
“I don’t think he expected it to be like this,” said Elwood Mayor Jim Clementi, a Kohrdt supporter.
In the end, Kohrdt was forced to succumb to what Clementi called “big-picture” political pressure of a bipartisan nature.
“This project has been getting it from both sides. Anybody who needs a vote comes down to Elwood and starts waving the flag and saying how this is not good for humanity,” Clementi said.
“TDG, I’m sure Dan would tell you, found out they bit off more than they could chew,” he said. “Dan could push some buttons in (Washington) D.C., but others were able to push buttons a little bit higher up.”
Kohrdt “got tangled in a political web and didn’t come out very well,” Clementi said.
Meanwhile, Clementi said he is encouraged by what he knows of CenterPoint’s reputation.
Kohrdt’s development scheme grew from his familiarity with the arsenal, having been on site as an Army contractor assigned to demolish and liquidate what was left of the defunct munitions plant.
As his difficulties with the arsenal project became greater, so did the distance that Kohrdt put between himself and the media. Kohrdt declared himself off limits to the press several months ago.
For all the self-made millionaire’s detractors, Kohrdt had enjoyed broad-based support in and around Elwood, if only because of the local money-making opportunities he had proposed for the arsenal site.
Elwood officials agreed this year to annex the industrial park and the Steffes property and to give Kohrdt virtual carte blanche to construct the landfill and stone quarry, which they viewed as saviors for their cash-strapped town and school district.
Elwood stood to gain millions of dollars in royalties from the landfill, quarry and other industrial-related installations included in the village’s preannexation agreement with TDG.
