Someone stole a Barbie bedroom set from an unlocked Chevy pickup on Third Street. That’s the highlight of the December police report from the city of McHenry. Although this mini-city in eastern McHenry County doesn’t pretend to be crime-free, the bantam bed-and-bureau on the lam is one of many clues that McHenry remains as close to Hometown, U.S.A., as possible amidst rampant suburban sprawl.
Indeed, McHenry officials define their town by what it is not — a Lake in the Hills, Crystal Lake or Algonquin, citing some of the northwest suburbs that are melting together as production home builders cover their former farm fields with grids of new homes.
Founded in 1837 and incorporated in 1872, McHenry remains isolated from the county’s other burgs, still surrounded by a farmbelt and not sliced by a tollway. Just down the Fox River from the Chain O’ Lakes, McHenry remains off the recreational beaten path. Descendants of the city’s settlers had its gently rolling hills, criss-crossed by waterways, to themselves.
Until now.
The arrival of home builders was inevitable, as land nearby became more scarce. But McHenry is not giving a green light to developers. Instead, the lights directing them in McHenry are more often yellow or red.
“If a development benefits the developer but not the city, we say, `No way, Jose,’ ” says attorney Steve Cuda, midway through his second term as McHenry’s mayor. “With each development, we ask if it’s bringing anything new or different to McHenry. If it isn’t, we don’t approve it.”
Cuda winces when he hears the overused term “controlled growth,” preferring to say “smart growth.” But he admits that control is the intent here.
Cuda and the city council don’t hesitate to send developers back to the drawing board repeatedly until their plans incorporate, for example, open space or creative layouts. A tip to developers from the city administrator, John Lobaito: “We’d like to see more neo-traditional plans, with garages in back, front porches and some sort of community center such as a park.”
Once developers get past city hall, they must pay “tax lag” provisions to help cover increased school and library operating funds during the year to year-and-a-half lag between the addition of more students and the time when their parents’ property taxes are collected, explains Cuda.
The result: McHenry is growing steadily, with city hall OKing 100 to 225 residential permits a year for the last 10 years. But it is not exploding. Builders who survive the city’s approval process are mostly local, small to mid-sized firms who offer low-density plans. In August, the city put its density wishes in stone by including it in its new comprehensive plan. “More than 50 percent of the large and undeveloped tracts of land beyond the 1999 city limits are designated as low-density residential on the future land use map,” reads the plan.
While builders lure thousands of transferees and folks from built-up suburbs to new homes near the exits of Interstate Highway 90, McHenry’s builders report half their buyers are townies who grew up in the city or the tiny outposts circling it, such as Johnsburg, Bull Valley, McCullom Lake and Lilymoor.
That includes Kathy and Chuck Clark, who traveled only a few miles to their new custom, traditional home in McHenry’s Burning Tree subdivision, on the former Fiali family farm.
“We didn’t want to leave the area,” says Kathy, the mother of five children in school. “McHenry is still a small town where the kids are safe and parents are involved. Our (extended) family is here, and the kids see their cousins.”
The Clarks’ five-bedroom home isn’t that much larger than the home they left, says Kathy, but it offers more privacy and land. They paid $450,000 for their home and 1 1/2-acre lot in the neighborhood, which is being built by Lakewood-based Lanco Development. Its president, Curt Langille, says he has 14 lots left in the 65-lot development. Like most of his buyers, the Clarks work nearby and plan to stay awhile.
The Burning Tree lots, mostly one-acre, run $50,000 to $76,000. Prices for the Lanco semi-custom and custom homes here are $275,000 to $550,000. “We have 45 standard plans that we revise to suit,” says Langille, who has been building in McHenry County since 1976 with his father, Ki. “Or, we design from scratch or work with a homeowner’s plan.”
A step down the price ladder from Burning Tree is Park Ridge Estates, a 211-home subdivision being built by Windsor Development Corp. of Elgin. Base prices range from $167,900 to $213,000 for ranch and two-story models with three to five bedrooms and square footages of 1,650 to 2,700. The prices include quarter-acre lots, but some larger, wooded lots are available with higher price tags. Ditto for hilly lots suitable for walkout or lookout basements.
“A creek runs through it” could be the motto at Olde Mill Ponds, a 130-home development-in-the-works on Boone Creek by Libertyville-based Cambridge Homes. Base prices are $178,900 to $208,900 for three to four bedrooms and 1,650 to 2,475 square feet. Cambridge offers several ranch and two-story plans here, but the hottest one is a two-story with a first-floor master bedroom suite. “We’re seeing empty-nesters use the first-floor suites for themselves and the second-floor bedrooms for guests,” says Richard J. Brown, Cambridge’s chief executive officer. His buyers’ favorite upgrades are finished basements and hardwood floors.
Brown echoes the other builders when he reports that many of his buyers are locals who work west of Chicago.
The developer who has the greatest number of projects in McHenry is Gerstad Builders, based in McHenry. The company offers a smorgasbord of new homes, from town homes to sprawling houses on 1.5 acres.
Empty-nesters and first-time home buyers are purchasing Gerstad’s Timber Trails two-bedroom town homes with base prices from $122,915 to $160,240. These ranch and two-story units range in size from 1,150 to 1,550 square feet.
Gerstad has three new subdivisions that appeal to the move-up crowd looking for homes in the $200,000-plus range — River Oaks, Pebble Creek and The Trails of Boone Creek. Gerstad is building half the homes at The Trails; American Heritage Development Corp. in McHenry is building the other half.
Gerstad’s priciest new subdivision in McHenry is its Deer Wood Estates, where 3/4- to 1 1/2-acre lots run $51,000 to $80,000. The company is building semi-custom homes here for $170,000 to $230,000 (excluding lot). Buyers can alter available floor plans, which range from 2,375 to 2,900 square feet.
A buyer who doesn’t necessarily want a new home can find a range of houses on the market. Recent sales include a 20-year-old, roomy, three-bedroom ranch for $189,000 and an 8-year-old, two-story, four-bedroom brick home on an acre for $420,000. “The old Victorians are rare here, and most of the old farmhouses are gone,” reports McHenry-based Michael Purvey of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. “But we do see some of the old, riverfront homes come on the market….
As the city’s new areas replaced the farms that surrounded the established, tree-lined neighborhoods within walking distance of town, McHenry’s population has grown from 13,536 residents in 1980 to 21,244 now. Now, the lines are drawn in the sand between McHenry and most of its neighbors. To the north, the city abuts Johnsburg. To the east, Lakemoor. To the south, Prairie Grove.
Some unincorporated areas remain unclaimed to the southwest and northwest. “There is still a lot of land that we could annex in those directions, and our water/sewer lines already extend to the southwest,” reports Lobaito. So the city’s population prediction of 32,000 by 2020 depends on how much annexation occurs, he says.
These numbers don’t jibe with the swelling populations in McHenry’s two school districts, though, because the districts absorb students from new neighborhoods outside the city’s borders, such as the 48-lot Bull Ridge by McHenry-based Brittany Builders Inc.
Now, McHenry Elementary School District 15 includes five elementary schools and two middle schools. Under construction are one new middle school and an addition to the other. Completed, one will convert to an elementary school. McHenry High School District 156 includes McHenry High School’s east and west campuses.
Many predict school referendums ahead, which, of course, will hike McHenry’s property taxes. Now, they run approximately $5,500 a year for a $250,000 home.
While the schools are playing catch-up with McHenry’s population, the city’s roster of employers is keeping pace. Already, McHenry is home to many of the county’s largest commercial and industrial companies, including Motorola Inc., Hydraulics Inc., Brake Parts Inc., Follett Software Co., Fabrik Industries Inc., Rae Corp. and Lenco Electronics.
McHenry’s downtown business district is thriving and larger than it appears to those who drive through town on Illinois Highway 31. It includes three distinct districts — the Riverside Drive district along the Fox River, the Green Street district and Main Street between Illinois 31 and Crystal Lake Road. The Main Street district, anchored by a Metra stop, used to be a separate town called West McHenry. Before that, it was called Gagetown.
Like many downtowns that predate food courts and parking ramps, McHenry’s began to show its age when shoppers fled to the malls in the 1970s. To the rescue came the McHenry Area Economic Development Commission, a non-profit group formed in 1981 to preserve and promote the town’s commercial districts. Its recent accomplishments include new “streetscapes” and facade-improvement subsidy programs for the downtown districts. This year, the group will focus on creating a riverwalk along the Fox River and Boone Creek.
“We’ve been talking about the riverwalk for years, but now the stars are in line to make it happen,” reports Kit Carstens, one of the commission’s key players. “We have support from the business owners and the community. We recognize that a community has to have an identity, like Woodstock has the square. The riverwalk can do this for McHenry.”
While riverwalks have been on many of the Fox River towns’ wish lists for years, Carstens is confident that McHenry’s will become a reality in the next decade. “When McHenry wants to do something, it rolls up its sleeves and gets it done,” he says.
McHenry retailers and restaurateurs hope the riverwalk will lure more visitors who travel through McHenry by bicycle on the Prairie Trail, a 25.9-mile link between the Fox River Trail and Wisconsin, or by boat on the Fox River.
Even without the riverwalk, McHenry offers lots of open space and parkland. The McHenry Park and Recreation Department operates 32 parks that include five new soccer fields, an outdoor swimming pool, a preschool, playgrounds, tennis courts and a sledding hill. Residents can fish or rent boats at McCullom Lake.
Preservation of undeveloped land is a priority, says Lobaito. “We’ve preserved an 800-foot greenbelt along Boone Creek at the western edge of town,” he says. “We bought the former Petersen farm at the north end to keep as open land. We’ve also bought and renovated three barns, and will buy more if we can.”
In 1837, Wesley Ladd described McHenry in a letter he wrote to friends back home in Hebron, N.H.: “I think that this country is the best place that I have ever seen for young people that are just setting out in the world and that they can find for any business that they have a mind to engage in life.”
One hundred sixty-three years later, Cuda agrees. A native of McHenry, Cuda left briefly after graduating from college. “But I was driving back to McHenry every weekend,” he recalls. “So I moved back. This is a place where you can raise a family, find a job and enjoy your leisure time.” The occasional Barbie may skip town, but, says Cuda, “McHenry is a place where people come and stay.”
