When Geneva-based Sho-Deen began building its Mill Creek development in Kane County in the early 1990s, the firm opted for housing clustered in neighborhoods, open lots at the end of the streets and more than 460 acres of open space in the development’s 1,470 acres.
The plan flew in the face of the one-home-per-acre Kane County zoning code and “was a very new concept,’ recalls Craig Shodeen, president of Sho-Deen.
“You see a lot of that going on now,” he adds.
Indeed you do.
Open space has lured American homeowners since the first European settlers set foot on the continent. But while U.S. homeowners historically have purchased as much land as they could afford, a growing number of buyers are opting for housing on smaller lots amidst open communal surroundings.
The carefully platted single-family homes on large suburban yards so characteristic of the decades following World War II now must compete with developments boasting “preserved open space” and calling themselves a “conservation community.”
The reasons for this change are growing environmental awareness and changing U.S. lifestyles, says Stephen Fennell, vice president of development for Pritzker Realty Group, developer of Valley Lakes near far north suburban Round Lake.
“These things are being viewed as amenities,” says Fennell of the natural surroundings and open space promised at Valley Lakes, a mega-development planned for 1,800 residential units on 856 acres. “Look at the broader societal trends over the last 10 to 20 years. There has been a significant rise in two-income families and the decline of the traditional family with one spouse at home. In addition, there is a growing number of single-parent households.”
“People have less time,” says Fennell. “And one of things that some people decided was that maintaining the large suburban lawn with mowing and landscaping chores was less and less a priority.”
“Still they want a space for the kids to run and the dog to play,” he observes. “The compromise has been maybe the same size or even bigger house, but on a smaller lot and with more common open space with another entity such as a homeowners association, a park district, a village or forest preserve district.”
At the same time that families were getting busier, restrictions were tightening on builders and developers.
Congress passed the Clean Waters Act of 1972 aimed at protecting the nation’s water. Under the law, any change to land defined as wetlands had to have a federal permit.
Wetlands are areas between deep water and dry land that may hold water from a few days to the entire year. Marshes, wet meadows, bogs, sloughs and fens are wetlands. The spongy soil in these natural transition areas is formed by water and is particularly valuable for absorbing storm water, thus aiding flood control.
The vegetation, which is adapted to water, improves water quality by filtering sediment and other impurities. Wetlands are a unique habitat for some plants and a number of animal species.
Northeastern Illinois is rich in wetlands — Chicago is built on drained swampland — but an estimated 90 percent of the wetlands present in Illinois in the early 1800s have been drained for farming and other development, according to The Wetlands Iniative, a Chicago-based non-profit organization.
Since 1972, builders and developers have been required to determine whether the soil on which they hope to build is part of a wetland.
“Thirty years ago, a developer just filled in wetlands and built houses,” says Fennell. “Now that is prohibited.” In addition, he says, “The definition of unusuable or less desirable land is expanding. More and more land that used to be available for development is not now.”
Fennell cited Lake County as an example. The county’s stormwater management project ruled that there should be a buffer of 30 to 50 feet around a wetland where development cannot occur, taking away hundreds of feet of what once might have been residential or commercial acreage.
Builders protest that some protected land definitions are too broad and that the approval process is time-consuming and costly. The National Association of Home Builders filed an amicus brief for a case brought by the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was argued before the the U.S. Supreme Court last week . The case asks whether the Corps of Engineers can regulate land use activities in shallow, often dry, land depressions known as “isolated wetlands” just because a migrating bird might land in the areas not connected to any other body of water.
But while fighting the regulations, builders and developers have also discovered the appeal of natural areas to the buying public. Wetlands, even mandated detention ponds, have become waterfront property commanding premium prices.
“Water sells,” says Fred Loeb, president of Milwaukee-based Capital Associates, when asked why he and his company chose to build Reva Bay, a 92-unit condominium development with optional boat slips on Grass Lake in Fox Lake.
It took 18 months to get approval for the project from agencies ranging from the Army Corps of Engineers, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Lake County Storm Water Management Commission, the Village of Fox Lake and Federal Emergency Management Agency. The development’s site is 52 acres, some of it filled-in flood plain, but building will be limited to 26 acres. The other half of the site is covered with trees, detention ponds and wetlands.
“There is no doubt it increases the time” for a project, Loeb says, and “there is no question there is a cost to being inside of nature” both to builder and buyer.
Environmentalists argue these efforts are necessary to preserve an already scarred and endangered landscape.
Steve Byers is a field representation for the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, an agency that works with landowners and public agencies in preserving and restoring the remaining remnants of pre-settlement land.
“We ought to be prudent enough to save and maintain the natural resources we have to pass it along to future generations. It provides a sense of identity and a sense of place and vital ecological functions that we don’t even begin to understand, ” says Byers, who is based at Moraine Hills State Park in McHenry County.
Kenneth Fiske is owner of Woodstock-based Conservation Services, a natural resource assessment company that advises developers and public agencies.”Sometimes one-half acre wetland as important as 150 acres of wetlands. Some assessment is necessary. Is it a habitat for endangered wildlife or does it just fill with water that stands there?” asks Fiske, who is a vice president of CorLands, a non-profit group whose mission is to increase the quantity and quality of open space throughout northeastern Illinois and has helped preserve almost 10,000 acres of open space.
“We can’t put a fence around an area and expect it to survive,” Byers says. He encourages the creation of buffer zones between valuable wetlands and actual building as was done at Mill Creek.
“If homeowners can see that this can be a living natural habitat and a permanent buffer, they might even restore it with native plants,” he says. “It can encourage birds and butterflies, be visual and attractive and also functional.”
And, he claims, because of nature’s checks-and-balances system, properly managed wetlands have fewer mosquitoes and other pests than in the typical suburban bluegrass lawn after a soaking rain.
“People are genuinely interested in open space issues” believes Byers, because they have seen too many natural and community landmarks disappear almost overnight.
“Look what has happened along Randall Road,” he says of development along a main artery in the Fox River Valley. “People wonder, `What has happened to our sense of place and our sense of identity?’ “
Despite the current regulations and the enthusiasm for open space, some buyers are uninformed.
To address this, the Wetlands Institute, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Corps of Engineers and others publishes a glossly, illustrated booklet called “Living with Wetlands: A Handbook for Homeowners in Northeastern Illinois” to help explain such surroundings and helpful resources, both government and private, available to homeowners.
Some developments, such as Valley Lakes, provide the booklet to buyers.
But not all. And not all builders are scrupulous about explaining.
“The problem is that people put their own spin on what the words mean,” says Thomas Forman of Chicago Associates Planners & Architects, which worked with Tryon Farm near LaPorte, Ind. Tryon Farm, which has dunes, meadows and wetlands, is one of several developments calling itself a conservation community, which Forman defines as maintaining a balance between physical building and the natural environment.
“People don’t ask. They look at the view,” says Loeb. “We have to point out what they need to be aware of.”
“Someone sees a nifty lot, but fails to note the back 50 feet of the lot is an easement. So the lot is smaller than they thought,” says Fiske.
“People also may have an idyllic view,” concedes Byers. “They may move to an oak savanna or lake for the view and think they have bought lakefront property and the cattails may seem like just a bunch of weeds.
“The reality is they have bought on a wetland and are stuck with the weeds.”
