Elgin is moving ahead with long-in-the-works plans to signal the intersection of Galvin Road and Route 72.
At the Oct. 14 Elgin City Council committee-of-the-whole meeting, the council unanimously approved moving along a $37,846 engineering services agreement with the Elgin office of Hampton, Lenzini and Renwick Inc. for the project.
Past the engineering, according to Elgin city staff, the effort will cost about $310,000, and Community Unit School District 300 has agreed to provide $50,000 toward it. The intersection is not far from Dundee Middle School.
The intersection also is an entry point to a business and industrial park where Motorola Solutions is in the process of opening a 300,000-square-foot training and manufacturing facility in a currently vacant building built in recent years on spec.
An economic development agreement between the company and Elgin fast¿tracks permitting and waives city development, impact and building permit fees for the site at 2580 Galvin Road in the Northwest Business Park. The road is named in honor of the Galvin family, members of which founded what would become Motorola Inc.
The city has been told the Motorola Solutions facility eventually will have 200 full-time employees and possibly as many as 200 seasonal workers.
According to information provided by the city, “because Galvin Drive is neither a state route nor an arterial road for the city, the installation of the traffic signal is deemed a private business benefit for which the Illinois Department of Transportation will not provide funding.”
At the request of Kane County in 2011, the department did conduct a traffic study, the results of which indicated the intersection was busy enough to allow signals. If all goes as planned, the lights should be up by the start of the next school year.
At the Oct. 14 meeting, council members Terry Gavin and Rose Martinez complimented Public Services Director Greg Rokos for the work he did setting the intergovernmental agreement in motion.
“The cooperation will benefit both groups,” Martinez said.
Gavin also noted city staff reports indicated another industrial park not far from the intersection is outside Elgin and is less likely to get IDOT’s permission to have its own lights put in with Elgin’s plans already approved. This could give Elgin’s business park a competitive advantage, Gavin said.
