The Aurora City Council will hold off consideration of a truck depot on the far northeast side of the city, next to an unincorporated subdivision, until at least July 26.
Old Dominion, a national trucking firm proposing the facility, asked for the delay. They were to present an updated proposal to aldermen at this week’s Committee of the Whole meeting, but asked to hold off on that presentation for another two weeks. It is the second, two-week delay the firm has requested.
The company is asking for approval of annexation and a development plan on a 5-acre site at the corner of Meridian and Sunrise roads for a 24-hour truck depot that would handle about 115 truck trips a day. The facility would be across the street from the 17-home Ferry Road Farms subdivision, a group of homes in Naperville Township sandwiched between Naperville to the south and east and Aurora to the north and west.
The subdivision also is squeezed in between Interstate 88 and burgeoning development along both sides of Ferry Road.
Representatives of Old Dominion have made the case that the area is predominantly corporate and warehouse uses, and that the truck depot fits in with that. Residents have said that the depot is so close to the subdivision that the noise and lights – not just from the facility but from the trucks – would ruin their quality of life. At a public hearing June 28 before the City Council, resident John Trapp pointed out that living right across Sunrise Road from the facility, it would be 61 feet from his bedroom.
“Imagine waking up in the morning and what do you see – trucks, semi-trucks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.
Dana Kaempen, another Ferry Road Farms resident, said the subdivision has homes built nine years ago, and some more than 70 years old. He said there are children up to senior citizens living there.
“Business is coming, we understand that,” he said. “But there are better commercial neighbors.”
To emphasize that point, three people who are neighbors of an Old Dominion truck depot in Crest Hill spoke at the Aurora public hearing and said their quality of life has been ruined by the facility. Dave Swanson said he and his wife anticipated a quiet retirement when they moved to their house, but that the facility has turned their house into “a house of horrors because of the noise.”
“This type of operation is not compatible with a residential neighborhood,” Swanson said.
Old Dominion has been changing its plan to include more landscaping and fencing to better shield the neighborhood from the noise and light, company officials said.
The Aurora Planning Commission recommended denial of the facility, but the Planning and Development Committee and city staff have recommended it.
The City Council is expected to convene the public hearing again next week, but continue it to July 26.
