Naperville City Council members must decide if the city will pick up an extra $2 million to build noise reducing walls along 248th Avenue on the city’s southwest side that don’t qualify for federal funding.
The city is moving forward with plans to improve and widen 248th between 95th and 103rd Streets from two lanes to five, and has been able to secure $6.45 million from the Federal Highway Administration to help pay for the $9.5 million project.
Work is slated to begin in 2026 and will take an estimated year to complete.
As part of the federal funding application process, the city was required to submit preliminary engineering reports that include a noise analysis.
Because the initial study — which showed no need for noise walls — was conducted before plans for the Islamic Center of Naperville’s mosque complex on 248th Avenue were approved by the council, nearby residents requested another analysis be made.
The second review, completed by city consultant Civiltech Engineering, accounted for the added traffic from Masjid Al-Nur and determined about three quarters of the residents adjacent to 248th Avenue would hear noise from the roadway, according to a memo from William Novack, the city’s Transportation, Engineering and Development director.
In general, he said, the blocks with noise levels that qualified for noise barriers barely met the criteria while those that did not barely missed.
The two blocks that did not meet the criteria for a wall both are on the east side of 248th Avenue: from Grassmere Road to Lapp Lane and from the Tall Grass Greenway to Landsdown Avenue.
In the first block the homes are set back from 248th because of stormwater management facilities, Novack said. Houses in the second block don’t qualify because of their distance from 248th Avenue due to their configuration on a cul-de-sac.
The house on the southwest corner of 248th and Lapp Lane that backs up on the Tall Grass Greenway also didn’t qualify because a continuous wall cannot be built there.
Homeowners who did not qualify are asking the city to pay for walls along the entire corridor.
Novack said the city can choose to install a wall at the locations that did not meet the criteria without jeopardizing the federal funding, but the city would have to front the estimated $1.5 million.
The council also could add a wall at the northwest corner of 248th Avenue and 103rd Street where single-family homes are under consideration for an added cost of $450,000.
The city often receives requests to install noise walls adjacent to arterial roadways, Novack said, but the response has always been that noise walls are funded by the city as part of a federally funded roadway widening project.
He said on most projects, Naperville only installs noise walls adjacent to the homes that meet the federal criteria. The one exception was the wall associated with the improvements to 75th and Washington streets.
Despite all the new homes going up on the city’s southwest side, 248th Avenue remains a rural roadway with a gravel shoulder, drainage ditches and one 11.5-foot lane in each direction.
Plans are to widen it to two lanes in each direction with a landscaped median and left-turn lane at intersecting streets. Storm sewers, curbs, gutters and streetlights are to be installed and sidewalks added where there are gaps.
In addition, a pedestrian refuge island will be added at the Tall Grass Greenway Trail crossing.
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