Dozens of Lindenhurst residents have been left in limbo for about eight months as road-construction equipment and supplies — including excavators and massive cement blocks — have been left laying in yards, and roads have been reduced to one-way traffic, because the iniitial contractor was pulled off the project.
“There’s big holes. There’s rocks. There’s equipment that’s just been left,” village resident Nancy Filippo said. “It’s like a ghost town. They left everything for us to deal with.”
The unfinished project was intended to upgrade two roads in the village — Sprucewood Lane and Lake Shore Drive, which are home to about 65 houses — by adding gravel shoulders and sidewalks, widening the roadway and enhancing stormwater drainage.
Construction began on the project in October of 2024, and was supposed to be finished “about a year later,” according to Lindenhurst Mayor Dominic Marturano.
For two months, crews worked and were able to install stormwater drainage structures, catch basins, manholes and pipes along the two roads. But in December, the work stopped and never resumed.
“Because of winter setting in and the holidays, they were not supposed to go back to work until mid-to-late January,” Marturano said.
But in April, when no work had resumed, the Illinois Department of Transportation informed the village that Lenny Hoffman Excavating, the contractor working on the project, was being removed from the project by IDOT due to “unforeseen financial circumstances,” village officials said.
“I’ve been extremely frustrated with the lack of communication,” the mayor said.
Marturano said plans for the project had been in place for awhile, and that the village had been requesting funding from federal and state sources in order to complete it.
“We had requested over $6 million to do Lake Shore, Sprucewood and Hawthorne: Do total resurfacing, take out all of the culverts that people have in their yard, put in sidewalks and have storm drains running underneath, and funnel that out to one of the lakes to help with flooding mitigation,” he said.
After the request was made, Marturano said that the village received “about half of what [Lindenhurst] requested. The village ultimately received $3.2 million in federal funding for the project, in addition to funding that the village is contributing to the project.
“We had our engineers go back and see what we could do for half of the money,” Marturano said.
The village cut back on its original plans, and intended to just focus on sections of Lake Shore Drive and Sprucewood Lane.
“We could at least get that portion of the project completed,” he said.
Marturano said that because the project was funded by federal sources, the state of Illinois, and specifically IDOT, is in charge of overseeing it.
Filippo said that she was “pretty fortunate” to not have any major equipment left in her yard.
“Everybody was left with stakes all over their yard, and these temporary fences that were supposed to help with the dirt being blown, but temporary is different than all summer,” Filippo said. “My neighbor is worried. They have big holes, and just threw a piece of plywood on top.”
Lindenhurst resident Julie Martin said that the project has been “really inconvenient.”
“It’s not catastrophic, but it’s hard to be inspired to take care of your lawn,” Martin said. “We’ve got this plastic fencing with wooden spikes in our yard, and some cement spools that are across the street. It impacts your ability to have anybody park in front of your house if we’re having guests
“It’s just inconvenient, and we’re hopeful that it will resume soon,” she said.
Within the construction area, traffic is directed to go one-way, resulting in lengthier detours for residents. Filippo said that this is not regularly respected, and cars will frequently drive the wrong way through the area, creating a safety hazard.
To help offer residents a form of temporary relief, residents in the construction area received a notice from Jeffrey Lee, the Lake Villa Township assessor, that their property tax payment will be reduced in the upcoming year, as property values in the construction area were lowered for 2025. In the letter sent to residents, Lee said that he anticipates that assessments will be back to their full values in 2026.
On Aug. 11, Lindenhurst was notified that IDOT had accepted a bid from Lima Excavating Contractors, a company based in Ringwood, to finish the project, but no timeline has been given, according to Marturano. He added that, “There’s no way this project will be completed before the end of the calendar year.”
“Nobody thought that it would be this long,” Filippo said.
