Riverside Plaza one big failure

Algonquin’s Riverside Plaza development was doomed to fail from the start, if you ask me. Our village planners took the busiest intersection in all of McHenry County and, instead of planning something small, they allowed a 4- story, 54-unit condo building to go there.

This ill-conceived plan only had one parking space per unit, so who were they marketing those to? The remaining parking level was supposed to be for retail/other uses, and ever since they “improved” the downtown area and lost parking spaces there this was extremely important.

As a citizen who lives up the street from this development I have been concerned with all the traffic at Harrison and Route 62. Anyone driving through this intersection has to notice how dysfunctional it is. I have tried to let our mayor know, I have spoken to the village planners and I also have spoken to the Illinois Department of Transportation, only to have it fall on deaf ears.

Plain and simple, this intersection cannot handle any more traffic. So the village failed us by allowing this to be built in the first place; the developer failed to get all his financing in order; IDOT failed to produce a functioning light system; and I am begging you, Mr. Mayor, please don’t fail us again and allow this developer to add more units and all the extra traffic that will surely come with it.

Lisa Clark

Algonquin