35 acres at heart of land deal din

Earlier this month, hundreds of Bloomingdale residents attended a short series of town hall style meetings to criticize and question the village's plan to enter a land deal with Indian Lakes Resort and Hilton Hotels. Monday night, only four residents attended a public hearing to make sure village leaders keep their promises.

As part of the resort's $10 million agreement with Hilton and the pending $4.9 million sale of the resort's southernmost 35 acres to Bloomingdale, trustees and Mayor Bob Iden have promised to leave their new acquisition green as a 35-acre passive recreation retreat.

As part of the proposed reconfiguration, the resort will convert its two 18-hole golf courses to three nine-hole courses and a golf school. There also will be significant improvements to the facilities within the resort, including new carpeting, new mattresses and other interior decor.

Since the resort will be losing nine holes of golf in the reconfiguration, Bloomingdale has agreed to buy 35 acres of the resort's land, between Meadowlark Road to the west and Cardinal Drive to the east, for $4.9 million.

The residents who spoke out Monday were concerned that the promise may not be long-term and want to prevent the village from ever selling the property to residential developers.

"What will guarantee that these resolutions will not be overturned by the next administration and that this vacant land will no longer be vacant land?" asked Sherri Hagedorn, of 424 Cardinal Drive. "How can you guarantee me that won't happen?"

Village attorney Ronald Cope stopped short of the guarantee but said such a flip flop would be highly unlikely, if not illegal.

"Once a municipality acquires property for a public purpose, it always must keep that property as a public area unless they can demonstrate that it is no longer needed," Cope said. "It's very rare that you would ever be able to establish that a park is no longer needed for a public purpose. I don't think there's any absolute guarantee that in 20 or 30 years, the area may change... but nothing like that would happen in the short term."

Iden told the residents that purchasing the land was actually the only way to prevent the resort owners from selling the land to a private developer who might try to build residential property there.

"We'd rather see Indian Lakes as a prospering, growing business and eliminate any chance of them folding," Iden said. "We understand residents don't want to see houses there and that is absolutely why we're doing this."

Next Monday, the village will begin passing ordinances to create a special business district for the hotel and continue to lay out the financing options for the project. Currently the plan is for the land purchase would be funded by 20-year bonds, which would be repaid with home rule sales tax dollars. That $4.9 million would cover half the resort's needed funds for its golf course improvements and resort upgrades. The remaining half would be funded by another bond issue and repaid through the increased hotel/motel tax and the 1 percent increased sales tax imposed only on the resort.

Once those details are finalized, the deal could be complete as soon as Oct. 2.