Lake County Forest Preserve District considers $3 million in purchases
The Lake County Forest Preserve District could grow with the pending purchase of adjoining properties near Lake Villa at a cost of nearly $3 million.
Acquiring the properties, which total about 97 acres, north and east of Route 59 and Grand Avenue, would allow the district to expand Grant Woods Forest Preserve.
The pending purchase was unanimously approved Monday by the forest board’s land preservation and acquisition committee and will be considered April 10 by the full board. It also would provide a potential trail link between Grant Woods and the Bluebird Meadow Forest Preserve to the north.
“This provides us with the linear connection we’re always looking for,” said Tom Hahn, the executive director of the forest preserve district.
The larger of the two properties is 60 acres fronting Route 59 known as the Grunewald parcel. It is adjacent on the east and south with the Zimmerman property, a 37-acre rectangle-shaped piece fronting Grand Avenue.
Hahn said the agency has been in contact with the property owners for about a decade.
“They came to us as a unit, both properties,” he said. The prices are about $1.8 million and $1.1 million respectively or about $30,000 an acre.
Hahn showed the committee an aerial map from 1939 to illustrate how an extensive oak woodland on the Zimmerman property has matured.
“It’s just a gorgeous piece of property,” he said.
The Zimmerman property once had been slated for development. An access road was cut into the landscape and could be used as part of the trail corridor, Hahn said. A connection also could be made with an existing Lake Villa Township trail.
The township just completed three soccer fields on 45 acres it owns adjacent to Olive C. Martin School.
“We already have a trail connection to the Grunewald property that goes to Petite Lake Road,” said Lake Villa Township Supervisor Dan Venturi. “Our goal is to have bike trails.”
If approved, funds for the acquisitions would come from bond sales to buy and improve property approved by voters in 2008.
“We’ll have $36 million left. We started off with, I believe, it’s $148 million,” Hahn said. “That will carry us through probably 2014.”
Hahn said land prices were still reasonable, and the district gets two to four unsolicited offers a month from potential sellers.
“A lot of the landowners in Lake County who have 40 acres or above, they may have been approached by developers in the past but developers are not buying land like they used to,” he said.