‘We haven’t gotten anything yet’: Church has yet to ask for changes to development plan

A religious group’s controversial proposal to build a church and school in South Barrington can’t move forward until it resubmits a request to amend the property’s development plan, village officials said Thursday.

“We haven’t gotten anything yet,” Mayor Paula McCombie said.

Schaumburg-based Fourth Avenue Gospel, an organization that is owned and operated by a suburban congregation of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, recently purchased the 34-acre site at Bartlett Road and Route 59 from the South Barrington Park District. It plans a house of worship for about 200 congregation members and a school for about 25 students on the land, known locally as Area N.

The property is zoned as a planned unit development and designated as parkland as part of the adjacent Woods of South Barrington neighborhood, McCombie said. To build a church and school, Fourth Avenue first would need the village board to amend the development plan.

A Fourth Avenue spokesman on Thursday said the group is putting materials together for just such a request and didn’t have a firm timetable. Congregation members are looking forward to joining the South Barrington community, the spokesman said.

A planned public hearing on the congregation’s proposal was canceled last August when the group decided to make changes to the concept. The plan had drawn criticism from some area residents who cited traffic, the impact on the environment and some of the Plymouth Brethren's practices among their concerns.

Fourth Avenue didn’t own the property at the time, but it does now.

Using a limited liability company called Area N Development, Fourth Avenue members successfully bid for the property at an auction in late February, offering $2.3 million for the site. The deal was finalized March 7; Fourth Avenue came forward as the buyer about two weeks later.

That was the second time Fourth Avenue Gospel won an auction for the land. It also had done so in May 2023, with a winning bid of about $1.7 million.

But the park district board canceled that sale because of community protests about Fourth Avenue and the auction process.

A church representative has said the group hopes construction will begin later this year and conclude by late 2025.