Naperville panel to consider proposed townhouse development near Mill Street underpass

Mill Street runs past Naperville North High School, continues under the BNSF Railway tracks and eventually leads to downtown Jackson Avenue, and beyond it, the Riverwalk.

A homebuilder wants to construct 25 luxury, townhouse-style units at the northwest corner of Spring Avenue and Mill Street, just south of the train tracks.

The roughly 2.3-acre property previously held a large industrial building and single-family homes. The buildings have been cleared from the site.

It’s next to the Ozinga concrete facility to the west, and homes are to the south on the other side of the street. The built-for-sale units in the development — called Ostara — would each have three bedrooms, two-car garages and a second-floor balcony.

“The proposed development will also replace an underutilized industrial and commercial site with a cohesive residential community, improving the overall character of the area and supporting reinvestment along Spring Avenue,” project documents note.

Naperville’s planning and zoning commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposal Wednesday night.

“Ostara delivers exactly the redevelopment Naperville has planned for this corner for nearly twenty years,” said Jimmy Calvo, an attorney for builder Kramer Homes, LLC, in a written statement.

Calvo wrote that the city studied the Spring Avenue corridor in 2007 and rezoned the property to transition it from industrial to residential use. The city’s 2022 Land Use Master Plan “reaffirms that vision,” Calvo stated.

“It identifies properties abutting the railroad here as appropriate for medium-density residential and notes that the corridor still awaits the residential redevelopment the City envisioned,” he continued. “Ostara is that redevelopment.”

Some neighbors, however, continue to raise concerns, especially about traffic.

“Mill Street is incredibly busy, getting backed up frequently, especially during the school year due to its close proximity to Naperville North, Washington Junior High, and Naper Elementary. Anyone who spends a brief amount of time in the area will know that is beyond dispute,” read a message from opponents and sent to the city’s planning services team.

The property owner, Kramer Homes, has reduced the total number of proposed units by one to 25, among other revisions.

“We also took the neighborhood’s feedback seriously. After meeting with residents, Rich Kramer redrew the entire site plan so the homes face the streets, added gabled roofs and decorative fencing, expanded the interior sidewalks, eliminated the freestanding sign, and provided roughly double the required parking,” Calvo added. “We think the result is a thoughtful, conforming project that improves this corner.”

The proposed project seeks no rezoning and no density variance. It’s nearly identical in density to the Naperville Station townhouses two blocks east, Calvo noted.

The traffic study submitted to the city “projects a net decrease in weekday peak-hour trips compared to the site’s current uses, because townhomes are a lower-intensity use than the existing commercial and industrial activity,” Calvo explained. The city’s traffic engineers have reviewed the study and concur, he added.

Still, residents say 25 are too many units in what they describe as an already congested area.

“While the developer states that traffic from the development will be limited, this is not realistic,” one told the city via email. “One only has to look at the number of parents driving their children to/from the local schools to know this and this development will be attractive to families with school age children.”

The average daily traffic on Spring Avenue adjacent to the development is “expected to slightly increase from 772 to 782,” a city memo states. Using those projected conditions, the traffic volume at the Mill and Spring intersection is “unlikely to meet” the criteria for consideration of stop signs in every direction.