185 townhouses in 38 buildings coming land near Fox Valley Mall

The Aurora City Council approved a townhouse development near Fox Valley Mall after a few last-minute questions at the council’s Tuesday meeting.

Developer M/I Homes plans to construct 185 townhouses in 38 buildings on the long undeveloped land in the triangle created by the intersection of Ogden Avenue and 75th Street on Aurora’s far East Side, according to city officials.

The townhouses will be built over the next three to four years as the homes are sold, instead of all at once, said Russ Whitaker, an attorney representing M/I Homes, at an Aug. 18 city council committee of the whole meeting.

The site infrastructure, which includes the roads and landscaping, along with a project to extend Commons Drive through the site, would be completed first in a single phase, he said.

The city previously planned to spend millions of dollars to extend Commons Drive, a road that dead-ends on both the north and south sides of the property, and do other infrastructure work, but M/I Homes is now taking on that work.

The city agreed to cap permit fee costs for the company to help cover additional costs to construct the extension of Commons Drive and include some sustainability features as part of the project. Capping these fees could save the company between $2,000 and $2,500 per unit, city officials said.

But Alderman Carl Franco, 5th Ward, said he was concerned about this fee cap, just before the council approved the development Tuesday night.

Franco called the cap an incentive and said the city was giving up around $400,000 in revenue when the savings for each unit are multiplied by the total number of townhouses.

“Those permit fees would be taxpayer money that we can use for other things,” he said. “This wasn’t some benevolent gesture by the developer. We actually had to give him an incentive to do something.”

But Alderman Edward Bugg, 9th Ward, defended the fee cap and said the developers are incurring a large expense by extending Commons Drive, a cost he said the city would have taken on with taxpayer dollars.

“(Extending Commons Drive) was going to cost the city quite a bit of money, and the people on the East Side have needed that stretch extended for decades,” Bugg said.

The developers also committed to performance-based home-efficiency standards proposed by the city, marking the first time M/I Homes has incorporated these standards into a large-scale project. These standards include around $8,000 to $10,000 in additional costs per unit for the developer, officials said.

As part of its agreement with the city, M/I Homes must submit a report showing its designs will meet energy-efficiency standards for each building permit application. The company must also submit verification that the homes meet those standards after construction, too.

Alison Lindburg, Aurora’s director of sustainability, said meeting these energy-efficiency standards will reduce utility costs and create overall higher quality homes.

The townhouses are set to be a mix of two and three stories, with between two and three bedrooms, that would be sold at prices in the mid- to upper-$500,000s, according to Zach Kenitzer, manager of land planning and entitlements for the developer, M/I Homes.

The proposed development’s planned 185 units would be split between three different model types, according to a presentation from Whitaker in late May.

The largest of the models, the Pearson, would serve as the edge units for many of the development’s 38 buildings, he said. It is planned to have between 2,000 and 2,300 square feet, with three stories, three bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms, according to the presentation.

The other three-story model, the Madison, would be the interior units. It is planned to have between 1,900 and 2,100 square feet, with three bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms.

The final model, the Taylor, would also be built on the edge of some buildings. At only two stories, it has two bedrooms and two baths with around 1,900 square feet, Whitaker’s presentation showed.

Each of the units would have two-car garages with a two-car driveway. The development is also expected to have 37 other visitor parking spots throughout the site, according to officials.

Inside, the units would feature “modern accouterments” and energy-efficient systems, Whitaker said.

City officials said the proposed development would bring needed housing, along with increased property and sales tax revenue, to the area.

awright@chicagotribune.com