Batavia gives OK to start land talks

Batavia administrators got permission Tuesday to start negotiating an annexation agreement with Mooseheart.

Moose International, the fraternal organization that runs the residential school, wants to eventually develop about 470 acres of farmland it owns on the western half of its campus, from Main Street south to Mooseheart Road.

The city council's city services committee gave the go-ahead.

Committee Chairman Dave Brown said it will benefit the city to start making plans for that land, even if Mooseheart doesn't put anything there for a long time.

"For years ... and years and years it has always been a discussion that 'nothing will ever happen to that property,' and so there was a lot of planning in town that never included that property. Well, now Mooseheart is thinking differently," Brown said, including what it would take to run Batavia water, electrical and sewer utilities to the site.

Only one Batavia resident spoke at the meeting, and that was to ask where the proposed annexation was in relation to his property.

Mooseheart has suggested the site could bear active-adult housing, stores, restaurants and a hotel. It would lease the land, not sell it.

Mooseheart will pay the city's costs, including attorney fees, for the annexation talks.

No building plans have been submitted. Mooseheart intends to get annexation and zoning approved before soliciting proposals from developers, said Jerry Swanson, Batavia's community development director.

Mooseheart now rents the land to farmers. It used to have students raise Holstein cows on part of it until several years ago. The school annually hosts the Kane County Farm Bureau's Ag Days educational program.

The Mooseheart campus started with 1,300 acres, bought in 1912. It sold several hundred acres off Randall Road in 1990s.