St. Charles residents worried about new neighborhood

There are at least 400 St. Charles residents with concerns about plans to build a new residential neighborhood on the old Applied Composites industrial site, according to a petition delivered to aldermen Monday night. A sampling of those residents peppered developers with questions aimed at making aldermen think twice when they vote on the project next month.

The concerns about the number and price of the new residences, impacts to local traffic and schools, and fears about increased flooding were similar to those expressed during public discussions of just about every other large-scale development that’s come to the city in the past couple of years.

What was different were expressions of an underlying distrust of the developers, Lexington Homes, because the site they’ve owned for several years has sat most of that time with mounds of construction debris and other trash. The same developers once found similar public anger about the state of disarray for a site they owned in Des Plaines.

“That land has been sitting there for years with nothing done to it,” said James Warden, who lives near the proposed development. “They have money to acquire other properties, but they don’t have money to take care of the site they own? He’s got a mountain of rubble out there. You could have that cleaned up in a couple weeks. Why hasn’t it been done? And why would the city think he’s going to be responsible for his development when he has been responsible for taking care of it so far?”

Moses Cukierman, a member of the development team, told residents the economy has left builders with many stagnant projects, including the conditions of their property, in recent years. But that’s changing.

“We see a light at the end of the tunnel of the economy,” Cukierman said. “Things are beginning to improve. We are cleaning it now.”

Indeed, city officials could have forced Lexington Homes to clean the property at any point in its ownership history without disrupting the known land pollution problems, if ordered to do so by the city council. That order has not come for the sake of friendly negotiations of the more than $40 million proposed project. But it may come soon.

Alderman Cliff Carrignan said the current state of the property and when it must be cleaned may be part of the city council’s discussion leading up to a vote on the fate of the plan at a meeting Feb. 13.