Hoffman Estates reviews road improvement impact fees

The Hoffman Estates village board was presented Monday with an update of a road improvement impact fee program.

The program allows the use of fee money to expand roadways when development occurs in two parts of the village.

One is a “central service area,” which includes land near St. Alexius Medical Center, commercial properties north of I-90 and areas between Sutton and Barrington roads. The other is a “western service area” that includes multiple subdivisions and the Poplar Creek Crossing and Prairie Stone Crossing shopping centers.

Mark Koplin, assistant village manager for development services, said the fee amounts vary depending on the type of development and how much impact that development has on roads during peak evening hours.

“The premise behind traffic impact fees is that new development needs to pay its fair share of the cost of serving that development, for the road ... for the impacts that they create (on the roads),” he said.

Koplin said when a company gets occupancy of a building they need to pay the traffic impact fee. About $1.4 million in impact fees have been received in the last five years.

“We can’t use the money to resurface a road that’s already built,” Koplin said. “We can use it to add lanes, add new roads, add a new interchange, things like that.”

A portion of the phase I engineering costs for the Barrington Road interchange are already being paid with impact fees.

Some proposed projects the village hopes to help pay for with future impact fees include the widening of sections of Barrington, Golf and Higgins roads from four to six lanes; adding a lane on Beverly Road from I-90 to Route 72; and installing new entrance and exit ramps at the Beverly Road interchange.

Koplin said the projects have not been ranked in any order of which ones should get done first and said there is no guarantee that any will get done, as they are dependent on the amount of development that occurs.