Revised plan for houses, commercial development rolls on in Hawthorn Woods
A development team expects to return before the Hawthorn Woods village board later this summer to seek final approval for houses and commercial lots proposed for the northeast corner of Route 22 and Quentin Road.
Trustees voted 5-1 late Monday in favor of a revised preliminary plan that includes single-family houses, but has eliminated a gasoline station and car wash from the project.
“I hope the audience understands and our residents understand, this is preliminary approval,” Mayor Joseph Mancino told about 60 spectators opposed to the development. “These folks have to come back to us again before we will tighten up the details a little bit more.”
Hinsdale-based Foxford Communities is leading the development plan for the site, which is across the street from a retail plaza with Mariano's Fresh Market, a McDonald's and a PNC Bank in Lake Zurich. It would be the third phase of the Hawthorn Trails subdivision.
Under the revised plan, there would be three commercial lots in place of the gas station and car wash on nearly 4 acres closest to Quentin and Route 22. There would be 39 clustered single-family houses in the $500,000 price range with alleys to mimic an urban setting toward the north end of the property.
Icon Building Group of Algonquin would offer clustered single-family houses of 4,590 and 3,254 square feet that would cover most of the individual building lots. The village board did not agree with an advisory panel's recommendation that called for minimum lots sizes of 12,000 square to match Hawthorn Trails' existing homes.
Attorney Thomas Burney, representing the developers, told the crowd his clients have the right to build a commercial project on 14 acres of the 72-acre site. That led village Trustee Michael David to say the proposal with the cluster houses would be preferable to a “Wal-Mart-type of situation” on the land.
Burney said the developers plan to return to the village board for final approval in about two months.
Hawthorn Woods Chief Operating Officer Pamela Newton said the developers initially approached the village with the idea of building townhouses on the site. She said the village persuaded the developers to consider single-family houses instead.
“What you see today is certainly not how it was pitched or presented to the village,” Newton said. “But staff has spent an extraordinary amount of time working with the village board to ensure a product that we would be proud of, where we would want to live.”
Several residents from the Hawthorn Trails subdivision and neighboring Kildeer spoke against the proposal even after the car wash and gas station were eliminated from the proposal Monday. Their concerns included the potential for declining property values because of smaller houses nearby and added traffic congestion.
Hawthorn Trails resident Somesh Surapureddi said the high-density cluster houses don't belong near his subdivision. He said they are more suitable to suburban downtowns with commuter system access, using StreetScape Development's urban-style residential projects in Libertyville and Skokie as examples.