Joliet City Council Approves NorthPoint Development

JOLIET, IL — The Joliet City Council voted 6-2 Tuesday night to approve NorthPoint’s plans to annex 2,300 acres of Jackson Township land to build Compass Business Park, which will consist of a warehouse and light manufacturing. The plan also includes a proposal to build two bridges, a closed loop traffic system, and at least 16 million square feet of warehouse space.

The Joliet City Council first approved the Compass proposal in December 2020, though the size of the proposal has grown since then. The Joliet Plan Commission approved the proposal 6-2 on Nov. 18. Tuesday’s vote was allowed to proceed after a judge dismissed a temporary restraining order filed by opposition group Stop NorthPoint. The project has faced several lawsuits, and several are still pending.

During a jam-packed, three-hour meeting Tuesday night, attorneys from opposition groups like Stop NorthPoint, LLC. and local officials and property owners in Jackson Township, Elwood, and Manhattan voiced numerous concerns about the project, while officials from NorthPoint Development spoke out in favor. Despite widespread and vocal opposition, just two Joliet council members – Cesar Guerrero and Bettye Gavin – voted against the project. Council members Larry Hug, Terry Morris, Pat Mudron, Jan Quillman, Sherri Reardon, and Joe Clement voted in favor.

Opponents have argued for almost two years that the extensive project will bring a series of low-wage, low-benefit jobs to the area, harm the local environment, and increase traffic, especially along I-80. Opponents have criticized NorthPoint for not providing a traffic study for the most recent plan (it provided a traffic study for an earlier proposal), and no environmental impact report on a large proposal adjacent to farmland.

“It’s a monster ready to gobble up precious American farmland and spit it out as a foreign concrete jungle gone wild on steroids,” Joliet resident Michelle Peterson said at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I am against the NorthPoint development because our roads can’t handle tens of thousands of additional trucks on the roads a day,” said Ericka Gonzalez, a former warehouse worker.

NorthPoint Vice President of Acquisitions Tom George told the Council that new traffic studies will be completed for every 3 million square feet of construction. Developers also said that a closed-loop road network will provide a direct route for trucks and mitigate traffic issues. CenterPoint Properties, which manages the CenterPoint Intermodal Center and intermodal yards, requested a traffic study to show the impact on roads inside its development, and requested the Council table the vote until the traffic impact is explored, according to a report in the Herald-News.

Related:

• Joliet Votes For NorthPoint Once Again: 2022 Construction Nears
• Judge Rejects Stop NorthPoint’s Lawsuit: WJOL
• NorthPoint Is Coming: Joliet Council Votes 6-2
• NorthPoint: Giant Project Coming To Joliet
• Lawsuit Aims To Stop NorthPoint Joliet Project