Mayor: Joliet Receptive To Learning About NorthPoint

JOLIET, IL — Outside downtown Joliet's Renaissance Center, a few creative people parked a military transport vehicle and a red pickup truck displaying lots of signs proclaiming Just Say No To NorthPoint and Stay Off Our Graves.

One of the downtown protesters, who didn't want his name published, told Patch he lives between Manhattan and Elwood.

Across the street, inside the second-floor ballroom, Joliet Mayor Bob O'Dekirk gave his annual State of the City presentation during the lunch hour. A crowd of roughly 260 Joliet area businessmen, local public officials and politicians came to hear Joliet's mayor talk about the city's economic developments efforts in 2019 and what's ahead for 2020.

The mayor waited until the end of his presentation to address NorthPoint, which was set to be the topic of discussion for Monday's 4 p.m. city of Joliet plan commission meeting.

The plan commission is only an advisory panel. Ultimately, the mayor and Joliet's City Council will have the final say on whether the NorthPoint project is approved or denied.

The mayor outlined a number of key aspects regarding the NorthPoint development and its proposed annexation into Joliet:

• NorthPoint is asking for no tax incentives from the city of Joliet.
• NorthPoint is not asking for a Tax Increment Finance District. "They're going to pay full taxes from day one," O'Dekirk announced.
• NorthPoint will pay all permit fees to the city of Joliet.
• The proposal calls for NorthPoint to pay for all infrastructure improvements within the proposed Compass Business Park. Any new roads or sewer lines would come from NorthPoint coffers, not city of Joliet tax dollars.
• NorthPoint agrees to pay Joliet $2 million up front.
• NorthPoint has negotiated a 100-percent-of-the-project labor agreement with the Will and Grundy County trade unions. "What that is, is that everything, everything built within that park, sewers, streets, buildings, refitting the buildings, is going to be done by local union labor and prevailing wage."
• The city has negotiated that NorthPoint build a bridge from their business park over Route 53 into Centerpoint (Intermodal) Park, a closed loop route for truck traffic.
• The city made it clear to NorthPoint that it will not approve any building permits until that closed loop is secure and that bridge is built.

During his state of the city, Joliet's mayor told everyone: "I'm not trying to give one side of the argument. There are fair, reasonable arguments against doing this. It's something the whole (city) council is going to have to debate. I just wanted to put it out there, this is the agreement that Joliet has negotiated with NorthPoint, this is what's coming forward tonight to the planning commission and then possibly to the council moving forward."

O'Dekirk also wanted Monday's audience to know that, "From my prospective, I think you have to do as mayor what's best for the people of Joliet, what's best for Joliet as a whole. That's how I'm going to approach that decision."

The mayor said he's planning to make a trip next week to Kansas City to tour NorthPoint's existing business park operations there. O'Dekirk said that all but two council members have agreed to make the trip.

"And then we're going to make a decision at the city level," the mayor suggested.