NorthPoint Virtual Meeting: Joliet Urged To Deny Project

JOLIET, IL — Joliet's City Council heard from nearly 40 people at Monday's public hearing on NorthPoint Development's proposal to build the Compass Business Park on nearly 1,300 acres near Route 53. The overwhelming majority of people who called into the meeting were vehemently opposed to the NorthPoint project.

The vast majority of opponents said they lived in the Elwood and Manhattan area. Few people who spoke against the project identified themselves as being current city of Joliet residents.

Monday's virtual public hearing began around 5:30 p.m. and ended shortly after 9 p.m. The city council agreed to reconvene the public hearing at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Corporation counsel Marty Shanahan announced that he would email all of the remaining people who signed up to speak that the meeting would resume at 9 a.m. and continue to 11:30 a.m.

The council also expects to accept more calls from citizens from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

At Monday's meeting, Mayor Bob O'Dekirk announced that 298 people notified City Hall of their intentions to call into the public hearing to speak about the NorthPoint development.

Callers get four minutes to speak for or against the project. When someone passed the four-minute mark, a noise went off and city officials disconnected the caller from the meeting. O'Dekirk then informed the next caller waiting on hold that it's now their turn to speak.

Only about a half-dozen of Monday's callers identified themselves as proponents of NorthPoint.

Late Monday night, Joliet resident Kathy Spieler, who is a regular attendee at Joliet City Council meetings, posted on her Facebook page that she watched Monday's meeting on YouTube.

She informed her followers that only five Joliet residents called into Monday's meeting and of those who did, three were in favor of NorthPoint's business park.

She said the phone calls were dominated by people from Manhattan and Elwood.

"I think the Joliet City Council did an excellent job of making the public comment available. All the comments (were) mostly from people who don't even live in the city of Joliet," one of Spieler's social media followers responded back.