More New Homes In Plainfield: Trustees OK Plan For Up To 168 Townhomes

PLAINFIELD, IL — The Plainfield Village Board voted to approve a plan for as many as 168 townhomes to be built at the corner of 143rd Street and Steiner Road Monday night.

Trustees met Monday night for a Committee of the Whole meeting and special Village Board meeting to discuss and vote on the proposed Lockley Park development.

Trustees spent about an hour discussing the project during the Committee of the Whole workshop before moving to a vote at their Board meeting. Trustees first voted to skip another discussion on the project before voting to approve a special use for planned development, the site plan review and the preliminary plat.

The Board passed the project 4-2, with trustees Margie Bonuchi, Richard Kiefer, Cally Larson and Tom Ruane in favor and Patricia Kalkanis and Brian Wojowski opposed.

Chicago-based M/I Homes will build up to 168 townhouses on about 38 acres of vacant agricultural land on the southwest corner of 143rd Street and Steiner Road. With work underway to shift Route 126 onto 143rd Street, buyers interested in the new townhomes will be required to sign a disclosure acknowledging they are aware of what's being constructed around them.

"Knowing 143rd Street was going to go through, we should not have allowed the houses to be built as closely to 143rd," Mayor John Argoudelis said. "Not that the development shouldn't have happened at all, but we should have known. I think that predates everyone sitting up on this Board, so none of us can be blamed for that, but previous Boards should have thought of that when they were doing that."

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The property is currently zoned to allow a townhouse development with up to 252 units and was originally annexed in 2004 as Pod 12 of a larger, 673-acre development called McMicken Assemblage.

"Personally, if they weren't zoned by right, I wouldn't be voting for it," Larson said. "I can tell you that right now because I have been very anti-anything along 143rd."

Ruane said the village is "fortunate that M/I Homes came in and decided to do a project that would fit and would enhance and not cause problems for the neighbors that live to the east and for themselves for 143rd Street."

The proposed development is a "logical land use transition between the single-family residential to the south and east and the current and planned warehouse uses to the west and north," according to village documents.

RELATED: 168-Townhome Development On Agenda For Special Village Board Meeting

One of Plainfield residents' biggest concerns with new developments in town is traffic impact. Director of Planning Jonathan Proulx said no road improvements would be generated by the development's traffic.

"We evaluated the roads: There is sufficient capacity in the roadway network in the immediate vicinity which we know from other traffic studies that have been completed within the last year, so we're confident there's capacity," he explained.

Proulx said townhouses typically generate about 30-35 percent less traffic than single-family detached houses.

In August, the village board OK'd a proposal for 322 single family homes and 83 townhomes and to be built on the Keller's Farmstand property. A mixed-use development including 84 apartments is also likely to be built on land adjacent to Settlers' Park after trusees nixed a proposal to purchase the property — and keep it as green space — for $2 million.

"Everyone's biggest concern here in this village is traffic," Ruane said. "It seems to be the flavor of social media right now is to shut everything down. That's not the answer because if you shut everything down, you shut down most of the stuff that gets you the money to expand the roads. ... Population is one thing that gets us more money and also [the] need to bring businesses."

He continued: "This seems to come up every time there's a new project coming up. The consensus is you guys always vote yes. ... You don't see stuff that gets voted down. Sometimes these things don't even make it to a vote because they're so horrible. We had a couple projects up here that looked like downtown Philadelphia tenement housing. I mean, 3 feet away from the street, they were just horrible. ... There's a lot of work that goes behind the scenes."

Kalkanis, who voted against the project, explained in the last 5.5-6 years, 95 developments were approved and 12 were denied.

"I am flabbergasted that you all still voted 21 times in the last three years with original approval dates of the last three years," Kalkanis said.

The trustee said she continued to question why the Board continues to vote for developments that weren't bound by annexation agreements or zoning, citing the Keller Farm project as an example.

"I can't even comprehend how that even passed," she said. "We didn't have to approve it, we weren't bound by anything, but we did anyway. This Board still approved it. As early as a few weeks ago, we had an opportunity to stop something and to keep something amazing and this Board again, with such opposition, still went against their community."

The developer will be required to apply for final plat approval in the future, Proulx confirmed, giving trustees and residents another opportunity to share thoughts on the project.