With Industrial Development, Route 126 Shift, Plainfield Enters 'Golden Age'

PLAINFIELD, IL — To Mayor John Argoudelis, Plainfield is entering a "new golden age" in its history.

In this golden age, the village will boom with industrial development, property taxes will decrease and wildlife will flourish.

Bringing industrial development to Plainfield, the mayor told Patch, was his number one goal when he took office in 2021. It's coming to fruition and with it the latter two benefits.

In news that means a potential sigh of relief for many Plainfield residents, Route 126 is in the works of being moved north to 143rd Street.

The state route currently overlaps with Main Street, which travels through the Lakelands and segues into downtown Plainfield. Shifting it has been in talks "for years," according to Argoudelis, and it’s finally moving forward.

Main Street will revert to being a residential street as Route 126 will be relocated onto 143rd Street, keeping traffic on the north side of Plainfield. It also opens up the possibility to expand the downtown area up Main Street down the line, Argoudelis said.

The work, happening in conjunction with the Illinois Department of Transportation, will be completed by the end of 2024, the mayor said.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson at IDOT directed Patch to the Village of Plainfield, which is helming the project.

An effect of the road switch is increased industrial development in Plainfield, and developers are already interested. On Aug. 1, the Village Board unanimously approved a proposal for DHL to build a 1.2 million square foot warehouse and distribution center on a 100-acre site off Ridge Road. A few months later, on Nov. 21, the Board approved an annexation agreement with Georgia-based Seefried Industrial Properties for the property known as the Plainfield Business Center.

With more companies setting up shop in Plainfield, residents can expect some tax relief, according to the mayor. Currently, Plainfield’s industrial tax base is at 1.08 percent. But that'll soon change when that figure will increase to 5.31 percent as a result of tax generated from incoming developers.

"When I became mayor, I made a big priority to encourage industrial development out there because it’s a great source of tax revenue," he said. "The biggest concern people have in Plainfield is the taxes on their homes — they’re very high — so the one way we can have real tax relief is we do more industrial development, which will take the burden off the homeowner."

He continued: "Even though 5.31 percent doesn’t sound like a lot, it’s a 500 percent increase of the industrial tax base, and there is more interest yet. … They want to be here in Plainfield."

Besides taxes, traffic is another one of Plainfield residents' biggest concerns — traffic is frequently heavy on the current Route 126. To Argoudelis, "you can’t get all the good stuff of industrial development without some other impacts, like you’re going to have a little more truck traffic, but it's going to be up there."

And in that regard, the mayor is "taking one for the team."

"I am the only residential driveway that will remain out there, so no one can accuse me of putting a road somewhere and bothering them because ... I'm going to be most affected," he said.

Before making the decision to overlap Route 126 and 143rd Street, village officials reviewed traffic studies that showed industrial developments will have less impact on traffic than additional homes.

"If we think about it logically, industrial traffic is kind of dispersed throughout the day," Argoudelis said. "You put a bunch of homes, you have three or four cars per home, everybody is trying to move around at rush hour and in the morning or evening."

To buffer Plainfield's industrial development from its homes, the village is spearheading the "Greenbelt project," a green space that will extend for several miles. The corporations coming to Plainfield are also paying for the green space through land or cash donations.

The Greenbelt project won’t be an additional financial burden on the village. Instead, officials are locking developers into Property Owner's Association contracts — which function similarly to a homeowner's association — that will require them to pay annual fees to help the village maintain the Greenbelt, which will include ponds, a recreational path and native wildlife habitat.

"It will be a way of not only preserving existing green space but in creating new green space that will be a great legacy to future generations of Plainfield," Argoudelis said.

Other benefits include permanent and temporary job creation and charitable donations from corporations — "you'll be surprised how they become charitable benefactors down the road as well," according to Argoudelis.

"It's all really coming together; there's a great synergy with that," the mayor said. "It's happening here in Plainfield because we've created the atmosphere ... to make it happen."