Senior housing plan placed on pause
Homer Township Supervisor Balich says township will ask voters via referendum
Homer Township is putting plans with a developer for senior housing on hold until a referendum can be held for voters to weigh in on the proposal and use of township property.
The action means a Homer Glen workshop May 25 to discuss the proposed senior housing community has been canceled.
“If there’s not a good answer and there’s two opposing sides and there’s no way to judge what the people actually want, the best thing to do is to go to a referendum,” said township Supervisor Steve Balich.
The township announced in April it wanted to develop Autumn Ridge, a 55-year-old and older community that would contain 93 single-family homes and 20 duplex buildings on about 40 acres of the former Welter farm property, purchased by the township for $2 million in 2001 as part of its open space preservation program.
Nearby residents as well as some former village and township leaders expressed their opposition to the project, saying that building homes goes against the spirit of a 1999 referendum to buy open space and prevent development.
The township board has until Aug. 22 to adopt a resolution to put the referendum proposal on the November ballot. The board hasn’t had a public meeting since Monday night, but Balich said he spoke individually with each member and said they all favor a referendum.
The township’s lawyer is working on the wording of the referendum, and the township could call a special meeting as early as next week to approve it, Balich said.
On Monday, residents packed a Homer Township meeting to voice their opposition to the senior housing project. When fire offi
cials asked for some residents to clear out of the overcrowded room, they told township officials they should have anticipated a large crowd and had the meeting moved to a larger venue.
At least one Homer Glen trustee said on social media she was interested in moving the May 25 Homer Glen Village Board meeting to a larger space in case a large crowd attends.
Balich said he believes that despite the opposition, the development would provide affordable housing for senior citizens or empty nesters who want to downsize but still live in Homer Township.
The development would provide more rooftops, which in turn would generate more property taxes for school districts and provide businesses with more customers, he said.
“When all the dust is settled, you have to look at (whether) this is a good project or a bad project,” Balich said. “It’s a good project.”
In 2002, the village of Homer Glen zoned the land for residential use, Balich said. The land is within the boundaries of Homer Glen, which would have to review and approve the development.
“We have to look at it in a different way because there is a lot of people that don’t like the idea that we are doing that project,” he said. “There’s also a lot of people that think it’s a fantastic project.”
Residents opposed to the project cite a 1999 referendum in which voters approved spending $8 million to buy open space land. The township bought about 200 acres of land, including the Paul, Purdy, Trantina and Welter farms.
“If you allow development of a subdivision on open space it will go against the good faith the voters had in voting to both enact the open space program and to fund it with an $8 million bond,” said Gail Snyder, who advocated for the township open space program and was a member of the first Homer Glen Village Board.
Snyder said developing the land goes against what the founders had in mind when they wanted to control development and preserve the “open and rural character of the community.”
“Will County and any town that annexed part of Homer Township did as they please with development,” she said.
“This is why current efforts to develop open space lands are wrong and misguided.”
Some Homer Glen trustees said they appreciated the township’s efforts to put the question to voters.
“I really do like the idea of the senior housing plan and its proposal going up for referendum” Trustee Jennifer Consolino said. “All I can do as a board member and all the other board members can do is do our due diligence if and when this project comes before us as a proposal.”
Consolino said there are more than 10,000 senior citizens living in the township, which is comprised of Homer Glen and portions of Lockport, New Lenox and Lemont.
“It is a project that should be looked at,” she said. “If it doesn’t go where the township would like, maybe there’s other areas that we can consider in the future as well.”