The Aurora City Council Tuesday night approved rezoning and preliminary plans for a townhouse development near Eola Road that nearby residents are concerned will create a safety issue because of increased traffic.
The Eola Preserve development planned by national homebuilder Pulte Homes looks to put 54 townhouse units on 21 acres off Old Eola Road, which runs just to the west of Eola Road, at the site of the former WBIG and WMRO radio stations.
The townhome units would be between 1,883 square feet and 2,508 square feet with three to four bedrooms. The average price would be around $500,000, and no more than 30% of the units would be rentals, according to Russ Whitaker, a Naperville-based attorney who represented Pulte at Tuesday’s meeting.
The site was previously zoned for manufacturing but after Tuesday’s vote will be rezoned as a split between R-4, a residential zone for the portion of the property that will hold the townhomes, and OS-1, a conservation zone for the part of the property that will include wetlands.
Whitaker said 11 acres of the 21-acre site will be dedicated to preserving the wetlands on the property, and that restrictions will be put in place through the city to make sure that the wetlands area is protected in the future.
The project passed by the City Council on Tuesday was “undeniably better” than the one presented to the council months ago because Pulte has worked with aldermen, city staff and residents to find “practical solutions,” Whitaker said.
The final vote on the project was delayed twice by the Aurora City Council, most recently on Nov. 12.
Pulte made a number of changes to the plan, including restricting the number of units that can be rentals, relocating units to increase setbacks near existing residents at the north edge of the development, removing the option to add rooftop terraces to buildings backing up to existing residents and roughly doubling the number of plantings that will be made to create a landscape buffer between the new townhouses and existing homes.
Despite the concessions, nearby resident Janine Keating told The Beacon-News on Wednesday that she was disappointed that the Aurora City Council approved the project. She said the primary concern of neighbors is safety, specifically because of the traffic that the development is likely to bring, she said.
The townhouse development and nearby 20-home Riverstone neighborhood will share a single exit, which is the intersection of Waterstone Drive and Eola Road. At Tuesday’s meeting and past meetings, several residents have said they already have a difficult time getting out of their neighborhood onto Eola Road without the extra traffic brought by a new development.
“This project could add around 100 cars to the mix, which is a big increase from the 40 cars my community might have in it now,” Riverstone resident Greg Bolger said. “As a result, I think it’s reasonable to believe there will be multiple cars lined up to take a left onto Eola Road at certain times of the day.”
Whitaker said traffic studies of the intersection show that it is safe, even with the foreseen increase in traffic.
Pulte did design some changes to Eola Road’s median to create additional space for turns, but those proposed changes were shot down by DuPage County, which controls that portion of Eola Road, Whitaker said.
Pulte will be resurfacing parts of Eola Road and will be improving the Waterstone Drive and Eola Road intersection by adding a new right-turn lane, according to Whitaker.
However, residents said during the meeting Tuesday that the only way they see to improve the traffic situation is by lowering the density of the townhouse development.
Whitaker said Pulte made projections comparing the current plan of 54 townhouse units to a neighborhood of 30 single-family homes, and the traffic difference between the two was minimal.
Some aldermen sided with the residents who were upset with the development, but the project was still approved in a 9-3 vote. Voting against the development were Alds. John Laesch, at-large; Ron Woerman, at-large; and Brandon Tolliver, 7th Ward.
Before the vote, Tolliver thanked his constituents for showing up and getting involved. The development is in the 7th Ward.
“As your alderman, I am incredibly proud of all of you. You have come here week after week. We’ve met time after time. You guys have voiced your opinion, and that’s the way that it’s supposed to go,” he said.
Tolliver said he appreciated the design changes that Pulte made to address privacy concerns that some residents had. However, he said the issue of density was not addressed in the developer’s changes, so that is why he voted against the project.
Laesch similarly said he was voting against the project because he believes the public safety concerns around traffic were not addressed.
Ald. Edward Bugg, 9th Ward, who voted in favor of the project, said he thinks Pulte did everything they could to move the project forward. Now, the traffic issue is in the hands of DuPage County, he said.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
