As some residents of Sugar Grove and nearby communities launch a petition to continue to oppose a recently approved project by Crown Community Development, the company is gearing up to begin engineering the first phase of its 760-acre mixed-use development planned for the edge of Sugar Grove.
The project is known as The Grove and is planned to bring neighborhoods, mixed-use residential and commercial areas, a walkable town center and a business park to the land surrounding the Interstate 88 and Route 47 interchange, an area recently annexed into Sugar Grove. The Village Board approved the project earlier this month despite significant opposition from residents of the village and other nearby communities.
While the Sugar Grove Village Board approved the development despite extensive public comments made at months of meetings that called for The Grove to be voted down, board members did request a number of changes from Crown Community Development’s original proposal, including restricting certain land uses like heavy industrial from the business park and assurances to make sure a planned fueling station does not turn into a 24/7 truck stop.
“I would say we got to a project that’s mutually acceptable for Crown and the village and those folks that the village serves,” Crown Community Development’s Jennifer Cowan said. “Did we get everything we wanted? The answer is no, but I also understand — and I think Crown understands — that’s part of the process.”
Now that its project is approved, Crown is in the process of getting contracts in place for the engineering design of the first phase of the development, which previously was referred to as “area one” during the project’s presentation to the Village Board, according to Cowan.
That area is planned to be a neighborhood of homes, the largest in the development, and is the closest area of the development to existing neighborhoods within Sugar Grove.
The first phase of a project always has the most unpredictable timeline, but Crown’s goal is to begin work on the site in fall 2025, Cowan said. Between now and then, the company will complete the engineering on the first phase of the project and gather the required permits, she said.
Crown Community Development is a land developer, meaning that it does not actually construct any structures except those within promised parks or other recreational areas, company representatives have previously said. Instead, the company prepares the land for development and then sells the land to a builder.
Cowan said she expects land work to take around six to 12 months, with the first lots being sold and builders starting to construct houses sometime in 2026.
The company is focusing on phase one at the moment, so a timeline on when other phases of the project will be started or completed is currently unknown, according to Cowan. She said Crown’s portion of the project — that is, work on the area’s land to make it suitable for development and the construction of infrastructure to support the development — will take a total of 10 to 15 years to fully complete.
Full construction of the project will likely take somewhere between 15 and 20 years, but that is a conservative estimate, Cowan said. Although markets fluctuate, currently the markets are strong, so she doesn’t really think that the project will take 20 years to complete, she said.
In a recent opinion piece in The Beacon-News, Sugar Grove Village President Jennifer Konen announced that Crown “has signed a letter of intent to sell all the industrial-zoned land to a data center developer.”
Cowan confirmed Konen’s announcement in a statement sent on Monday, clarifying that the letter of intent is to sell all of the land planned to be the business park, called Grove Park in the company’s presentation of the development, which is also known as “area four” in project plans.
Residents opposed to the project said throughout the development’s review and approval process that they were concerned that this business park area would hold a number of warehouses, which they said would significantly increase traffic on area roads and cause health concerns from air pollution generated by the trucks.
These residents voiced a number of other concerns about the development throughout the process, including its impact to the area’s rural character, environment and local residents’ private wells in addition to potentially higher taxes for nearby residents because of the tax increment financing, or TIF, district, approved to support the development.
Even after the Village Board voted to approve the development, the opposition has continued to push back and try to get the project stopped.
Recently, a petition was started to try and stop the annexation of the property by putting it to a referendum. However, Sugar Grove village administration has said the petition is not valid because the annexation was voluntary, “which means that 100% of the property’s ownership sought annexation and the owner and the village mutually agreed upon the annexation,” according to a statement from Sugar Grove.
“Without anything actually having been filed, it is difficult to provide any further assessment,” the statement said. “However, to reiterate, the village does not believe that the Municipal Code provides any legal basis for a referendum in the case of a voluntary annexation.”
The opposition has pushed forward with a different petition, this time asking the village to put an “advisory question of public policy” on the ballot in April. That question would ask voters if the Village Board’s approval of the Crown Community Development project should be “immediately reversed using all necessary and lawful measures.”
“The petition is basically the residents of Sugar Grove letting the village government know what they think about this, because the government basically ran roughshod over their residents,” said Dale Essling, who has been a consistent voice against the development. “We’re asking them to let the people have their speak.”
Essling lives in Blackberry Township, which is outside of the borders of Sugar Grove, but next to the Crown Community Development property.
Residents opposed to the development were out near the village’s Jewel Osco on Route 47 last Friday and Saturday to gather signatures for the new petition.
Sugar Grove police showed up within 30 minutes of when the petitioners said they were planning to begin to gather signatures on Friday. The petitioners then moved from their planned location in front of the Jewel to be in front of a different, nearby store.
Over six hours across those two days near the Jewel, the petition gathered just under 500 signatures, Essling said. The group is also planning to do more signings and neighborhood canvassing based on the conversations they had with residents during that time, he said.
The petition must be physically signed, so it is not anywhere online, according to Essling. He said the opposition group is going about the petition “the way it’s supposed to be” so that it will be notarized and sent to the village.
Jaden Chada, another consistent voice against the development, said it is his hope that something is found within Crown’s proposal that broke the law, so the company’s agreements with the village get thrown out and Crown needs to once again ask the Village Board for approval to move forward with its project.
By that time, Chada hopes there will be different people sitting on the Village Board who would vote down the project, he said.
A number of residents opposed to the project previously threatened legal action against the village if the board were to approve the development, but Village Administrator Scott Koeppel said he was currently unaware of any lawsuits against the village related to the project.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
