Sugar Grove voters could get a chance to voice their opinion on the controversial project by Crown Community Development in the upcoming April election through a non-binding, advisory referendum question.
A petition to place the question on the ballot in April got over 500 signatures and was submitted to the village of Sugar Grove on Dec. 26, according to the principal proponent of the petition, Pat Gallagher. He said the results of the referendum question, which would show the sentiments of Sugar Grove voters, should give the newly-elected Village Board enough reason to explore ways to reverse the approval of the controversial development.
“We want to give them a directive, a voice of the people,” Gallagher said. “We think that’s been missing from this whole process.”
The question as submitted in the petition is set to ask Sugar Grove voters if they think the village’s approval of The Grove, Crown Community Development’s 760-acre mixed-use development planned for the edge of Sugar Grove, should be “immediately reversed using all necessary and lawful measures.”
The Village Board approved the project in September despite significant opposition from residents of the village and other nearby communities across many hours of public meetings. Residents of Blackberry Township in particular voiced a number of concerns around the potential safety, traffic and environmental impacts of the development, among other things, especially because they are closest to the industrial-zoned portion of the property.
Residents in opposition to the development and some trustees were also concerned that the project would take away needed tax dollars because the project is being partially funded by an economic development incentive known as a tax increment finance, or TIF, district. Many also disagreed with the village’s consultant that the property even qualified for a TIF district.
Gallagher said in a phone call on Monday that, while it is unfortunate those most affected by the development will be unable to vote on the referendum, he still believes there is strong opposition to the project within the village itself.
He said some Village Board members may be shocked by how many people signed the petition because “the rhetoric they’ve tried to present is, ‘Oh, well, this is more of a Blackberry Township issue. They’re the only people who are upset,’ and really that’s not the case here.”
Organizers collected the bulk of the petition’s signatures by gathering outside the village’s Jewel Osco on Route 47 to speak with residents and get signatures, which Gallagher said they did twice. Additional signatures were also collected through neighborhood canvassing, he said.
Objections to the petition can be filed up until Tuesday, but as of Monday there have been no objections filed, Sugar Grove Village Administrator Scott Koeppel said in an email.
The Grove 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 because of the project.
Those opposed to the development are not planning to stop with just the advisory referendum. Gallagher said several different paths of opposition are being explored, including a potentially binding referendum challenging the annexation.
“We still believe that’s possible. There’s some legal footwork that needs to be done there first,” he said.
Previously, the village of Sugar Grove has said that any binding referendum would not be 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.”
“Without anything actually having been filed, it is difficult to provide any further assessment,” village staff previously said in a statement. “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.”
Crown Community Development representatives told The Beacon-News in September that engineering for the development’s first phase was set to begin soon with a goal of starting construction in fall 2025. That phase 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.
Phase one land work is expected to take around six to 12 months, with the first lots being sold and builders starting to construct houses sometime in 2026, company representatives previously said.
Crown is a land developer, meaning that it does not actually construct any structures except those within promised parks or other recreational areas. Instead, the company prepares the land for development and then sells the land to a builder.
At the time, company representatives did not have a firm timeline for any other phases of the project but said the project in total would conservatively take somewhere between 15 and 20 years to be fully constructed.
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 — is expected to take 10 to 15 years to fully complete, representatives said at the time.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com