Sugar Grove seeks feedback from residents about new development, transportation, infrastructure for new comprehensive plan

The village of Sugar Grove is continuing to fine-tune its new, updated comprehensive plan and is hoping to get more feedback from residents as the process unfolds.

The village is just beginning to work on its next plan, which is expected to be a roadmap for the village for the next 20 or 30 years, said Walter Magdziarz, community development director for the village of Sugar Grove.

The village’s previous plan was adopted in 2006, and Magdziarz said it’s time to update it as much has changed in the past 16 years.

“We’re attempting to address all of the normal and usual things like transportation, housing, open space. But we also want to address issues such as climate change, sustainability, both environmental and fiscal, as well as diversity issues among the population and housing choices,” he said. “Obviously, a lot has changed since 2006. The assumptions and some of the trends [that were] prevalent at that time don’t exist anymore. So we felt it was necessary to completely overhaul the plan to reflect the current state of affairs and what’s going on in the world.”

Sugar Grove has partnered with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning to create the plan.

According to a plan document from CMAP, the village will explore land use, growth and development; transportation and mobility; quality of life issues; environmental justice; affordable housing; conservation and natural resources; and infrastructure and utilities.

“[The plan] is not set in stone yet, but it is taking into consideration so many factors. We went through this process and took almost 12 months to do it,” Village President Jen Konen said.

The village was awarded a grant from CMAP about a year and a half ago, Konen said.

“I would say it is all encompassing; we are not looking to develop more residential and that’s it, we are looking to develop a little bit of everything,” Konen said. “We need more residents, we need different types of businesses as we look to our future and have different opportunities, and having those discussions is why you go through the comprehensive plan process.”

The village held its first community workshop session in March and is planning another one later this summer. Residents are asked to provide feedback about their thoughts and concerns for the future of their community. The village also sent an online survey to residents and could send another one soon.

Magdziarz said they got about 900 responses from the survey, and he is encouraging more residents to get involved in the planning process.

“Everybody’s got an opinion about change, whether good, bad or otherwise, and now’s the time to express those opinions,” he said.

The planning process officially began in October 2021 and will conclude in early 2023. More information about the comprehensive plan, as well as upcoming community workshops and surveys, is available at https://engage.cmap.illinois.gov/sugar-grove.

“At the conclusion of this, what we’ll have is a plan to provide staff and elected officials as to how the community prefers to grow and develop and deal with change,” Magdziarz said. “The plan will be the marching orders. So then staff will be charged with implementing it.”