Looking ahead to 2023 in Elburn and Sugar Grove

The Elburn Village Hall is currently also home to the Elburn Police Department.

2023 is here, and with the new year comes new projects, new development and new faces in local government.

Elburn

The biggest news out of Elburn for the new year is the referendum for a new police station. The village will ask voters in the April 4 election for permission to borrow almost $10 million to construct a new station on Anderson Road.

“The biggest thing for us right now is the police station, which is huge for us,” Elburn President Jeff Walter said. “I think people who have come down and looked at our station and seen how small it is, and seen the potential for bad things to happen, can see that the officers don’t have the space they need and this is long overdue.”

Housed in Village Hall, the current station cannot accommodate 10 full-time officers, 10 part-time officers, two records associates and two community service officers, let alone provide them the means to safely do their jobs, Walter said.

“We’ve got 6,200 residents and just a 1,900-square-foot space,” Walter said. “It’s just not even close spacewise to what we need.”

Growth remains steady in Elburn with new homes in 2022 matching the 2021 output.

“We did 69 new houses [in 2021] and have done 68 [in 2022], so we’re pretty close,” Walter said. “Growth has been pretty steady and we’ve talked to some other developers. We’ve talked to the developer for behind Jewel. We had one in 2008 or 2009, but they went away with the economy, but we have another one that’s now talking to us.”

Studies on roads and sewers in Elburn have been completed. Some work already has been done and work will continue this year.

“We started this summer with some of that work,” Walter said. “We’ve lined all the sewers that needed it, so we’ve got that done and it’s helped us decide what roads we need to do next. We spent a lot of time planning and we’re now executing on the plan, so it’s been kind of nice. It makes life a little easier for you; that’s the funny thing about planning.”

The makeup of Elburn’s Village Board will be different in 2023. Trustees Sue Filek and Chris Mondi are not running for reelection. Bill Grabarek, who has served as a trustee since 2003, will be on the ballot again.

Sugar Grove

Changes are coming to Sugar Grove. The village welcomed Michael Cassa as its economic development director in April and announced at its December meeting that it was severing ties with Brent Eichelberger, who had served as village administrator throughout former Village President Sean Michels’ tenure beginning in 2001.

“We are working internally, just preparing our staff for the new days ahead and getting the right people in place,” Village President Jen Konen said. “We had a new economic director come on this past year and we’re looking to the future for what that position brings. We know there’s some interest in the Old Second Bank, not as a bank, but as a restaurant or retail kind of project.”

The development of Sugar Grove Center Lot 17 has broken ground and Konen is hopeful residents will enjoy burritos, ice cream and other treats from new establishments Bubbakoo’s Burritos and Cold Stone Creamery by the summer.

“We haven’t seen any walls up yet,” Konen said. “But we’re hoping for operations by June or July.”

At the southwest corner of Galena Boulevard and Sugar Grove Parkway, a commercial subdivision development known as Prairie Grove Commons was granted an annexation agreement amendment, PUD amendment and PUD plan approval in November.

“It is an agreed annexation agreement and the TIF [tax increment financial] agreement is in place,” Konen said. “Hopefully we’ll see some earth move soon to lay sanitary sewers under [Route] 47 and a half a mile or so to the east.”