Lennar Corporation, a corporation with nearly $34-billion in gross revenues last year, has proposed a 320-unit high-density housing development southeast of Woodstock where Lucas Road intersects Doty and Mt. Thabor roads. The planned subdivision would be sited in and alongside wetlands at the headwaters of the Kishwaukee and most certainly will destroy sensitive habitat. This is reason enough to examine the request carefully.

Lennar has requested that Woodstock waive $1.8 million in impact fees. These are one-time fees imposed on builders to pay for infrastructure. The required infrastructure improvements do not build themselves. Who ends up paying for sewers, electricity, utility installation, etc? Taxpaying residents of Woodstock.

This project will empty onto Lucas Road, a road with speed limit constraints and construction typical of a two-lane country road. Now, add at least 1,000 trips a day into and out of the proposed subdivision off Lucas Road. This results in increased traffic of at least 200,000 trips per year. Who will pay for rebuilding the inevitable degradation of Lucas Road? The taxpayers who live in Dorr Township.

Where will these new residents shop? The main retail destinations of Huntley, Woodstock and Crystal Lake are equidistant from this mega-development. Therefore, the tax haul for Woodstock will be, at most, 1/3 of the anticipated amount due to tax “leakage.”

Four reasons to urge Lennar and Woodstock to look elsewhere: environmental disruption, lack of economic benefit from impact fees, transportation impacts, and lack of economic benefit from the sales tax harvest.

Louis Dolmon

Woodstock