Woodstock mayor proposes halving city’s fees for single-family home development

In a move meant to attract more residential development to Woodstock, Mayor Michael Turner is proposing to temporarily cut building permit and impact fees by half for all new single-family homes.

The new policy meant to spur housing growth could be passed by the City Council Tuesday.

Turner has said he wants the city to be assertive and creative with its appeal to development as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, contending there is much opportunity for Woodstock to lure new businesses and residents as the nation emerges from a strange year in which markets of all kinds were destabilized.

He said he feels growing the city will help the local economy reboot after it was battered by the public health crisis, and, early in the previous decade, the housing bubble resulting in the Great Recession that left Illinois, including McHenry County, with large amounts of vacant land once set to become homes.

While the policy will not grant a break to builders of duplexes, triplexes, townhomes or apartments, Turner said he also wants to push for more multi-family housing development on key parcels in and near downtown Woodstock.

“I would expect us to be emerging from the economic and social distress of what we’ve been going through,” Turner said earlier this year. “And as such I think that in my role and for the new council, we have to look at things differently, and more aggressively in how we get the local economy going, how we support growth and development and how we recover.”

The cut in building permit and development impact fees would apply to the next 100 single-family home building permits issued or through June 2023, whichever comes first, according to a city staff memo.

It would take the total cost of city fees from $10,670 for a two-bedroom home, to $5,335; for a three-bedroom house, the figure would drop from $16,900 to $8,450; and for four-bedroom homes and larger, developers would see decreases from $20,279 to $10,140.

Local officials have seen signs residential construction is about to pick up pace, with the builder DR Horton erecting homes on most of the 127 lots it purchased in 2018. There are only 31 home sites remaining out of that portfolio, city Building and Zoning Department staff reported, and DR Horton has the purchase of 23 more lots pending.

There are 211 lots in the city prepared for immediate development, the department said, many of them in the Sanctuary and Ponds of Bull Valley neighborhoods, where DR Horton has been active.

“In the last two months, the department has seen a significant uptick in building permits issued for DR Horton. In addition, there have been two permits issued this year for new, custom single-family homes in other areas of the city, which may not seem significant, but there has been little, if any custom home activity, apart from School District 200 and Habitat for Humanity, in the last decade,” city staff wrote in a memo.

Woodstock last reduced its development impact fees in June 2018, based on a change in the fair market value of an acre of improved land in the city, which is a factor that goes into fee calculations. The fair market value dropped to $90,000 per acre at that time, and fees were lowered by about 25% for developer cash heading to the local public school system and by about 60% for money going to police and library coffers.

The city will require developers that are charged the lower impact fees, if they are approved by the council, to obtain building permits and finish construction on faster timelines than would be mandated under the standard city fees, to prevent developers from applying for permits at the lower prices and then waiting to perform work.