Apartment numbers reduced at Rock Run in Joliet

The Joliet City Council is slated to vote Tuesday on a revised plan for Rock Run Crossings apartments that has been reduced to 570 units.

That’s down from the 760 apartments that Cullinan Properties wanted to build.

The developer reduced the number of apartments amid opposition from Troy School District officials and residents of a nearby subdivision. But the revised proposal on 31 acres would still exceed the city’s density strandard of 10 units per acre.

City staff is recommending approval of the Cullinan plan.

“The requested increased density is viewed as necessary and desirable to generate enough local critical mass to support the various components of the mixed-use development,” staff said in a memo to the council on the Cullinan proposal.

The apartments are one piece of a 309-acre project designed to bring retail, restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues, offices and other uses to the location at the crossroads of Interstates 55 and 80. Hollywood Casino has announced that it plans to move onto the site. The city has issued $103 million in bonds to finance infrastructure for the project, and the bonds are to be paid off by tax revenue generated by the development.

That tax revenue includes a Tax Increment Financing District, which would use increased property tax revenue from development to pay for infrastructure.

But Troy school officials have objected to the size of the apartment proposal, pointing to the number of students that the apartments would produce while the TIF District would freeze any property tax income for the schools for 23 years.