After seven and a half hours of discussion, the Lake Barrington Board of Trustees approved the construction of a Speedway gas station at the intersection of Kelsey Road and Northwest Highway, stunning and disappointing residents who had opposed the plan and stuck around until the bitter end.
At around 2 a.m. the trustees began reading statements explaining why they supported Speedway’s plan to build a station with 20 gas pumps, a convenience store and a car wash.
Barrington Hills Village President Martin McLaughlin said he felt the gas station, which he referred to as a “mega station,” would negatively affect the property values of Barrington Hills residents near the site. Northwest Highway is the boundary of Lake Barrington and Barrington Hills near Kelsey Road.
Read more on the Speedway decision here.
Horizon Forest Preserve Meeting
An update meeting hosted by Forest Preserve was informative, It appears that the FP leadership have a good plan that brings a balanced use for equestrian, conservation, hiking, biking, birding, etc. for this Barrington Hills jewel.
Concerns remain. Creating a new entry on Sutton will cause more traffic at the congested and dangerous entry back onto Algonquin for existing neighbors. The Longmeadow fiasco ignored by Abboud and Meroni will only aggravate that in coming years.
Fritz Gohl, BH Trustee, made two points. First, he spoke about the inevitability of Algonquin widening to 4 lanes and relayed with certainty that a bridge would be constructed over Algonquin there. Second, he suggested not to allow cross country skiing because other options exist nearby in order to encourage more equestrian only trails at Horizon. Guess he doesn’t have enough of those already for the commercial boarders he hopes to attract to the Village with code changes he supports at the ZBA.
Now that the ZBA (Karen Rosene) granted this week the property across the street a polo facility with no commercial restrictions, it’s more apparent that the John Rosene master plan is to connect the two sites to advance commercial polo and boarding. Parking at the FP on the South end will make it convenient for parking for the unrestricted number of polo matches to be held.
One of the FP managers shared that there is an ongoing problem at the site for removal of manure. The previous owner abandoned horses that need to be safely and humanely removed. Nevertheless, the open spaces of Horizon and few horses there in density punctuates again how/why can the ZBA be considering promoting code changes that allow 15 commercially boarded and as many as wanted owned horses on any 5 acre lot in BH.
The tax payers of Cook County paid 14 Million Dollars for Horizon Farms which was the highest price paid by Cook County Forest Preserve District for real estate in more than 40 years. You are kidding yourself if you think Cook County paid this record sum of money so VBH equestrians have a new exclusive playground to enjoy their activities.
Mark my words, some Cook County politician(s) wanted this parcel willing to assess Cook County taxpayers a premium totaling many Millions of Dollars. This is because Cook County already has a grand design for Horizon Farms; a plan which has yet to be disclosed and will be shocking and upsetting to the VBH naive.
Hint: it will not be to host 10 fox hunts a year or a livery service. It will be set-up with attractions to be used by as many Cook County residents as possible residing in Northern and NW IL suburbs. Anything other, would be political suicide for those politicians who approved this purchase. I am just hoping a segment of the land on Horizon Farms is reserved for campouts with fire pits and hiking where I can take my cub scouts.
David Stieper