Phantom Developer
The Zoning Board of Appeals will be holding a continuation of their July meeting this evening at 7:30 PM at Countryside Elementary School. Tonight’s meeting will include a public hearing followed by a board discussion of a proposed amendment to the current commercial horse boarding codes. A copy of the agenda, including reference documents, can be viewed here.
Many residents have reported they received a form letter over the weekend urging them to attend the meeting. The letter (seen here) came from a resident who wrote, “Some months ago a clique of [unnamed] area residents associated with [undocumented] high density commercial housing development initiated a subtle, but strategic campaign to defeat and dismantle the statutory defenses that preserve the character of the Village of Barrington Hills.”
As we illustrated in our recent editorial, “Here we go again,” playing the unsubstantiated “developer” card has become extremely wearisome to most residents after so many years.
If “high density commercial housing development,” is the motivation behind the currently proposed amendment, then where was this letter writer’s outcry when recommendations from both the Equestrian Commission (seen here) and an equestrian-laden Zoning Board of Appeals (seen here) advocated very similar guidelines for commercial horse boarding under a previous administration back in 2011?
In fact, there was little, if any, uproar from the equestrian community at that time, so why is the sky suddenly falling now?
Frankly, we think residents are too savvy to fall for the incessant cries of “wolf” such as this latest one in every election cycle and every time prudent commercial horse boarding codes are being considered.
However, since he raised the topic of commercial residential development, we’d like to pass along something we recently ran across that should be of interest to residents.
It seems Barrington Hills Farm (whose chairman happens to be the aforementioned letter writer) has engaged a website developer to promote, “600 acres of pristine, undeveloped land located at Haegers Bend and Spring Creek Roads at the northwestern most corner of Barrington Hills,” as depicted below (please click on the image to enlarge for better viewing):
We found it interesting that this prototype website (click here to view it) is grouped with other sites under development promoting businesses and commercial developments in Chicago in a staging web address as seen here, so perhaps the chair of Barrington Hills Farm would like to share their development plans sometime sooner than later with residents.