The city may allow a developer to build homes where long range plans calls for offices, if the firm donates half of the parcel to accommodate wastewater lagoons the city may build.
The deal that would allow Airhart Construction Co. of West Chicago to build at Illinois Highway 25 and the Chicago and North Western railroad tracks is unsettled and hinges mainly on the city’s decision to pursue a multimillion-dollar change in the way it treats its sewage.
Geneva public works officials, together with an outside consultant, are studying a plan to replace the city’s wastewater treatment plant with a reclamation system in which the sewage is treated in open air lagoons and then irrigated onto agricultural land.
One scenario for building such a system involves locating the lagoons on about 25 acres of the Airhart site, located across Illinois 25 from the existing wastewater plant.
The developer is to appear before the city’s Plan Commission on June 12 to discuss the proposal, said Community Development Director Michael Donahue.
In March, Airhart proposed building 96 upscale homes on the 50-acre property, once home to an all-girls school and currently owned by Waste Management Inc., the national disposal giant that operates Settler’s Hill Landfill immediately east of there.
But the city rejected the developer`s plans last month because the official comprehensive land-use plan calls for office and research development on the site.
Donahue said that Airhart’s original proposal would have to be scaled back and that the lagoons could be designed to blend in with residential development.