When Bill Hoppenrath drove home from work one day last week, he found the main entrance to his town closed.
Hoppenrath is one of 97 residents of unincorporated Eola, a 125-year-old community now surrounded by development on the far east side of Aurora.
Changes and upgrades in local roads, controlled by DuPage County and Aurora, forced Hoppenrath into a 1-mile detour to get home, a detour he and other residents will have to make for the rest of the summer.
And in the end, access to the town’s main thoroughfare will be limited, making the detour a permanent necessity for residents coming from the east. Only emergency vehicles will have full access to the hamlet.
“Eola has been here for 125 years,” Hoppenrath said. “They have totally isolated Eola, so I can’t get home from work.”
Hoppenrath’s after-work discovery was just another sign that small unincorporated Eola, which has no central government, has more trouble than most areas in warding off the banes of progress.
In this case, the end of life as it was known in Eola began when DuPage County planners decided to widen and upgrade Eola Road to make it a major north-south thoroughfare through the rapidly expanding Fox Valley Villages, which now surrounds Eola.
Eola Road is Eola’s main thoroughfare, and residents did not want it widened, so the county simply routed Eola Road 300 feet east of what now is tentatively called Old Eola Road. But that change made a left-turn lane from nearby North Aurora Road too dangerous, so city planners instead made the Eola and North Aurora intersection a right-in, right-out only from Eola.
But while construction on an upgraded North Aurora Road is under way this summer, even the right-in, right-out access will be closed, because summer construction is being done on the northern portion of North Aurora Road.
Only emergency vehicles will be allowed access during the construction, said DuPage County Engineer Chuck Tokarski.
Tokarski said the detoured cars, which must drive through the upscale Stonebridge subdivision just west of Eola, will have to drive an extra two minutes and 30 seconds to get to Eola. But Tokarski pointed out the new road configuration has dramatically reduced traffic on Old Eola Road, from between 10,000 and 15,000 vehicles a day to a few hundred a day.
More Top Picks Best Turntables For Vinyl Collectors
Meanwhile, Aurora continues to search for an alternative access method to Eola, said Robert A. Rieser, Aurora public works director.
One option would be to extend Sheffer Road, an east-west street that now ends at Old Eola Road, to new Eola Road, allowing southbound traffic on Eola Road to turn into Eola. Another is to extend 4th Street, a north-south street a block west of Old Eola Road, north to North Aurora Road, where there would be room for a left-turn lane.