After years of delays, a portion of the Kane County highway commonly known as “Killer Kirk” is about to be reconstructed.
Meeting in special session Tuesday, the Kane County Board unanimously approved a $7.84 million contract with Chicago-based Plote Inc. to rebuild about 2 1/2 miles of heavily traveled Kirk Road between Illinois Highway 64 in St. Charles and Illinois Highway 38 in Geneva.
When completed, the roadway will stretch across 84 feet, double its current width, according to Nabi Fakroddin, Kane County transportation director. The divided highway will include a 16-foot median and 10-foot shoulders on each side.
“This should give us a lot more room for safety,” Fakroddin said.
The roadway currently has no shoulders and no left-turning lanes in some spots, factors that have contributed to dozens of accidents–including 26 fatalities since 1978–along the 9-mile stretch of roadway that skirts the eastern edge of St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia.
The rebuilding of the four-lane highway south of Highway 38 is in the planning stages, but no work dates are set, Fakroddin said.
Fakroddin said the County Board was asked to meet in special session to approve the contract, rather than waiting until its scheduled May 14 meeting, so that construction can begin within days. The contract includes a $4,000-a-day incentive clause for project completion for every day before Nov. 30, Fakroddin said.
During construction, one lane will be open in each direction.
“This was a long time coming,” said County Board member Rob McConnaughay (R-Geneva), whose board district includes the highway construction zone.
The county has planned to renovate the highway since at least 1991, but a court challenge to a state-approved, 2-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax held up those plans for more than two years.
However, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year cleared the way for Kane, DuPage and McHenry Counties to use millions of dollars in gasoline-tax funds for road-maintenance work.
Of the $10.5 million bond issue for the project, about $9.6 million is being financed from gasoline tax funds, Fakroddin said. The county has spent about $2 million securing more than three dozen parcels of land for the project and other preliminary costs.
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