More Top Picks Best Sashimi Knives
player ready...The Wilmette Park Board must soon decide if it will grant a land easement near the Canal Shores Golf Course, one that would allow an east Wilmette property owner to access his otherwise landlocked acreage, but which golf course officials fear could increase flooding on their greens and destroy trees growing in possible lowland or wetland habitat.
The Board’s Real Estate Committee is set to meet Monday night at Mallinckrodt Center, following the 6:30 p.m. regular meeting of its Lakefront Committee.
Both sides have previously pleaded their cases before the Park Board, which must give its eventual decision to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
The MWRD owns the land over which the easement would travel. It leases just under 32 acres east and west of the North Shore Channel, between Isabella Street and Sheridan Road, to the Wilmette Park District in an agreement that lasts until 2032, MWRD spokeswoman Allison Fore said in an email. The Park District in turn subleases that land to the Evanston Wilmette Golf Association, which manages Canal Shores.
Because a private entity seeks the easement, the Park District must sign off on it before the MWRD can grant it, MWRD Executive Director David St. Pierre stated in a January letter to Steve Wilson, his Park District counterpart.
Last July, Joe Keefe, representing the Keefe family trust, told the Board his family needs to have the easement to sell a four-lot property in Wilmette, just north of the Wilmette-Evanston border.
Without being able to build an access road on the easement, he said, the property would be hard sell because it can’t now be reached, since there is no ingress from Wilmette’s Golf Terrace to the north.
The easement lies roughly 100 feet east of CTA train tracks, he said. The family has provided a plan to remove eight to 10 swamp white oaks and other trees to create easement access, Keefe said. It also intends to replace some of the trees, and would be willing to make a contribution to the Park District to finance planting elsewhere in the district.
In February, however, Canal Shores superintendent Tom Tully read a statement to park commissioners from Association President John Powers, in which Powers said the group is concerned about how development of the property would affect the course, especially since the Association plans on widening its 10th hole area.
“Vacant adjacent properties impact the area under our stewardship, just like developed adjacent properties impact our operations,” Powers stated. “From past experience, the stormwater flow from the developed property is different and almost always an intrusion compared to the stormwater flow from vacant property.”
Powers also said agronomists and landscape experts the Association previously brought in as part of its plans to renovate the golf course have alerted it “to the existence of wetlands and pre-Columbian woodlands adjoining the course.
“While we have not specifically surveyed property that is not under our management, we think it is advisable to consider the ecological impact of any development that would remove old-growth forests and wetlands.”
On March 25 Keefe said a brief environmental impact study his family had done states the wetland isn’t natural.
“What our experts tell us is this is a lowland, but that it’s artificially created. The lowland is created by the CTA tracks to the west and the golf course to the east. The conditions in that area are not what you’d call indigenous. And the swamp oaks are not necessarily indigenous,” he said.
Keefe also said the question of how to maintain land on or near the easement is of concern, but should go to whoever purchases the Keefe family’s lots, which comprise a package of just over an acre.
“We solely want to sell the land in the interest of the trust. We’d assume that any future development would go through necessary Plan Commission and Zoning Board review,” he said. He reiterated what he told park commissioners in July, that development of those lots could add “tens of thousands” of property tax dollars to the Park District’s coffers.
On March 22, Tully said the Association had received a grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to do an environmental study of the course, including the area adjacent to where the easement might come in. The Association is in the process of choosing a group to do that.
Although the study would be of land managed by the golf course, just where the golf course’s remit ends and the easement area begins is questionable, he said.
“Our concern is, if you add impermeable surface, how does that affect flooding and (golf) playability?” he said. “We’re stewards of this land, we’re trying to do what’s right for this property.”
[email protected] More Top Picks Best Cooling Gel Eye Masks For Puffy Eyes
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy