On March 15, a town hall meeting was scheduled in Homewood to provide the residents of both Homewood and Hazel Crest an opportunity to discuss the ongoing plans for the property on which Calumet Country Club now stands. It was to be hosted by the local NAACP.
However, at the last minute, the mayor and trustees of Hazel Crest hijacked this meeting, brought it to Hazel Crest, invited the Illinois State NAACP to oversee the meeting (thereby overriding the local NAACP), brought in Catalyst, the company that has been commissioned to build upon the land and essentially reshaped the meeting to accommodate the mayor’s and trustees’ agenda.
I attended, and at the end I had two questions. Since there is so much opposition from both Hazel Crest and Homewood residents to the trucking component of this plan, my first question was, is the trucking component essential to creating the other more appealing components (water park, hotel, golf course, etc.) on the property that was annexed by Hazel Crest?
I later found out that the answer is yes. Without the trucking component, nothing else can happen. In other words, the owner of the trucking company is obviously calling the shots. We were also told that 24 trucks would be in and out of the facility every hour. That adds up to 240 trucks per day in and out of a facility across the street from and in the vicinity of a residential community. Also, the trucking component of this facility will take up 58 acres, which is almost half the entire property. This will be the “legacy” of the current Hazel Crest Village Board.
My second question was based on hearing the Illinois State NAACP moderator and the mayor repeatedly state residents would be able to vote on some aspect of the ongoing plans for this property. I wanted to know specifically what the residents would be able to vote on, especially since all the critical decisions had already been made. The mayor and trustees made the decisions, without input from the residents, to annex the land and to commission Catalyst to build on the land in agreement with the trucking component. The residents had no voice or vote in those decisions; and beyond that, there is nothing left for the residents to vote on.
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Our Village Board’s rubber-stamp trustees are as complicit as the mayor in agreeing to the plans going forward, beginning with the annexation and including the trucking component, without meaningful input from the residents. Inviting the residents to partake in the discussions now, after the fact, is nothing more than appeasement simply because at this point, it’s meaningless. The land has already been annexed, the plans are already in place and the fate of our community has already been decided by seven people who have denied any input from those whom they were elected to represent and serve.
Yet, it’s never too late to let our voices be heard in our vote and to make a difference. Therefore, I am imploring the residents of Hazel Crest to become more involved in the business of our village, more aware of the decisions being made by the mayor and the trustees that will negatively impact our community as well as neighboring communities, and to use this knowledge to make an informed decision when casting your ballots in the April 4 election. We do have choices.
Mary Griffin
Hazel Crest