The city of Aurora is considering selling 18 acres near Interstate 88 and the Chicago Premium Outlets mall to a townhouse developer for just over $6 million.
The 18 acres located on Bilter Road east of Farnsworth Avenue, if sold to national homebuilder Lennar Homes, would be developed into a 159-unit “urban style” townhouse development. Those townhouses are expected to all have three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, two-car garages and two additional driveway parking spaces.
That’s according to a presentation by Trevor Dick, the assistant director of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, at an Aurora City Council Finance Committee meeting last week.
That committee unanimously recommended approving the sale, but it must still go before the City Council for final approval.
Although the townhouses would be similar in the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, there would still be variations in their square footage from around 1,800 square feet up to roughly 2,200 square feet, Dick’s presentation showed.
The price for the townhouses would likely be around $425,000, which is similar to the recently-approved Abbey Meadows, also by Lennar Homes. The townhouses would also be a similar model to what is expected at Abbey Meadows and what was previously built at Liberty Meadows in Aurora.
The proposed townhouse neighborhood would also include a private park with a potential playground, Dick said.
Plus, the development would build what Dick’s presentation called a “long-planned connection” of Ginger Woods Parkway, which he said would save the city money because it would not have to build the road extension itself.
The sale of the land must still go before the Aurora City Council’s Committee of the Whole, which is set to meet May 6, then to the City Council for final approval. Even if the land is sold to Lennar Homes, the company must still come back before the City Council to get the project itself approved.
The city bought the land, split across seven parcels, in July 2024 for nearly $5.9 million with the help of Invest Aurora, which is now part of the Aurora Regional Economic Alliance.
Although it is near the proposed 50-acre development on city-owned land announced by outgoing Mayor Richard Irvin earlier this year — a key part of the area also including the Chicago Premium Outlets and the under-construction Hollywood Casino resort that the city recently named the Apex District — the 18-acre site that the city is now considering selling was not mentioned as part of that development.
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According to past reporting, city officials said they were interested in assembling the land in the hopes of marketing it to a residential developer to keep potential industrial uses out of what the city considers more of a residential area.
Dick said at last week’s Finance Committee meeting that the city sought out requests for qualifications to find the “highest and best use” for the land as a residential development. Based on developer applications and interviews, the city chose Lennar Homes to develop the site, he said.
Lennar Homes is not looking for city incentives to help develop the site, according to Dick.
The sale to Lennar Homes would put the 18 acres back on the tax rolls. Previously, the land generated around $42,000 of property taxes each year before it was bought by the city, and after the proposed townhouse development is built, the land may produce as much as $1.8 million each year, Dick’s presentation showed.
Aurora Chief Financial Officer Chris Minick said that the property would also help bring in other additional tax dollars because more people would move into the city.