With Sun City growing rapidly and now maturing, it was inevitable that senior living and healthcare facilities would come alongside. This is what is happening now in the Regency Square area just outside Sun City.
In the next couple of years, one senior living development already in Huntley will, if the village board approves, build a major addition to its facility on Regency Parkway. And another, larger complex will start rising next spring just a few yards away at Regency and Princeton Drive. By 2017 or 2018, Heritage Woods of Huntley LLC and Alden Senior Development will be neighbors.
On August 9, the Huntley Plan Commission voted unanimously to endorse a plan for a 31,176-square-foot assisted living and memory care addition to the existing 72 units at Heritage Woods at the intersection of Regency Square and Farm Hill Drive next to one of the village’s fire station. A Michael Raymond Construction official said after last week’s hearing that they would start building on or about January 1, 2016, if the village board gives final approval to their plan at its meeting on August 27.
The first phase of the Heritage Woods project was built tin 2009. It houses 72 assisted living units and various recreational and social facilities in its two-story complex immediately north of the fire station. The new proposal would add nine one-bedroom assisted living units and thirty studio apartment memory care units in an attached building on the east side of the existing building. The addition’s building elevations would match the architecture and color scheme of the existing Heritage Woods facility.
This project was initially proposed to the village earlier this year and actually is phase two of the project’s initial plan. At the August 9 hearing, plan commissioners asked a few questions about emergency exits, anticipated traffic flow, and signage, and indicated it got satisfactory answers. Thirty-seven standard and handicap accessible parking spaces would be added around the addition.
Alden, a family-owned senior development company that already owns and operates more than 40 senior living facilities in Illinois and Wisconsin, received approval from the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board in 2013, and from the village in 2014. It plans to begin construction next spring.
Alden’s facilities will be located at the northwest corner of Regency Parkway and Princeton Drive. Its 14-acre complex will include a 110-bed nursing and rehabilitation facility, a 60-bed memory care building, and a 91-unit independent living complex. Alden’s facilities will cover 14 acres and stretch from the corner of Princeton and Regency westward to the detention basin next to the fire station.
When completed, these two projects will bring 172 independent living units, 30 memory care apartments, 60 memory care beds, and 119 assisted living and nursing/rehabilitation units to Sun City’s doorstep. Plus it will deliver several hundred jobs to Huntley.
When Alden was approved in 2014, a company official said that the facts that their project lacked opposition and would provide skilled care to seniors now in Sun City were major selling points to the village and state medical authorities.
There now are almost 40 businesses in the Regency Square commercial complex along Route 47, from Walgreen’s on the north to Kinder-Care on the south. One Sun Citian remarked recently that the area “is almost like Sun City’s central business district.” The area includes two banks, numerous medical, dental, and rehab offices, several restaurants, and a variety of retail and service shops and stores.
In other recent developments at Regency, The Kaye Eye Care Building on the west side of Farm Hill Drive, has added a third tenant, Cornerstone Hearing Center operated by Joe Madigan, a hearing aid specialist and a Sun City resident. Sleepy’s Mattress has opened a store next to Aldis, and village officials say they are close to welcoming another tenant next to Sleepy’s.
Finally (this is a notice to Huntley cops) another Dunkin’ Donuts is up for approval this month at the village board. If approved, it would be located at Reed Road and Route 47, next to Walgreen’s Pharmacy on the northeast corner.A popular Dunkin’ Donuts has been operating in the Regency development for several years.
