On the horizon

The Village of Huntley is so busy with economic development these days that it is being sued and pursued by corporate America at the same time.

Nearly 20 business and industrial building projects are proposed, underway, or about ready to open as the year 2020 dawns. The “Friendly Village with Country Charm” is welcoming and expanding throughout the community. The village and landowners at the former Huntley Outlet Mall property are battling in a Woodstock court on the question of industry or retail at the site.

Meanwhile, Huntley may soon be a stop on the nationwide Amtrak railroad system. Kreutzer Road may even be straightened and the railroad crossing made safer (finally).

A hotel may come to the village after months of marketing and dreaming. Sun City isn’t doing any of this, but it is causing most of it to happen.

Here are some details, discussed here in no particular order of priority or prominence:

Tired of winding your way around the Union Pacific track crossing on Kreutzer Road? The village is proposing to spend $300,000 for widening and straightening this busy road with Phase I engineering planning in 2020. The long-awaited project stretches from the WalMart shopping center near Route 47 eastward to Haligus Road. Included in the proposed 2-3 year project are a three-lane cross section along the whole section of road, realignment at the railroad crossing, landscaping improvements, a multi-use path to improve traffic flow, and an off-road pathway for pedestrian traffic. All of the signage and the crossing gates erected recently will be replaced, according to Charles Nordman, director of development services for the village.

Big changes are looming in the Church Street/Mill Street area immediately south of the village’s town square. In the past few weeks, two major developments have occurred: 1) a developer has proposed a multi-use office/commercial redevelopment of the inside of the historical Catty building on Church Street, and 2) the village has announced that $275 million dollar funding by the Rebuild Illinois Capital Plan for Chicago-to-Rockford passenger rail transportation will bring a train station to Huntley. The train location is immediately north of the Catty building along the Union Pacific rail tracks. Several years ago, the state identified Huntley as a stop along the proposed Chicago-to-Rockford route, but the project was put on hold and got mixed up in statewide politics in 2015. The project is now included in the state’s capital plan, and the village has designated design engineering funds.

The village and Landmark 11117, an area commercial developer, will enter into a Redevelopment Agreement for the inside of the Catty building, whose historical exterior will remain, according to Nordman. As part of its downtown Revitalization Plan, the village has already improved three properties: the McHenry County Visitors Center on Main Street, the SKM building on Main, and the BBQ King restaurant on Coral Street. The village purchased the century-old Catty building in 2017. Landmark responded to a village letter of interest late last year. The developer proposed an industrial event space, boutique lodging, a craft cocktail bar, a food & beverage tenant, business incubation space, civic flex space for possible village use, and corporate office headquarters. The proposed projects would fill more than 30,000 square feet inside the building, which retains a smokestack from its early years.

The Catty and Amtrak projects will be tied together for planning and future activity purposes.

According to a few previous issues of the Sun Day, you may have thought the idea of a hotel in Huntley was impossible. Now comes a proposal for possibly two hotels in the middle of the village in the Regency Square area, and a new road, an extension of Regency Parkway. Huntley Hotel LLC is proposing a Hampton Inn on Kreutzer Road about a quarter-mile west of Route 47. The proposal comes from BO2 Investments LLC, which owns a lot of the property in the recently-constructed Regency Square commercial area. The purchaser also owns the multi-tenant center including the Starbucks store under construction on 47 and Reed Road. The proposed hotel would have 95-100 rooms, and be located at the proposed future intersection of Regency Parkway extended from Deerpath Recovery Center next to Heritage Woods, to Kreutzer. Construction is proposed to start this summer. Estimated project cost is $11.5 million.

At the intersection of Reed Road and Route 47, two major projects are underway: the village’s second Jewel store behind Walgreen’s on the northeast corner, and the nearby Starbucks building, where several tenants will eventually join the village’s second Starbucks.

Panera Bread has purchased the site in front of Auto Zone at Kreutzer and 47, and plans to get going on its two-tenant building this spring.

“Their purchase of the site is a major signal to us that this project will proceed,” Nordman commented.

The developer of a Thornton’s gas station at the northwest corner of 47 and Kreutzer is moving ahead with permits from multiple sources, Nordman also reported.

In similar fashion, Barb and Chris Lincoln will open for business at their new event venue north of the Talamore subdivision, pending all approvals from government authorities (the site was an old dairy farm on 47). Barb Lincoln told the Sun Day last fall that she already has several weddings booked for 2020.

In addition to all these proposals, construction of the resident-approved expansion of the Huntley Public Library will proceed soon, and two new fire stations will be opened this year at Dhamer Road and Countryview and on Main Street near Ruth Road. The Dhamer facility is the second station to serve Sun City primarily.

On top of all this, the village’s 2020 calendar also says a review of alternatives and establishment of the process to be utilized in developing a new strategic plan for 2021-2025 will be done in 2020. One of the highlights of this project will be the Gateway Plan proposed for land on the east side of the new I-90 and Route 47 interchange in future years.

By the way, more than 100 new homes have been built in the Talamore area north of Huntley, and the new MORE microbrewery will open its brewery and restaurant in a former auto dealership at 13980 Automall Drive. And finally, General RV, a booming recreational vehicle business, is on its fourth improvement project on its newly-acquired 16 acres at the former Huntley Outlet Center site.

All of this in a community that in the late 1990s, when Del Webb came to Huntley to build its first active adult community outside the Sun Belt, was a farm community with a population of 2,500. Today, the population is more than 28,000, and growing.

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