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Politics & Government

Agreements at Work During Airport Expansion

Lake in the Hills expansion plans require notifying Crystal Lake of zoning changes.

When the Village of Lake in the Hills wanted to rezone more than 64.5 acres of land for expansion of its airport that borders Crystal Lake, it requested the city’s review of its plans before scheduling its public hearing on April 18. 

Lake in the Hills and has an intergovernmental agreement requiring each municipality to inform the other when rezoning land within 300 feet of each others’ boundaries. In fact, boundary agreements are common throughout Illinois and can contain any number of stipulations depending on the circumstances. 

Crystal Lake Planning and Economic Director Michelle Rentzsch said such agreements are usually created when undeveloped land exists along borders in order to open a dialogue between communities when developments are being proposed.

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“A lot of those boundary line agreements are based on the Facility Planning Area, which is where the community is required to extend sanitary sewer service,” she said. 

The city’s agreement with Woodstock is a good example of how these agreements are used, she said. Due to the large amount of undeveloped land between the two cities, each has committed to extend the service to certain areas. 

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“Our boundary line follows that line also because that’s why people develop in that community—for water and sewer within city boundaries,” she said. 

Such agreements can remain affective as long as 20 years and usually are discontinued when borders are built up with development, as in the case of the Village of Cary. 

“We’re pretty much all built up along our borders anyway,” she said. “We said there’s no reason for one anymore.” 

Rentzsch said the agreements allow communities to comment or even object to a neighbor’s land proposals along border lines, but in her 15 years with the city she’s never heard of it happening. 

“Usually, it’s stuff that meets zoning requirements,” she said. 

The city’s agreement with Lake in the Hills airport is similar to its separate agreement with the village itself. Lake in the Hills petitioned Crystal Lake to rezone five parcels the village already owns bordering the city to AD-1, or Airport District 1, which is the zoning that covers the airport now. 

Lake in the Hills Community Development Director Dan Olson said the zoning change will allow necessary safety expansion projects which will bring all land in the runway safety zone under control of the airport, including relocating the aircraft parking apron, aircraft fueling system and airport administrative office which are currently directly in the path of the parallel taxiway. 

Pyott Road has already been relocated from the end of the runway to meet FAA standards and improve the safety of vehicles on the road and aircraft at the airport. 

Olson said the airport expansion has been going on since 2002, with planning the improvements beginning in the 1990s. 

“The program is focused on safety improvements, not expansion of the airport facilities,” he said. “The additional space is required to bring the facilities up to FAA standards.”

There are no plans to change the length of the 3,000-foot runway or the capacity of the pavements, he said.   

The airport is located south of Rakow Road and east of Pyott Road. It is a designated FAA reliever airport for Chicago O’Hare Airport. It has 139 based aircraft and 60,000 annual operations.

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