Land Swap To Pave Way For New Algonquin Municipal Lot

The Algonquin Board Tuesday approved a complicated three-way land swap among the Village, the Illinois Department of Transportation and the McHenry County Conservation District so that when the dust from Route 31 Bypass construction finally settles, everyone will own the pieces of the area around Towne Park and the old Toastmaster factory that make sense. The main document alone runs to 180 pages and the detail includes things like the Village's right to cross the Prairie Bike path so it can mow the grass on the other side.

Village president John Schmitt said the swaps have taken 10 months' work to make everything come out right. From residents' standpoints, the important part will be construction of a new 110-stall municipal parking lot to the west of St. John's Church and School at the end of Railroad Street.  Village Manager Bill Ganek said the new lot will serve the Downtown where plans are being made now for improvements once Route 31 no longer runs through its middle.

In a related move, the Board passed an ordinance banning drinking wells in the area east of the former Toastmaster site to the river.  There aren't any there now and no one's planning one.  Ganek said the ordinance was just to keep the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency happy about remediation of contamination at the Toastmaster site. 

In the pic:  Closings on all the land transactions the Algonquin Board approved Tuesday are set for Friday.