Barrington begins buying property for Lake Zurich Road realignment project
Barrington on Tuesday made the first three of nine property purchases associated with the nearly $3.5 million Lake Zurich Road realignment project, but not everyone in the project's path is on board with the plan.
The village cut checks to three homeowners who live along Berry Road just west of its intersection with Northwest Highway to buy a portion of their front yards.
Greg Summers, the village's director of development services, said village officials are in negotiations with four other homeowners near there for similar purchases. The village will use the land to widen Berry Road and add a left-turn lane at its intersection with Northwest Highway.
The village board approved deals with the homeowners at 441, 443 and 446 E. Berry Road on Monday. Attempts to contact the three homeowners were unsuccessful Tuesday.
While the village is making progress on the west side of Northwest Highway, the story is not the same across the street.
The two other properties the village is working to purchase are owned by Citizen's Park and the Barrington Area Public Library. In addition to widening Berry Road, the project will shift Lake Zurich Road south to the intersection of Berry Road and Northwest Highway, which also serves as the entrance to the Barrington Area Public Library. To do that, the village needs land used by the library as a parking lot.
The village has budgeted about $1.7 million to complete the nine property purchases. Summers wouldn't say how much had been spent on the first round of acquisitions, but he said the land the village needs to buy from the library will be the most expensive.
The library's board of trustees has several concerns, including about the noise the road might generate and how the project would affect what the library might want to do with the property in the future, said Executive Director Detlev Pansch.
"That is currently not a plan that the library is supporting," Pansch said.
Pansch said they have no further meetings scheduled with the village at this point.
The realignment project is seen by the village as a precursor to the much larger and more expensive Route 14 Underpass project, estimated to cost $59 million. That project would reroute Northwest Highway underneath the CN railroad tracks so vehicle traffic wouldn't be affected by passing freight trains.
The village determined years ago that the current Lake Zurich Road intersection had a high rate of accidents and low visibility, a bad combination that wouldn't go well with the planned underpass.
The realignment is fully funded, largely through federal and state sources. The village will pay $348,700.