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Cell towers bump three homes from proposed Batavia subdivision

A developer in Batavia will proceed with three fewer houses in the planned Winding Creek subdivision after failing to reach an agreement with the owner of two cell towers on the property.

The Batavia City Council this week unanimously agreed to move forward with an amendment to the annexation agreement approved in March.

The proposal is for an area west of Randall Road and north of McKee Street in an unincorporated area of Kane County.

"A piece of land had to be carved out of the annexation," planning and zoning officer Joel Strassman said.

The three single-family lots to be excluded in phase one of the development are on the west side of Branson Drive, just north of McKee Street, according to the board packet. It would reduce the number of houses in the subdivision to 110. The 88 planned multifamily homes and townhouses remain unchanged.

The amendment will create a half-acre unincorporated "island" to accommodate the cell towers that would "not alter the character of the development," according to the documents. Proposed Geneva Park District property within the subdivision would be reconfigured to allow for the change.

The developer, M/I Homes, originally intended to include the cell towers as part of the annexation but, due to provisions and requirements of the cell tower lease, couldn't reach an agreement.

Without those three homes, it will "look really nice" and provide "a bigger entrance" to the park district section, Alderman Martin Callahan said.

By Batavia's standards, the Winding Creek subdivision is a big project, Strassman said following the meeting. But the cell tower issue is "minor in the grand scheme of things."

Strassman said the city could annex that half-acre in the future.

"A municipality can annex property it surrounds," he said. "We call them doughnut holes."

Strassman said the city wants to close several of those holes.

"Having a doughnut hole is not ideal for all the other positives we can draw from it," he said. "We have the ability to annex (these areas), even if the owner doesn't like it."

The doughnut hole in the proposed Winding Creek subdivision is on the city's radar.

"We don't have a timeline of when we would do that," he said. "The city has made its plans known on this piece (of land)."

The city council will take up the amendment at its Monday, Sept. 16 meeting.

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