Hastert, state push for freeway across farms

BIG ROCK, Ill. -- Supporters of a proposed "Prairie Parkway" say the freeway would bring big growth to small towns and farming areas 55 miles west of Chicago -- exactly what many residents fear.

U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert's acknowledges that the 33-mile north-south freeway linking Interstates 80 and 88 would displace some rural homeowners, but he pledges to deliver the funds for what he calls a vision for the future.

Then there is Marvel Davis, who calls it "Hastert's disastert." The farm widow lives on her husband's family's 1840s homestead in Big Rock, where neighbors still harvest the corn and soybeans.

"I am 74 years old," she says. "I am battling this road for the sake of this community that I have lived in all those years."

A vision of the past

Her dining room walls are covered with taped-up maps of the three possible alignments, including the state's preference to carve a 70-acre triangle from her 200-acre farm.

She drives around her town with a vision of the past. She points out the home of a 92-year-old farmer who just died, and whose funeral most of the town attended.

"We're not a perfect community, but it's a mighty good place to live because people do care about you," she says.

She fears roadside commercialism.

"The minute that center line is fixed, then the developers descend," she says. "I might as well sell that triangle to McDonald's or Menard's."

There is no trace of suburbia in Big Rock today. Many of the homes are old Victorians. Davis says the town exists because farmers retired and clustered their homes. The most visible business is a farm implement dealer.

The Illinois Department of Transportation says even this hamlet probably will need a freeway. Currently Chicago's farthest-flung north-south freeway is Interstate 355, some 30 miles to the east.

IDOT traffic counts at Sugar Grove -- seven miles east of Big Rock -- found 9,100 cars daily in 1991; 14,700 in 1999. Highway backers say freeway truckers skirting Chicago would add to that.

One proposal scrapped

No traffic study has yet established the freeway's need. But state officials want to mark a line to give landowners fair warning. Owners could sell to the state.

The state already has scrapped one proposal -- the Fox River Freeway a dozen miles east -- because development got in the way.

"We don't know how long" a study will take, says Tom Sancken, a planning engineer with the Illinois Department of Transportation, "and in that time development could preclude any corridor."

The department is reviewing public comments.

Some skeptics say they're only opposed to the hasty proposal without supporting data.

"Why the heck do we need this freeway?" says Brook McDonald, executive director of The Conservation Fund, of nearby Naperville. "Obviously we need roads." But, "It's always, 'Let's build another freeway.' People are getting sick of it."

Hastert says he has watched suburbia spread from Chicago all his life.

"Growth is going to happen," he says. "You have to have a vision." That goes even if it's a jolt to life on the unpeopled plains.

"I empathize with those people, especially if it's going through their farms," Hastert says. Still, without it, "you end up with gridlock."

By percentage, Kane and Kendall counties grew faster than Illinois in the last decade. The 2000 census showed Kane growing 27 percent to 404,000 since 1990 and Kendall growing 38 percent to 55,000. The state grew less than 9 percent, to 12.4 million.

But most of the population remains east of the corridor, where Aurora accounts for a quarter of Kane County's population.

Kane County wants to keep it that way. County commissioners passed a resolution opposing the state's alignment because it bisects a county farm-protection zone. Chairman Mike McCoy wants the highway farther east.

McCoy says Kaneville and Big Rock have just a few hundred residents. "There's certainly not a need today. Those are two townships that are committed to the agricultural life."