Path to connect far East Side of Aurora to Naperville park
One path to connect the side of the extreme-east of Aurora to a park in Naperville is currently at the first stages of planning.
The three -quarter of Mile trail is set one day to run alongside Wolf’s Crossing Road from Boulevard Hoffman in the Lakewood Valley district, crosses the neighboring railway and connects to Normantown Road, which takes place along Wolf’s Crossing Community Park in Naperville.
The project takes place in the jurisdictions, but it is led by the district of Will County Forest Preserve.
Aurora Ald. Edward Bugg, 9th Ward, described the “very exciting” project when he briefly presented it during a meeting of the Aurora municipal council last month. The path will help residents safely get started in “a very good park,” he said.
There are many people who live in the north and west of the region, as well as numerous subdivisions on the side of Naperville, but it is “quite dangerous” which moves east to the west along the crossing route at the moment, according to Matthew Novander, chief architect of the landscape of the Will County Forest.
He called the 10-foot multi-purpose path, which should be separated from the Wolf passage road by a sidewalk and a five-foot clearing, a “critical connection”. Currently, the road has no sidewalk in the section where the path is planned to go.
The Forest Preserve District currently estimates that the project will cost around $ 2.7 million in total, although it has received a federal subsidy which should cover 80% of the cost, said Novander.
Currently, the project is at the end of phase one engineering, he said, which included an open day on September 11 at the Montgomery branch of the Oswego public library to obtain comments from neighboring residents.
According to Novander, most of those who came to this meeting were fully supported.
The project has been underway since at least 2020, that is to say at this moment that he said that the District of Will County Forest Preserve did a feasibility study, then began to reach out to the partners to “fill this gap”.
The project consists in connecting several communities, and the district of the forest reserve “acts as glue for the moment,” said Novander.
The second phase of engineering should start towards the start of the new year, that is to say that engineering documents are starting to be created, he said.
The best scenario is that the engineering of phase two begins in January, then takes a year, said Novander, which would put the construction in the spring of 2027 at the earliest.
He said, however, that the railway crossing is “a bit of a joker”, so that the calendar can easily be pushed back for months or even a year.
rsmith@chicagogne.com
