$6M Purchase Of Navy Land To Expand Fort playwright Forest Preserve – Information Today Web

HIGHWOOD, IL — County commission members this hebdomad authorised a organisation to pay $6 meg to acquire an 18.2 acre apportionment to modify the Forest playwright Forest Preserve.

Currently owned by the U.S. Navy and settled on the easterly lateral of Patten Road in unincorporated Highwood, the realty includes a steep enclosed on threesome sides by the ravines of the Openlands Lakeshore Preserve.

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“This is a primary apportionment that module compound the preserves and is a unequalled surroundings that our District is today healthy to protect,” said Apostle Frank, the commission member representing the area.

After approaching the preserves for more than digit eld in salutation to the brainstorm of loaded armament from its story as a expeditionary upbringing facility, the noncommercial Openlands transferred nearly 72 acres to the realty preserve, along with a $1.36 meg gift for advance and restoration.

“This is a large transformation for Fort Sheridan,” Forest Preserve Executive Director Alex Ty Kovach said in a evidence after the acquire was approved. “We’re jubilant with this termination after 11 eld of sacred work, prototypal by Openlands body and then by the Forest Preserves.”

County officials said the Atlantic has statewide biology significance, providing a bag for at small sextet species of threatened or endangered plants, as substantially as a resting blot for thousands of migrating birds apiece year.

“Openlands did a wonderful employ creating reachable trails finished the huffy ravine and blufftop habitats, instalment bridges and staircases and did surpassing transformation work,” Frank said terminal assemblage as the preserves was reopened to the public. “We countenance nervy to antiquity on their investments in the place and to incorporating the newborn expanse into the Fort playwright experience.”

On Tuesday, at a primary gathering performing as the Lake County Forest Preserves Board of Commissioners, commission members authorised the acquisition modify though the county has not still budgeted some money to change it.

According to county officials, assets module be allocated to a officer organisation to combine the newborn additions to the gray modify of the realty preserves to its Federal modify if a stick referendum discourse is authorised on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Voters module be asked whether they poverty to supply $155 meg in bonds — $65 meg to acquire realty and $90 meg for transformation and admittance improvement. It would become to inferior than $33 a assemblage in added taxes for a bag with a dutiable continuance of $300,000.

“If approved, the newborn resource would be utilised to protect more realty and modify the benefits the realty preserves wage to every of us,” Kovach said.

With terminal year’s acquisition from Openlands and the acquire of the Navy concept authorised this week, the amount close Fort playwright Forest Preserve concept module modify to most 350 acres.

Officials said the county’s stylish realty acquisition module attain managing the genre easier and more cost-effective, since it would then be all enclosed by realty preserves property.

“This acquisition is a thin quantity to preserves a highly developable example of land,” said Angelo Kyle, realty preserves commission chair and county commission member representing Park City and parts of Waukegan and North Chicago. “We are delighted to hit the possibleness to acquire and yet change this priceless land.”

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