The McLean County Regional Planning Commission [MCRPC] held a meeting Tuesday night at Heartland Community College and heard from about 20 local residents after being met with blowback about their ideas for municipal growth.
Officials from the Town of Normal and City of Bloomington were also in attendance.
Part of the pushback was related to what some say was a closed-door process that failed to give members of the public adequate time to respond before publishing a draft copy of a Strategic Land Use Plan showing development at the fringes of Bloomington and Normal.
MCRPC said they hope the tentative plan will help municipalities decide how to grow.
The consensus among residents in attendance was that the town should have first gone to the public and/or outside stakeholders for review.
Constituents were most concerned about the plan envisioning large industrial development for north Normal, west Normal and southeast Bloomington.
MCRPC executive director Raymond Lai said the expansion blueprints are not set in stone.
“This public open house is one of those ways that we try to collect public input and whatnot, so we can take into consideration what the content should be,” Lai said.
MCRPC community planner Anthony Baumann gave a short presentation detailing the Strategic Land Use Plan, saying the MCPRC intends to publish a new draft in response to this round of public comments.
“We expect the revised draft to be made by mid-September, and the final version of this document will be completed by the end of October,” Baumann said.
Kathy Petty of Bloomington challenged the MCRPC, saying areas where industrial expansion had been drafted would harm natural habitats such as an eagle habitat on the outskirts of Bloomington.
“I am very curious as to what considerations you have made for this area down in southeast Bloomington. There’s no infrastructure down there—everything will have to be built—roads, sewers, all that,” Petty said.
Petty, along with other anonymous commenters, expressed concern for potential environmental drainage into Kickapoo Creek nearby where multiple residents at the meeting said they reside.
“Do you go out and look at [these areas]?” Petty asked. “Have you gone out and observed what kind of wildlife habitat that is, what kind of runoff issues you’ll have [or] what kind of infrastructure you’ll have to put in this area? I think there are other places that are already close to Bloomington-Normal that have infrastructure already in place.”
Petty said the idea for a bypass in the same area would also be obsolete, as the population of the Twin Cities is not large enough for additional highways.
“It would be very costly for taxpayers to fund that. I think that a lot of elected officials will look at this plan and take it as the truth and not even consider their own feelings,” Petty said.
Petty’s daughter, Angie Masters, said she hopes comments from the public are truly taken into consideration.
“I think because of where I live, I’m most concerned about that development on the southeast side of town. Coming here tonight, I now understand why maybe that final picture looks the way that it [does],” Masters said.
Masters said she would have done things differently if she had been at all involved in the creation of the Strategic Land Use Plan draft.
“I would’ve maybe approached it differently and started by getting some community input, but that’s not how this process works and that’s fine,” Masters said.
Director of planning and zoning for the Town of Normal, Mercy Davison, said she felt the meeting to gather public comment was quite productive.
Davison shared what she hopes all local residents come to understand throughout the process for utilizing the Strategic Land Use Plan.
“This is a very long-range vision of what land use could look like over many years, and for the Town of Normal, the idea that we would have additional industrial growth on the west side of Normal or the north side of Normal seems logical to us,” Davison said. “Keep in mind, this is long-term, so no one’s saying that this would all happen at once—that it would happen quickly. It’s just that right now, this is the kind of land use we envision happening.”
“This is a really beneficial process for the community,” Davison continued. “The success of a business like Rivian is helpful in diversifying our economy. Just having a stronger industrial base is helpful for a local economy in many ways, and so if that comes to fruition, that would be helpful all around.”
The next public comment session regarding the MCRPC’s Strategic Land Use Plan will take place from 6-8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8, at the Lexington Community Center, 207 Main St., Lexington. Four more public comment meetings will take place in total.
