Grundy Co. Board Approves Special Use Petition For Construction of Solar Farm Along Gore Road
A special use petition for a solar farm to be constructed near Morris was discussed by the Grundy County Board last week.
Details about the project were provided by Grundy County Development Director Alec Macdonald.
“Gore Road Community Energy Initiative LLC is requesting a special use permit for development of a ground mounted solar energy facility utilizing thirty seven and a half acres of a hundred and fifty five point four seven acre parcel. The address being seventeen forty five Gore Road. A property is currently owned by Smith Land Holdings and will be leased from GRCEI for an initial twenty year lease option contract the site is in Saratoga Township and is currently zoned agricultural. A location is adjacent to interstate eighty as previously mentioned shares a common border with the city of Morris. The anticipated generation shall be six point one six megawatts. the maximum panel height is designed to be about ten feet. construction of access roads, fencing, transformer pads, inverters, and associated electrical cabling are shown within the site plan as attached, and they are in compliance to the county’s vegetative and landscaping ordinance. Access Road has been preliminary approved and will be located on the west side of the development of Ashton Road.”
He said the city of Morris is objecting to the project.
“City of Morris submitted the official letter of opposition on March twelfth twenty twenty five asserting the proposed solar firm is inconsistent with the city’s comprehensive plan. City argues that subject partial is designated for limited industrial and commercial use and that permitting the solar facility contradicts the established land use policies of the City of Morris. Additionally, the city contends that approving the project limits its ability to extend municipal services and infringe upon industrial and commercial growth on potential adjacent properties. City of Morris was in hopes of annexing them as Mike Coffin would speak of earlier, just to reconfigure the layout of that facility.”
Morris City Planner Mike Hoffman said the city is objecting the project and had this to say during the public comment section of the meeting.
“Morris has put forth an objection to this project. It’s one, the city would really like to annex this into the to the city so that we’ve got all that land available for future development, and we would like to work with the applicant to reconfigure it. We’re concerned about taking up all the frontage along. I think that that that visibility and that frontage has got some significant value to businesses. If you look up and down eighty, you’ll see lots of businesses with their sign on their buildings, and that visibility is an important marketing thing that we think i something to be able to preserve. So we like to work with them to reconfigure the site a little bit and make it more practical, and ideally annex the property into the city so that we can have all the additional land available for light manufacturing or light industrial development as it’s shown on our comprehensive plan.”
Macdonald said the project received a negative recommendation by the Zoning Board of Appeals in April with a vote of three to two, however it was approved by the Land Use Committee at their meeting in May.
“If approved tonight, the final recommendation of the special use permit includes twenty nine conditions addressing various concerns such as stormwater management, compliance of building codes and electrical codes, utilizing utilization of Grundy County certified installers to perform the work, insurers, landscaping, buffers, and fencing, construction hours, dust control, pre construction meetings with fire and highway officials. it requires a full as built plan and annual maintenance reports. It requires an approved decommissioning plan and escrow bonds. in closing this evening, this project had its initial review during the April fifteenth Zoning Board of Appeals and included evaluation of all eight LaSalle factors with a unanimous vote of non concern. But while the Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously of non concern, it issued a negative recommendation by a vote of three to two to the Grundy County Land Use Committee. At Land Use Committee on May twenty eighth, the committee members considered all information as presented that evening and forwarded it with a positive recommendation with a vote of six yeses and one abstain to the full county board this evening.”
Grundy County Board member Eric Rasmussen, who is also an area farmer, said he farms land in that area.
“It’s very good soil, although it has about fifteen pockets of lower parts of the fields in it. So if it’s a wet spring, there’s substantial crop loss. On a dry year like this year, I got everything planted. Everything is really good, but it’s kind of an anomaly that it’s so dry. I just wanted to say dealing with Vincent and his team since they contacted me. They don’t they’ve done everything they said they were going to do. They…tracked all the tile lines. They’ve been really good to work with. So I’m still going to abstain tonight because of no conflict of interest, but I’ve been very impressed with them. And they’ve if I was to vote, it would be, in favor of them.”
Grundy County State’s Attorney Russ Baker was asked to give his advice on the special use petition.
“The only ruling we have so far in the siting statute is from Judge Sobol, who’s basically saying that if they’re in compliance with all of the land use requirements, if all the boxes are checked as Alec says, the language of the statute says you must approve it. And Judge Sobol’s ruling pretty much doesn’t take into consideration any objections from municipalities within a mile and a half or little cell factors. And in the cases that we had in front of Sobol, they were against these low cell factors and the objections were very strong and very salient. And I don’t think this case is near as strong a case as that…for approving for not approving. I think based on this presentation, there’s no articulable reason not to other than Morris has got a lukewarm objection. And that’s not enough clearly by the judge’s ruling and the status of that statute.”
Grundy County Board member Joe Schiavone was the only one to vote no.
“We talked about Judge Sobol’s judgment basically kicking it down to the appellate court. And so I think it’s important that, you know, Morris has said that it doesn’t meet their comprehensive plan. And I think that it’s important that we’ve talked about our comprehensive plan again. Every time these solar farms come up, we are woefully behind times on our comprehensive plan. I don’t think that…it is in the county’s best interest for us to move forward on any solar projects until we have our comprehensive plan in place. And so I’m I just want to make sure that we’re all on the same page with that.”
The final vote was 13 yes and one no while Rasmussen abstained.