75th Street Widening

The position of the Mayor and the City Council on DuPage County’s plan for improvements to 75th Street through the City of Darien: The Mayor and City Council approved a resolution stating that the County’s 75th Street proposal dated June 18th, 2010, is acceptable to the City pending an additional follow up meeting between the County and Darien residents and additional review by the City when more detailed engineering is available. Mayor Weaver recalled that the City has been in opposition of the County’s plan to widen 75th Street since the early 1990s. “Until now the County has not provided the City with a 75th Street plan that is acceptable to the Community. Previous County plans would have had a major negative impact on the character of Darien and also specifically on those properties that are adjacent to 75th Street including homes, schools, churches, and parks”.

DuPage County submitted a revised preliminary plan in 2009 and it was reviewed by the City. Darien submitted a number of questions and comments including an independent review by the City’s traffic engineer. The County revised the 2009 plan by instituting a number of the recommendations made by the City.

City Administrator Bryon Vana said “the Council approved the resolution with certain conditions including:

that the current proposal dated June 18th, 2010 is acceptable to the City pending an additional follow up meeting between the County and Darien residents and additional review by the City when more detailed engineering is available
that the City requests the County to resurface 75th Street as part of its annual maintenance program due to the poor condition of the existing pavement
that the County provides quarterly updates to the City regarding the status of the project.
if the County does not begin the Construction within 5 years from approval of this resolution the City requests the County updates traffic counts for the project area.”

Mayor Weaver acknowledged that “75th Street is a County road and the City has no direct control over the plans. However, the City would vigorously continue to oppose any plans that negatively affect the community and represent the community as we did against Com Ed and Argonne”.

If you have additional comments or recommendations you would like forwarded to DuPage County, please e-mail them to Dan Gombac, Director of Municipal Services, at dgombac@darienil.gov