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Chicago Tribune
September 20, 2002
Landowners say process of IDOT's unconstitutional
By William Presecky
Tribune staff reporter
More than 50 of the roughly 100 owners of property located in a 36-mile-long transportation corridor that the state
wants to protect for a possible outer beltway along Chicago's far western fringe Thursday mounted a legal challenge
to the constitutionality of the controversial plan.
Big Rock resident Marvel Davis, an outspoken critic of the state's plan, leads the list of plaintiffs in a lawsuit
filed in Kendall County Circuit Court against the Illinois Department of Transportation and its chief, Kirk Brown.
The suit seeks to have the court void the corridor protection map for the so-called Prairie Parkway, the proposed
link between Interstate Highways 88 and 80 through Kane, Kendall and Grundy Counties.
Timothy Dwyer, a St. Charles lawyer representing the property owners, said the suit may be the first test of a
longstanding corridor-protection process that has been used across the state by IDOT.
Transportation Secretary Kirk Brown said he didn't know whether the state's corridor-protection statute had ever
been tested in court.
Dwyer contends the process by which IDOT places restrictions on private property for an indefinite period without
due process and without compensation constitutes an unconstitutional "taking" of property .
According to the suit, "The effect of the statute is to deny ... [the plaintiffs'] constitutional right to
construct, develop or rehabilitate anything on the property for an unknown, arbitrary time period wholly within
the discretion of [IDOT]."
The state recorded its corridor-protection map July 31. It includes roughly 190 pieces of property held by more
than 100 private and corporate owners.
Dwyer said that there is no language in the state statute allowing for corridor protection that gives Davis and
the other plaintiffs a means of contesting or appealing Brown's decision to include their property.
The 75-year-old Davis said she was driven to community activism over the last year because of the state's plan
to bisect her farm, which has been in her family for generations. It became apparent to her soon after the state
unveiled its proposed corridor in December that "this probably had to be tested in the courts," she said.
"Let the fight begin. Let us test it and find out," said Davis. "At least this way, we will know
we did everything that we could."
Davis is a founding member of the Citizens Against the Sprawlway, which claims the proposed Prairie Parkway would
destroy thousands of acres of prime farmland and promote sprawl in Kane and Kendall Counties.
Besides raising constitutional issues, the suit alleges that Brown violated state statutes by designating a corridor
for protection without first determining whether a road is needed.
The suit claims state law "mandates that a determination be made that in order to record a map of reservation,
the proposed roadway must be needed."
A feasibility study as to the environmental impacts and need for the proposed beltway is to begin in October and
take a few years to complete.
"I can't comment on the substance of the suit," said IDOT spokesman Richard Adorjan. "But there
is not a major infrastructure project that we undertake of this nature that doesn't generate a suit of some kind."