Carden Springs, a 39 acre mixed residential development, was approved by Normal Town Council with no opposition after the developer Fairlawn Capital made it a point to meet several times with neighboring Wintergreen subdivision residents to work out any potential conflicts.
Council member Scott Preston talked with Cities 92.9 about the cooperation. “One of the things that is a real positive about this development that was approved unanimously by council tonight is the process with which the development team went about it from the beginning,” Preston said.
“We have seen in Normal, and I think this is reflective across the country where neighborhoods that are near new development sites, neighborhoods and residents becoming more vocal, more organized and more interested in what’s going on not only in their subdivision but in the cornfield next to it that’s coming up for development and the developers tonight engaged both residents of Wintergreen and Wintergreen Villas from the start,” Preston added.
Carden Springs is 477 unit development that will feature townhomes and apartments. Construction of the project will occur in phases over a five year period starting in the Spring of 2023. The developer will construct a northbound left turn lane on the south leg of the Beech St. and Towanda Ave. intersection to address an increase in traffic expected to make that movement.
Fairlawn Capital Partner, Jason Barickman talked with us about specific accommodations that were made as a result of neighborhood input. “We have gone through kind of a lengthy public dialogue just to get to this point and primarily speaking to the neighbors who are adjacent to this project and kind of hearing what their ideas and questions and concerns might be,” Barickman said.
“One of the questions was the type of buildings that we would build. Barickman explained. Primarily of these 29 or so buildings they are all two or three story buildings. And it was a mix. So one of the questions posed to us by the neighbors was could we position those two story buildings sort of adjacent to them which is an accommodation we were able to make just by kind of moving some of those buildings around.”
“The folks at Wintergreen had particularly asked that we really accommodate some setbacks. And so rather than looking at what were the town minimum setbacks we really looked at what made since. The result was we are probably three times the setback required by the town which is again good for the project because our project has lots of green space.”
As a result of these two accommodations all buildings that are adjacent to Beech St. or Wintergreen will be two story buildings. The buildings next to Wintergreen will be townhomes. The three story buildings will be on what then can loosely be described as the northeast part of the property. By providing the greater setbacks the developer was able to move their trail into that space and more trees will be planted in that area.
