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Plan group recommends Sho-Deen plan

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DELAVAN TOWNSHIP — Plans for a downsized Sho-Deen Homes development in Delavan Township moved forward Tuesday night after the town plan commission unanimously recommended a preliminary plat with 74 lots on 39 acres.

The Chicago-area developer has wrangled for years with plans for developing a subdivision on the northwest side of the Delavan Lake Inlet. The town board will consider the plans for the development near Mound Road and County F North at its April 17 meeting, board Chairman Ryan Simons said.

"This is really just looking at the concept—the lot sizes, the road layout and making sure it doesn't deviate from any of the town ordinances, which it doesn't," he said. "It meets or exceeds all of the restrictions the town has for its subdivision guidelines."

All lots in the single-family home subdivision will be at least 15,000 square feet or larger, he said.

"Most of them are larger than that," he said. "That's one of the big complaints that the town heard from citizens when we had open meetings and discussion on future developments is that town residents were very much against the smaller lots that were being proposed" in the last proposal.

The proposal is one segment of a 623-home development approved by the town plan commission in January.

After years of discussion, the commission and Sho-Deen in January came to agreement on a variety of issues including run-off control, open space, building density and lot size.

The plan for 623 homes was poised to go to the full town board later in January, but the Delavan City Council approved a resolution and ordinance exerting its extra-territorial zoning rights, effectively putting a two-year freeze on the project.

To move forward, an extra-territorial zoning committee consisting of three town representatives and three city representatives would have to meet and negotiate a new plan. That meeting hadn't been set up before Sho-Deen proposed a new, smaller development.

The 39-acre plan approved Tuesday is exempt from the city's extra-territorial zoning regulations because the area won't need to be rezoned and won't require a conditional-use permit. Therefore, it wouldn't need permission from the city or from an extra-territorial zoning committee.

After the board considers the plan, Simons said the next steps would be negotiating a developers agreement and approval of the final plat, which will need approval from the city of Delavan.