Crest Hill planners start comprehensive‑plan update; residents flag water, downtown and Broadway as top priorities

Crest Hill planners and commissioners opened a special March 9 meeting to begin an audit‑and‑update of the city’s 2014 comprehensive plan. Josh Kuntz, a planner with House Levine, told the group the update will be a targeted process using current demographic data, public outreach and an implementation strategy rather than an automatic full rewrite.

"We're gonna spend most of the evening on a listening session workshop exercise," Kuntz said as staff outlined a roughly six‑to‑eight month timeline for establishing priorities, drafting updates and holding a public open house.

Mitch, the workshop facilitator, guided a round‑robin exercise in which about two dozen commissioners and residents named the community's top concerns. Participants produced a list of about 33 issues that the project team will incorporate into outreach findings and the draft plan.

During the tally of top priorities, participants highlighted three recurring themes: keeping water costs down; creating a downtown or central gathering space; and promoting new development and redevelopment along Broadway and Route 30. Kuntz confirmed those items will guide early plan updates and supporting analyses.

Commissioners and residents also raised transportation and access problems — including limited access to nearby expressways and an interest in improved access to Weber Road — as well as zoning updates, business attraction and retention, pedestrian connections and beautification measures such as better lighting on Route 30.

Participants proposed a range of specific projects to address these priorities: a transportation or truck‑routing study, a connected pathway network that could accommodate pedestrians and small vehicles, targeted efforts to preserve and improve the Hillcrest Shopping Center, and the long‑term idea of a multiuse sports/entertainment facility plus a nearby hotel to spur restaurants and other services.

Nate Delbert, a city council member and lifelong resident, noted the need to coordinate short‑ and long‑term vision and zoning. "I've been on the council since 2021," Delbert said while describing community experience the plan should reflect.

At the end of the session, the project team described outreach tools that will inform the update: a live project website and an online community survey organized around housing, transportation, parks and commercial development. Staff said survey responses and the worksheets from tonight’s meeting will be summarized without participant names and folded into the draft plan for public review.

A resident, Linda Dike, used the public‑comment period to press the commission on neighborhood upkeep. "There's so much trash there," Dike said of a Ward 1 neighborhood she identified on Plainfield Road, adding she had documented more than 70 violations on a small set of streets and asking for stepped‑up code enforcement.

No formal votes or motions were taken. The meeting closed with staff committing to compile tonight’s input into an outreach summary and to return a draft for public comment; the session was adjourned at 8:12 p.m.

What happens next: project staff will combine survey results and tonight’s worksheets into an outreach summary and use that, together with updated demographic data, to produce a draft comprehensive plan for a future community open house and comment period.