Joliet council committee gives advisory OK for Division Street warehouse

A Joliet City Council committee gave tentative approval this week for a Division Street warehouse project that faces opposition from neighbors because of additional truck traffic.

MWI Property Group wants to develop the 31-acre site located behind the Joliet Commons shopping center that includes Target and other stores.

Representatives from the group said they want to build two industrial buildings – one for a warehouse and the other for a possible assembly plant – on the site at 3801 Division St.

“We really want to target manufacturers,” MWI Development Manager Patrick Swiszcz told the Land Use and Economic Development Committee on Wednesday.

The project was brought to the committee for a first look before MWI decides whether to apply to the city for rezoning.

The committee’s 2-0 vote was only advisory under a new process in which the city wants certain projects reviewed by a council committee before proceeding to the city’s Plan Commission or Zoning Board of Appeals and eventually going to the full City Council for a vote.

“Truck congestion and bringing additional trucks on Division Street is a hot topic,” Swiscz told the committee.

He said splitting the site between warehouse use and manufacturing would potentially lighten the truck load.

The site is now zoned B-3 for general business, which would allow a warehouse with higher grade building materials. MWI wants it rezoned to I-1 for light industrial, which would allow for conventional warehouse construction and manufacturing on the site.

Two residents from the neighboring Pinecrest subdivision told the committee the project would add trucks to an area already overloaded with semitrailers.

“This project raises substantial apprehension amongst myself and my neighbors,” Melissa Cowger told the committee. “Division Street is already overrun with semi-truck traffic.”

The road is a heavily used truck route that connects the Crest Hill Business Park, also located along Division Street, with U.S. Route 30 at one of the main entrances to the Louis Joliet Mall. A former Toys ‘R Us warehouse, now used for warehousing by another operator, is located along Hennepin Drive and kitty corner from the proposed site.

Resident Steve Boyd called the current truck traffic “horrendous,” saying it can take three traffic lights to make a left turn off of U.S. 30 at the mall intersection because of the line of semitrailers at certain times of the day.

Steve Gulden, a private consultant working with Oak Brook-based MWI on the project, said the current zoning already allows for a warehouse on the site.

MWI has proposed two options. One is 388,000-square-foot warehouse only. The other is the two buildings – one at 231,000 square feet and the other at 153,000 square feet.

“We can build this monster with a little bit of brick,” Gulden said, referring to what he said can be built without rezoning, “or a product that is better for the neighborhood and better for the developer.”

Committee members Pat Mudron and Cesar Guerrero voted in favor of the plan saying they favored the two-building concept. Chairman Cesar Cardenas was absent.