Joliet OKs Plainfield Road gas station despite neighbors’ objections

A new gas station is coming to Plainfield Road to the dismay of neighbors who wanted it stopped and the relief of landowners who said the tax bill on the undeveloped property had sapped their finances.

The gas station across the street from the Crystal Lawns neighborhood will include fuel pumps for semitrailers, packaged liquor sales and gambling machines – all of which residents said was too much.

“You’re playing with our livelihood,” Leslie Grimes, who lives across the road from the gas station site, told the Joliet City Council before it voted on Tuesday. “We have gas stations, liquor stores in abundance at both ends.”

The council, however, voted 9-0 for the project, which required them to amend an annexation agreement for the land that prohibited sale of packaged liquors.

Grimes pointed to the number of gas stations and retailers already selling liquor in the area, which is near the Louis Joliet Mall and in one of the primary retail districts of the city.

Even so, real estate agent Bill Caton called the location on the west end of the Millenium Square strip mall a “no man’s land for retail” as he pointed to 17 years of failed effort to develop the site.

Caton has handled the property for Allen and Susan Winter, who inherited the land and told the council for two days about how it has ruined them financially while going unsold.

The matter also was discussed at the council workshop session on Monday.

Susan Winter told the council on Tuesday that the land looks like “a simple field” to most people.

“It’s a field that costs us 15 grand a year to pay the taxes on,” Winter said. “We had to borrow from a friend the last two years to pay the taxes.”

Winter, who is 79 years old, said the $15,000 annual tax burden on the property has forced her and her husband, Allen, 91, out of the home they owned and into “a small apartment.”

Neighbors, who called the future development a truck stop, said the business will ruin the enjoyment they now have from their homes.

“Obviously, the community is against the building of this monstrosity in our neighborhood,” said Jim Harris. “I think our voices should be heard.”