Joliet restarting park plans near apartments that house sex offenders

The city of Joliet appears ready to get going on a park that initially was planned primarily to serve as a deterrent to an apartment building housing registered sex offenders.

The Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday will consider a special use permit that would allow the city to move forward with the park plan, which has sat stagnant for almost two years.

The city in August 2022 acquired a residential lot at 1000 N. Center St. amid a controversy at the time over a nearby apartment building that was being rented to registered sex offenders.

The plan was to build a park close enough to the apartments in the 1000 block of North Cora Street that it would trigger a state law barring registered sex offenders from living within 500 feet of public parks.

Whether or not the plan would work, the neighborhood wants the city to build the park, said John Sheridan, president of the Cunningham Neighborhood Council.

“It’s been sitting there for two years,” Sheridan said. “I pushed to get it done.”

The property had been the site of a burnt-out house damaged in a fire, so it had limited market potential when the city bought it for $124,000. The house has been torn down, and it’s now basically a vacant lot.

The new park could be ready by late spring or early summer if the plan moves smoothly through the approval process, said Joliet Community Development Directcor Dustin Anderson.

It won’t have a playground. It will have native plantings, community signage and park benches.

“The focus will be on passive recreation opportunities and neighborhood enhancement,” Anderson said.

City officials will have to decide whether to move ahead with the plan to use the park to try to dislodge the sex offenders living in the apartment house.

The Joliet apartment building was acquired by NewDay Apartments, which is based in Lake Zurich and buys property to house registered sex offenders.

Adele Nicholas, executive director for Illinois Voices for Reform, said the residents in the Cora Street building have not caused any problems in the neighborhood.

“I know there have been zero issues with local residents,” Nicholas said.

Illinois Voices for Reform advocates on behalf of improved housing for registered sex offenders.

State law regulating where registered sex offenders can live is restrictive to the point that offenders often stay in prison beyond the term of their sentences or are rendered homeless because they can’t find a legal place to live, Nicholas said.

But, she said, the rule that bars residency within 500 feet of a public park applies to some offenders and not others.

Sheridan said he was concerned that the conversion of the property to a park only would lead to a change in which sex offenders were living in the Cora Street apartments.

But he, too, said he does not know of any problems created by residents of the apartments since they moved in.

“They’ve pretty much stayed low key, which is a good thing,” Sheridan said.