Another example of the potential conflict of interest posed by commissioners serving on both boards is the Fabyan Woods/Settler’s Hill development plan. The 700+ acre Fabyan Parkway campus includes the former Settler’s Hill landfills, Settler’s Hill Golf Course, the former Kane County Jail site, Cougars Stadium, Striker’s Soccer facility, the Fox Valley Ice Arena, and the eastern part of Fabyan Woods Forest Preserve. Kane County owns the jail site and one of the landfills; the Kane County Forest Preserve District owns the other land fill, the Ice Arena, the Stadium, Striker’s Soccer facility, and Fabyan Forest Preserve. The Fabyan Property Utilization Study Subcommittee formed to create the concept plan for the redevelopment of the campus included several County Board (and Forest Preserve) members and the mayors of Geneva and Batavia. The Lannert Group was hired to develop a plan for a recreational complex that would enhance recreational uses while offering economic development opportunities. Preservation and restoration opportunities were not high on the list.
Predictably, the concept plan ran into problems when it became known that the proposal included constructing a music venue, parking lots, and mountain bike trails within the historic oak woodlands of the Fabyan Forest Preserve. There were also environmental concerns about building on the landfill site and whether the old jail site should be developed as a hotel and convention site, along with an expanded golf course, or sold to pay off some of the construction costs of the new jail. But the focus on recreational and economic development was clearly at odds with the Forest Preserve mission to protect and preserve the forest.
After considerable public opposition, most of the offending uses were removed from the Fabyan Forest Preserve woods, including the music venue, parking lot, and one of two mountain biking trails. But the plan still has at least two multiuse trails through the woods, which is a concern to preservationists because of the degradation of the woodland by existing illegal mountain-biking trails. According to Forest Preserve President Hoscheit,
“there is a benefit to putting a trail in an otherwise wooded area because it keeps people from making their own trail.”
On that assumption, the Forest Preserve is already working with the Chicago Area Mountain Bikers group to design and build a natural surface biking trail within Raceway Woods FP in Carpentersville. A similar arrangement may be considered for Fabyan Woods. The revised concept plan for the Fabyan Parkway campus was approved by both the Kane County Board and the Kane County Forest Preserve District as a general guideline, even though many details remain unresolved. But the original recreational development plan most likely would never have been considered in the first place by an independent forest preserve commission such as the one in DuPage County.