The Huntley Farmside

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The HiHifleY Farmside
Thursday, December 16,1999
A Press Publications newspaper«/ serving the Huntley community
Volume 29,lssiie 50
Sounds of the season
Santa Claus reads "Twas the Night Before Christmas" to a group of children at the Deicke Recreation Center following the Remembrance Tree Ceremony Saturday.
Population explosion
Residential property developments continue to increase in Huntley
By Christopher Petersen
Press Publications
Huntley has been growing considerably in the past five years, and it will only continue to grow.
The village released a study of current and potential developments for resi¬ dential units in Huntley, and the findings are staggering.
The village has found that if all new petitions for development were halted right now, the village would still stand to gain an additional 11,501 residential units.
The largest development currently in production is Del Webb's Sun City. The
retirement community just recently re¬ ceived final approval fi'om the village for another 1,255 units in the development, bringing the community's final tally to 6,016 residential units. Other current de¬ velopments include Southwind, with. 750 units under construction. Wing Pointe, with. 609 additional units, and Heritage of Huntley, which will account for an addi¬ tional 329 units in the village.
Village staff also took into account properties that were vested through an¬ nexation agreements, but were not yet under development. The largest of these is Northgate, which is vested to develop anywhere from 1,450 to 1,650 units.
Others in the category are the Sullivan
property, which could be developed for a maximum of 424 units; the Livingston property, which could bring in an addi¬ tional 105 units at maximum; the Loeb property and its potentially 223 additional units; and the Halat property, which could account for an eventual 102 more residences in the village.
Finally, the village looked at other properties not currently annexed by the village but have either begim the concept planning stage or are within the village's jurisdictional area. The Meier property has had a concept plan submitted by Pulte Homes for 302 units on the site. The Kutz properly has just begun the concept plan review process, and could provide the village with up to 350 units.
Huntley
Library
experiences
increased
circulation
By Christopher Petersen
Press Publications
Easier access to materials and a new building has re¬ sulted in an huge increase in circulation at the Huntley Area Public Library.
The amount. of materials being checked out has gone up about 195 percent since the new 15,000-square-foot build¬ ing opened last July. At this same time last year, the li¬ brary checked out 3,143 ma¬ terials. This year, the library has checked out more than 9,600 materials in the month of November alone.
For the period from July to November 1998, over 15,000 materials Were checked out of the library. In that same pe¬ riod this year, the number has jumped dramatically to well over 46,500.
The library's executive di¬ rector, Virginia Maravilla, at¬ tributes the jump to the easy access to materials that the library's new facilities offers, as well as its attractiveness to new customers.
"A lot of it is the new build¬ ing," Maravilla said. "A lot of new people are coming in."
Maravilla said that the sharp increase in the amount of books and other materials distributed by the library has been a refreshing change from the old building.
"It's about triple the [size of] old building," Maravilla. said.
Since   the   hew   building
opened,   Maravilla   estimates
that 3,000 new materials have
been added to  the library's
collection, along with all the
materials  that were kept in
storage since the old building ¦   LIBRARY, Page?