143rd Street Saga — Resolution Allows County to Proceed with Reduced Widening Plan
By Nick Reiher
Some 74 property owners along 143rd Street in Homer Township soon will receive one final offer before the county enacts eminent domain to acquire the land it needs to expand a reduced portion of the road to five lanes.
The Will County Board at its September 18 meeting voted 12-7 to approve a resolution allowing the condemnation proceedings, if necessary, for the widening and reconstruction of 143rd Street between Parker Road and Golden Oak Drive.
Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant offered the resolution as a compromise to move along the 143rd Street widening project.
The project has stalled for two years due to opposition from residents and local officials who believe the expansion to five lanes will create more traffic and ultimately change the more residential atmosphere of that area.
“The County will make one last attempt to settle any parcels remaining that would facilitate the widening and reconstruction of 143rd Street between Parker Road and Golden Oak Drive,” said Will County Transportation Engineer Jeff Ronaldson in an email to Farmers Weekly Review.
“If unsuccessful within 60 days, the State’s Attorney’s Office will initiate Eminent Domain proceedings.”
Ronaldson said they are considering a bid letting for the project in mid- to late-2026, pending the completion of all right-of-way acquisition.
“At that same time, utility companies will likely start their reconstruction efforts, so actual roadway reconstruction would realistically not start until late 2026 or spring of 2027,” he added.
The initial segment in question, between State Street/Lemont Road and Bell Road, is in the final segment of the widening and reconstruction of 143rd Street Corridor plan begun in 1991.
Other local governments along the route already have approved and completed their sections. The Will County Board had approved its own plans at least nine times since the project began.
But County Board members, some newly elected, picked up the opposition from residents, as well as Homer Glen Mayor Christina Neitzke-Troike and Homer Township Supervisor Susanna Steilen.
They had convinced the state Senate in May to not call a House bill allowing for quick take acquisition of the land needed.
Ronaldson and others said the traffic count warrants the five-lane expansion, which is why they were able to secure a $7 million federal grant for construction. They would lose that grant, he said, if the work were not begun by September 2026.
As such, he presented Bertino-Tarrant’s compromise plan at the September 2 Public Works and Transportation Committee meeting, where it narrowly moved forward to the full board.
The compromise, he and Bertino-Tarrant said, would reduce the scope of the five-lane project to the area between just west of Parker Road to Golden Oak Drive.
That would be sufficient to keep the $7 million grant viable for construction, Ronaldson said. Also, he said, the amount of land and right-of-way needed for the reduced project would amount to 25 percent of those needed in the original plan.
Bertino-Tarrant and other board leaders discussed the compromise offer in several private sessions before it was presented to the board.
Several Republican board members were open to discussing the compromise, Bertino-Tarrant said, while others — including Neitzke-Troike, Steilen and Board Member Jim Richmond, R-Mokena – did not.
As with every other county meeting on the issue, the resolution brought forth at the September 18 County Board meeting elicited sometimes heated responses from opponents.
Board members were presented with an amended resolution, amended a second time to strengthen language requiring the county to rescind offers from landowners outside the reduced 0.6-mile section of 143rd Street.
Board Member Dan Butler, R-Frankfort, wasn’t buying it, saying the resolution “is a big nothing burger. This doesn’t mean the county isn’t going to go back and do the exact same thing (for the remainder of the land).”
Steve Balich, R-Homer Glen, and other opponents also were concerned the entire project still remains on the county’s long-range transportation plan.
Ronaldson said that’s because transportation officials have indicated the five-lane plan was necessary due to current, not projected, traffic counts.
The county could not add back the rest of the property or spend any additional money to do so without approval from the County Board, he added.
Asked if the County Board could add language saying the county would never try to acquire the additional land, Assistant State’s Attorney Kevin Meyers said the current board could not tie a future board’s hands.
Nick Reiher is editor of Farmers Weekly Review.
