A 14-acre strip of vacant land on the north side of U.S. Route 34, squeezed between the Orchard Way shopping center and the sprawling Parksmith Run property, could soon hold eight multi-family buildings and 187 residential units. The Oswego Village Board is set to review the concept plan from developer PMC Investments on Tuesday, weighing in on a project that already cleared its first major hurdle with a unanimous nod from village planners.
The Oswego Planning and Zoning Commission voted 9-0 in July to recommend approval of the concept plan, according to reporting by the Chicago Tribune, which cited freelance reporter Linda Girardi's account published in the Aurora Beacon-News. Even with that endorsement, commissioners flagged concerns about a proposed connection to the neighboring Parksmith Run development and how traffic would flow between the two sites, per the same report.
Village planner Jeff Lind described the property itself as long and narrow — 1,470 feet deep and just 340 feet wide, according to Lind's account relayed in the Tribune's coverage. That awkward geometry appears to be shaping the layout: PMC Investments has proposed placing three three-story buildings closest to the nearby commercial properties along Route 34, while five two-story buildings would sit nearest to the Parksmith Run site, per the same account. The concept plan also calls for a half-acre of open space and a clubhouse with a pool.
Annexation and Rezoning Still Ahead
Before any of it can move forward, the site must be annexed into Oswego and rezoned, the article notes. The property currently sits in unincorporated Kendall County on the north side of Route 34, west of the Orchard Way shopping center — a stretch of the corridor that Illinois Department of Transportation figures published by the Village of Oswego peg at roughly 27,900 vehicles a day, making it the community's busiest commercial artery.
The commission's density and traffic worries echo a pattern that's played out repeatedly this year on the same corridor. Just to the west, the 107-acre Parksmith Run plan drew scrutiny when Oswego trustees asked developer D.R. Horton in March to widen minimum lot widths from 65 to 70 feet across the proposed 210 single-family homes there, a move that trimmed the total lot count by roughly 10 to 12 units in order to lower overall density, according to Shaw Local. Oswego officials had actually approved a different concept for that same Parksmith Run acreage back in 2007 — 154 single-family homes and 88 townhouses — but economic conditions at the time meant it was never built, Shaw Local reported.
A Board Willing to Overrule Its Own Planners
Whether the Village Board defers to the planning commission's density concerns or pushes ahead regardless is an open question, but recent history suggests trustees are willing to act independently. In April, the board voted 5-1 to approve the 52-unit Jade Estates project at Wolfs Crossing and Douglas roads, overriding a prior unanimous denial recommendation from the same planning and zoning commission, Shaw Local reported. Residents at the time had raised concerns about lost green space and worsening road congestion.
The Route 34 corridor's pull for developers tracks with Oswego's growth. The village's population reached an estimated 36,375 residents in 2024, up 5.2% from the 34,485 counted in the 2020 Census, making Oswego the largest municipality in Kendall County, according to Census Bureau figures. Data USA also reports a median household income of $123,792 and an 87.9% homeownership rate in the community as of 2024, socioeconomic markers that help explain why builders keep circling the corridor's remaining vacant parcels.
Commercial investment has followed the same stretch of highway. Trader Joe's confirmed plans for a new grocery store at 1930 US-34 near Kendall Point Drive as part of a Benderson Development retail project, adding to the sense that Route 34 is becoming Oswego's central growth engine on both the housing and retail fronts.
A Corridor With Deeper Roots
The land immediately west of the PMC site carries its own local history. The Parksmith Run parcel once housed the Oswego Drag Raceway, which ran along Route 34 from 1955 to 1979 before the property was converted into a tree nursery, a history documented in local reporting. State-funded road widening projects along Route 34 over the years have gradually transformed the once-rural highway into the suburban commercial arterial it is today.
For now, the immediate question is narrower: how Tuesday's Village Board review handles the same tension that's defined nearly every recent Route 34-area vote — planners' calls for lower density and better traffic flow against a board that has, in cases like Jade Estates, been willing to approve projects anyway. Details on how access between the PMC site and Parksmith Run will ultimately be engineered, and what annexation terms the village will require, remain unresolved ahead of the meeting.
