Not only would this town center be an easy walk to a new train
station planned on the Metra commuter rail line, it would be laid out on a
tight grid of narrow streets, with lots as small as 5,000 square feet.
Studio apartments over detached garages would bring an economic mix of
residents. And shops, some with dwellings upstairs, would be scaled to
neighborhood needs: a bakery, a deli, a general store.
Apostasy, in other words, in the world of conventional suburban
subdivisions.
But the five-year-old Prairie Crossing project already breaks so many
rules of conventional development that it has drawn national attention far
out of proportion to its small size. Of the 317 single-family homes
permitted on the site, 133 are now built and 20 more are under construction.
The community is organized around 10 guiding principles -- available for
browsing at www.prairiecrossing.com/principles.htm -- including
environmental protection, economic and racial diversity, convenient and
efficient transportation, energy conservation, esthetic design and
''lifelong learning,'' from child care through courses at a nearby college
to informal adult education.
Buyers choose from 12 prototype frame houses that resemble homesteads.
With gabled roofs, jaunty pediments, deep porches, clapboard siding, sash
windows and white trim against a palette of rustic colors, they exude so
much Americana they almost bring an Aaron Copland melody to mind.
''The development,'' the Chicago Tribune Magazine said in May, ''looks
like a well-edited version of the Midwest.'' Nearly 70 percent of the land,
463 acres, is set aside as prairie, pasture, farmland and wetland, with a
serpentine lake suitable for swimming, small ponds, a community-supported
organic garden and stables for horses.
The tradeoff for this ample communal space is that individual lots are
clustered more closely together and are smaller than they would be in a
conventional subdivision. However, Mr. Ranney said he is finding that
''people care more about access to open lands than having enormous lots.''
And Mayor Pat Carey of Grayslake said the village has made use of the
concept elsewhere. On one site where zoning was previously limited to
one-acre lots, Grayslake will now permit lots as small as the developer
cares to build, provided that 50 percent or more of the property is set
aside as contiguous open space and that there is no increase in the overall
number of houses.
Such an environmentally obliging approach comes at a price: $330,000 for
the average house at Prairie Crossing, Mr. Ranney said, or about 20 to 30
percent higher than comparably sized houses in the area. That is good for
the business success of the development but has tended to work against the
diversity goal.
''WE have done much better than anyone else around here,'' Mr. Ranney
said, ''but our hope was that we would have a minority population somewhat
larger than we do.'' It is estimated that 8 percent of the families at
Prairie Crossing are African-American, contrasted with 1 percent in the
area.
To encourage a greater mix, the Ranneys would sell 25 smaller houses in
the town center for $180,000 to $220,000. Buyers on some lots could build
600- to 800-square-foot studio apartments atop their garages for family use
or possibly for rent. The Ranneys propose to increase
the number of single-family homes to 400, from the maximum of 317 now
permitted. The plan is designed by Calthorpe Associates of Berkeley,
Calif.
''There's certainly an appeal to the kind of development they're
proposing,'' Mayor Carey said. ''If a good deal of people walk across the
street to take the train, that balances against the increase in density, in
my mind.''
However, the Mayor is only one of seven members of the village board,
whose approval is required for the new plan. And there is no predicting the
outcome of its deliberations later this summer.
Some Prairie Crossing residents wonder whether a town center that draws
outsiders may deprive them of the comfort of knowing everyone on the street
by sight. They are concerned about the impact on amenities like the little
beach along the lake. And there is an unspoken fear that lower-priced houses
in one part of the development might depress values elsewhere.
Even broader concerns, felt throughout surrounding Lake County, center on
new burdens being placed on already overcrowded schools and roads.
''When we approved the development, we allowed 317 homes,'' Mayor Carey
said. ''That's cast in stone at the moment. That's a significant issue.
There is a potential for concern about increasing the number of houses in
any development at this time.''
Donna M. Mack, who moved to Prairie Crossing from Chicago last year, said
of the Ranneys' plan: ''If anybody can make this work, I think they can. It
wasn't what I envisioned and it wasn't what I expected. But I think it can
work.''
The Ranneys said the extra density is needed in part to offset the
expenses they have faced dealing with ''outside threats,'' particularly a
nearby landfill. They also pointed out that Prairie Crossing would come
nowhere near the 1,600 units approved for the site in 1986.
In 1987, the property was acquired by Gaylord Donnelley, the former
president and chairman of R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, an enormous
printing concern founded by his grandfather in 1864. Mr. Donnelley, a
conservationist, owned a farm in the 2,000-acre Liberty Prairie Reserve,
which adjoins Prairie Crossing. He and other investors founded Prairie
Holdings Corporation to develop the site.
After Mr. Donnelley died in 1992, Prairie Holdings was taken over by his
nephew, Mr. Ranney, who grew up a half mile away. Donnelley family members
are among the largest investors in Prairie Crossing, as are the Ranneys. Mr.
Ranney is a partner in the law firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt.
Ms. Ranney is the great-granddaughter of George B. Post, an architect
whose works include the New York Stock Exchange, City College campus and the
former New York Times building on Park Row. She has edited a volume of the
papers of the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
''I'm surprised and delighted to see that if you lay out guiding
principles, the debate tends to be whether you're meeting them,'' Ms. Ranney
said. ''People are taking up the cause of Prairie Crossing in ways I would
never have guessed five years ago.''
Parents are establishing a charter school, publicly financed but
independent of local school boards. Although the charter was opposed by the
two school districts that serve the area, it was granted on appeal by the
state Board of Education. Classes will be held in a pitch-roofed country
schoolhouse where farm children were once educated. The earlier school
closed in 1958. When the Ranneys learned in 1995 that the owner sought to
raze the building, they offered to move it to Prairie Crossing. Come August,
it will be home again to 60 youngsters, from kindergarten through second
grade.
With ''lifelong learning'' as a guiding principle, Ms. Ranney said, ''We
thought we needed to start at the beginning.''
