“I think ‘Middle Road’ is dead,” Schroeder said.
The city of Lockport, village of Homer Glen, Homer Township and Will County recently gave the go-ahead to begin a study re-evaluating the merits of the “Middle Road,” which originally was approved by the Will County Board in 2009 after first being discussed in 1999.
Middle Road – a curved north-south route that would begin at 159th Street – is part of a $600 million project that includes transforming an 11.5-mile stretch of mostly two-lane roads into four-lane roads, and a new four-lane bridge over the Des Plaines River. But Middle Road is one of the two controversial pieces of the project, the other being where to connect the bridge over the river.
HOMER TOWNSHIP – Richard Schroeder stood in the ditch of his front yard along 163rd Street, imagining what it could become.
There was a time, years ago, when he thought a county highway would one day plow through the ground under his feet.
Not only that, but he and his wife’s 19th century farmhouse and machine shed would get knocked over. The four-lane road would curve through the
70-acre soybean farm, and make it impossible to get from one side to another to farm it.
