Resurrection Retreat Center plans to proceed despite controversy
By BRIAN SLUPSKI - bslupski@nwherald.com
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WOODSTOCK – Work on the Resurrection Retreat Center project soon will commence, despite ongoing attempts to derail it.
The center is being converted into a 123-unit senior living complex. The project at 2710 Country Club Road already was approved by the McHenry County Board.
It is south of Crystal Springs Road and north of McConnell Road.
The Congregation of the Resurrection is a Catholic order of priests and seminarians who work in pastoral and educational ministries. For years, the order operated the retreat center for high school students. Over time, cost-wary high schools used the center less and less. Eventually, the order was approached by developer Mike Reschke with plans to develop the property for senior living.
Some nearby residents, however, have filed a petition to have 193 acres – including the Resurrection property – annexed to Bull Valley. If the annexation is approved, it is conceivable that Bull Valley could take action to stop the project. Bull Valley officials are on the record as opposing the Resurrection project, but they have not taken a position on the annexation petition.
“From my side of it, we have to move forward,” Reschke said. “We have permission from McHenry County, and we are moving forward.”
Reschke is the president of Point in Time Inc., the company developing the senior living complex. Reschke said he hoped to have a permit this month to begin work inside the existing Resurrection building. Plans call for the building to be transformed into a community center with 36 senior living units.
Eventually, an addition would hold more units.
Meanwhile, the annexation petition is progressing through the courts.
A status hearing is set for July 21. Attorneys for the Reschke and the Resurrection Center have requested various information from the 13 annexation petitioners. They also have filed objections to the petition and might seek to take depositions on the matter. All of which will take time.
Although the Congregation of the Resurrection does not want to be annexed to Bull Valley, state law allows a majority of property owners or electors in an area to petition for annexation. Therefore, the retreat property can be included in the petition even if its owners oppose it.
Brandy Quance said that work at the site was a concern to her clients, who did not want to see the property transformed. However, she said, her clients are less concerned with work being done to the existing building than they are with the construction of new buildings.
“It’s everything outside the existing building that they are worried about,” Quance said.
Some preliminary landscape work at the site is under way, with trees and brush being removed in preparation for exterior site work. Reschke said that after final engineering was completed, he would go to the county for more permits. It is possible that work on some of the new buildings – 23 single-family residences and 14 duplexes – could begin this fall.
Quance said her clients were proceeding with the annexation petition. But her clients have not decided what they will do if significant work outside of the existing building begins.
“We will cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said.
