The owners of Chapel Hill Gardens West Cemetery have agreed to annex the rest of the graveyard to Oakbrook Terrace to placate several aldermen and win zoning approval for a long-planned, on-site funeral home and office.
SCI Illinois, which owns Chapel Hill, has postponed a public hearing scheduled earlier this month to have more time to prepare a revised plan for the proposed funeral home.
The firm has told city officials it will annex the cemetery’s large unincorporated tract–almost 98 acres in the center of the graveyard–and not just the previously requested two acres for the site of the new building.
Chapel Hill Gardens West’s total area is about 120 acres. Oakbrook Terrace’s boundaries already surround the unincorporated portion, but under state law, the city cannot force the annexation of any totally enclosed parcel that is larger than 60 acres.
SCI long has wanted to demolish its existing office building at the cemetery, which is on the west side of Illinois Highway 83 between Roosevelt and Butterfield Roads, and replace them with a new building that would be a combination funeral home and administrative office.
The company’s plans had been stalled by Oakbrook Terrace’s inability to provide the site with Lake Michigan water and sanitary sewer service and by the unwillingness of neighboring communities to extend utility lines to the graveyard.
SCI ultimately decided to proceed without lake water, but it is expected to provide land for a city-owned reservoir that will be part of the water distribution system that Oakbrook Terrace is expected to build next year.
![Nearly a year after April Perry was nominated to be Chicago’s first female U.S. attorney, President Biden has changed tack in the face of blanket opposition from a single Republican senator and is naming Perry instead to be a federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois. The announcement Wednesday ends Perry’s bid to take over the top federal law enforcement job in Chicago, which has been officially vacant since U.S. Attorney John Lausch stepped down in March 2023. Perry is being nominated to fill a seat being vacated by U.S. District Judge Nancy Maldonaldo, who has been nominated to […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ctc-dirksen-general-06_175944451.jpg?w=525 "Nearly a year after April Perry was nominated to be Chicago’s first female U.S. attorney, President Biden has changed tack in the face of blanket opposition from a single Republican senator and is naming Perry instead to be a federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois. The announcement Wednesday ends Perry’s bid to take over the top federal law enforcement job in Chicago, which has been officially vacant since U.S. Attorney John Lausch stepped down in March 2023. Perry is being nominated to fill a seat being vacated by U.S. District Judge Nancy Maldonaldo, who has been nominated to […]")
