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player ready...The Kane County Forest Preserve District and Dundee Township have agreed to buy more than 130 acres of woods in Carpentersville where a popular raceway once stood. The site is to be preserved as open space.
The agencies will split the cost of about $6 million for 133 acres of the 231-acre Raceway Woods property off Illinois Highway 31, north of Huntley Road.
The Carpentersville Village Board has approved the sale of the property, except for 7 acres along the highway zoned for manufacturing use. The Forest Preserve District already owns 41 acres in Raceway Woods, and Dundee Township Park District owns 50 acres.
The three jurisdictions will use the land, adjacent to about 100 acres owned by the township, for nature paths and bicycle trails.
“We will use it as a unified piece. We will connect all of the trail systems into one,” said Susan Harney, Dundee Township supervisor and an open-space advocate. “We will work together to get grant money to manage this property as a whole.”
Dundee Township voters approved an $18 million open-space referendum in 1996. The township has about $3 million left in that fund, which Harney said would cover its share of the latest purchase.
Meadowdale Properties Co. agreed to keep frontage property, which the board intends to rezone for commercial use.
Frank Scarpelli, whose grandfather, Leonard Besinger, bought the land in the late 1940s and opened the Meadowdale Raceway in 1958, has been negotiating the land deal. Car clubs used the 3.2-mile course until about 1970, Scarpelli said.