Peotone Township Solar Permit Wins Fourth and Final Extension in Divided Vote

Will County Board | September 17, 2026

Article Summary: The Will County Board on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, granted a fourth extension of the special use permit for Prairie Solar LLC’s 4-megawatt community solar facility on West Kennedy Road in Peotone Township, approving Resolution 26-278 with 14 votes in the affirmative after nearly half an hour of debate over missing case records, the transfer of the project to Standard Solar Inc., an unresolved conservation plan and whether state law leaves the county any discretion to say no.

Prairie Solar Extension Key Points:

• Resolution 26-278 / 26-5306 (SEXT-26-019) extends the special use permit granted in zoning case ZC-22-066/S-22-040, which carries 15 conditions, on PIN 17-20-26-300-010-0000 in Peotone Township, County Board District 2. The extension runs 180 days — through Feb. 4, 2027, effective Aug. 9, 2026 — and is the fourth and last allowed under the county zoning ordinance.
• County land use staff said the owner of record remains Prairie Solar LLC, and that the application is now held by Standard Solar Inc., which owns Prairie Solar LLC. Trajectory Energy Partners notified the Land Use Department of the ownership transfer on April 29, 2026.
• The Land Use & Development Committee recommended approval 7-0; the full board recorded 14 in the affirmative, the narrowest margin of the meeting.
• An assistant state’s attorney advising the board said staff had located a provision in the state solar statute directing that extension requests not be unreasonably denied, and that potential property tax revenue is not a lawful consideration in granting a solar siting permit.

WILL COUNTY — The Will County Board on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, approved a fourth extension of the special use permit for a commercial solar energy facility on vacant farmland north of West Kennedy Road in Peotone Township, after the longest and most divided debate of its monthly meeting.

The item, Resolution 26-278 / 26-5306, is filed as zoning extension case SEXT-26-019 and extends zoning case ZC-22-066, a special use permit carrying 15 conditions approved by the County Board on March 16, 2023. The agenda lists Prairie Solar LLC as applicant, with Cole Brennan as agent and Mike Streams as attorney. The parcel is PIN 17-20-26-300-010-0000, County Board District 2.

An Aug. 7, 2026, memo to the Land Use & Development Committee from Marguerite Kenny, the county’s zoning administrator, sets the extension at 180 days — through Feb. 4, 2027, effective Aug. 9, 2026. Three prior extensions, SEXT-25-001, SEXT-25-013 and SEXT-26-001, were approved by the board, the third expiring Aug. 8, 2026. Under Section 155-16.40(J)(2) of the Will County Zoning Ordinance, special use permits may be extended on as many as four separate occasions by up to 180 days each; land use staff told the board Thursday that four is the maximum.

The project is a 4-megawatt community solar facility on roughly 29 acres in the southeast portion of a 56.83-acre parcel. The county’s 2023 staff report describes the site as one mile north of the Will-Kankakee County line and a quarter-mile south of the Village of Peotone, split by Interstate 57 and a 380-foot-wide utility right of way.

Member Sherry Newquist, who presented the Land Use & Development Committee’s items in place of committee Chair Frankie Pretzel, moved the resolution; Member Elnalyn Costa seconded.

Ownership Change Drives Opposition

Member Judy Ogalla, who represents District 2, said the change in control was reason enough to vote no.

“The original company that was applied for the permit is no longer part of this project at all,” Ogalla said. “A new company is taking over right now. So, you should take that into consideration when you are voting. This happens quite a bit with solar.” She said applicants routinely come in, do “the leg work,” then leave, and that the project had changed hands more than once. “They’ve asked for a fourth extension because the prior company didn’t get to the point to develop anything. So, I’m going to be a no.”

The packet documents the sequence. On April 29, 2026, Trajectory Energy Partners notified the Land Use Department that ownership of the project had been transferred to Standard Solar Inc., which retained a developer to build the facility. The extension application, received July 31, 2026, lists Prairie Solar LLC as owner of record at a Rockville, Maryland, address care of Standard Solar.

“The owner of record is Prairie Solar LLC, and the owner of that application now is Standard Solar Incorporated, who owns Prairie Solar LLC,” Kenny told the board. She said the company is leasing, not buying, the property.

Member Julie Berkowicz said the agenda carried almost none of the case history. “You cannot go on this agenda and you cannot find any of the documentation following this application,” she said. “I need to be able to go back to the first extension, the second extension. Where is this documentation?” She added that material filed before 2024 cannot be retrieved at all: “If you go into our system and you try to go back prior to 2024, you can’t find anything. Where did our records go? So, we need to fix this.”

Kenny said the extension application, the staff report from the original zoning case and the Planning and Zoning Commission minutes were all attached to the memo on the agenda — a 33-page document, with the staff report beginning at page 22. Berkowicz said the county’s agenda platform “is not user friendly,” and County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant suggested a refresher course on the new system. Member Daniel J. Butler offered a workaround, saying the attachment sometimes opens from the paper-clip icon and sometimes from the item text, and suggested the difficulty may have been with the software rather than the filing.

Berkowicz restated a standing objection. “I’ve always objected to these special use permits being transferable,” she said. “If the company goes bust, if the company sells, this application should not be transferable. The new owner should have to come back to the county.”

How Much Discretion the County Has

Speaker Joe VanDuyne asked the state’s attorney’s office whether the county is obligated to approve extensions. An assistant state’s attorney advising the board said no case law exists on the question.

“Contrary argument is, look, they have a right to do it. They don’t have a right to do it forever,” he said. “If they don’t get their act together, eventually it lapses.” Erring on the side of caution, he said, “a court would generally analyze it the same way as equity and say, look, they have the ability to do this as long as they meet the requirements. My sense is they probably have an ability to get these extensions in the same way they have the ability to get the zoning.”

Mid-discussion, he reported a finding from staff research conducted during the meeting: “There’s actually a provision within the statute that says that we should not unreasonably deny extension requests” — in the solar statute specifically.

Member Jacqueline Traynere asked whether the county could require a new application when ownership changes, “even if it’s only a name change because somebody swallowed them up.” The assistant state’s attorney said the statute does not address it, and that most of the county’s special use permits “run with the land rather than with the individual owner,” with no challenges to that practice so far.

Butler urged the board not to give up what authority it has. “We do not want, I would think, as a group, to take any resistance or power or control that we have over special use permits at all,” he said. “If we have to vote on every single one, then we vote on every single one. Just say it quick and get it over with. But we should always retain that power to be able to make that decision. Otherwise, what are we here for?”

Conditions, Scoring and the Conservation Plan

Newquist argued the 15 existing conditions were themselves the reason to approve. The permit was originally granted before the current state law, she said, and if the board denied the extension and the applicant reapplied, “we would not be able to put many of those 15 conditions back on this. And that was one of the reasons why in land use committee it was unanimously approved — because we wanted to maintain the existing conditions.” Asked by Member Mica Freeman which conditions would be lost, Newquist said she was not certain but recalled “greater setbacks” and “additional vegetation.”

The 2023 staff report notes the application was submitted Aug. 23, 2022, and was reviewed under solar farm regulations the County Board adopted Jan. 18, 2018, rather than the regulations adopted Sept. 15, 2022.

Kenny said the Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District gave the property a Land Evaluation and Site Assessment score of 216 points, classifying it as essential farmland. She said the assessment weighs agricultural land uses within a one-mile radius, the site’s own use for agriculture, woodlands, floodplains and wetlands, surrounding zoning, transportation accessibility, sewer availability, fire protection response distance and distance from a city or village. Asked by Butler whether soil quality factors in, she said it did not appear to be a significant component. Member David G. Oxley pointed members to page 24 of the memo, which he said referred to essential farmland.

“This site is also at the end of Kennedy Road along I-57,” Kenny said. “In terms of location, it is from staff’s perspective a very good location for solar just based on it’s kind of out of the way.” She said the Village of Peotone did not object during the original zoning case, that the parcel falls within the village’s mile-and-a-half review area, that the minutes reflect no citizen objections, and that the case predated battery storage entering the discussion, so no battery component is involved.

Under condition 14, Kenny said, “the applicant shall submit a conservation plan at the time of the building and/or site development permit application, whichever is first.” Pressed by Berkowicz on whether that plan exists four extensions in, Kenny said she believed it was recorded or in the process of being recorded and that the applicant is working with the conservation district, but that she was “not 100% sure” whether it had been approved or is still pending.

“You don’t know if the conservation plan yet, and we’re on our fourth extension,” Berkowicz said. “That’s incredible.”

Ogalla asked whether utility lines must be buried. Kenny said condition 10 allows connections to existing overhead utility lines where the electric utility requires them — a condition written, she said, before the county knew it could require burial — and that the applicant is proposing a couple of overhead connections.

Per the applicant’s July 28, 2026, letter, the building permit has been delayed by the Manhattan Fire Protection District, which initially rejected the application on June 19, 2026, over the access road location; a revised access road design has been tentatively approved by the fire marshal. The letter lists approvals already obtained from the Will County Health Department and Will County Farm Bureau on June 29, 2026, along with comment letters from the Forest Preserve District of Will County on July 7, 2026, and the soil and water conservation district on July 1, 2026. Prairie Solar has completed an ALTA survey, wetlands delineation, geotechnical evaluation and drain tile survey, and a Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessment refreshed Dec. 17, 2025. The utility had installed interconnection equipment as of December 2025, and design has reached a 60% construction plan set. Rent payments to Pralle Farms Partnership, the landowner, began in October 2025.

Property Tax Question Deferred

Berkowicz asked what the project would pay in property taxes. Kenny said she could not address it. The assistant state’s attorney said tax revenue “would not be a relevant consideration for the granting or extension of the permit” and that the county “cannot condition a solar siting permit on whether they could generate more property taxes.”

Member Dawn Bullock noted that where land is leased, “the owner of the land still continues to pay their taxes.” Berkowicz asked that the question of how property taxes are allocated in such cases be placed on a Finance Committee agenda. “We’re forced to give a permit for an industrial use on agriculture,” she said. “I think our taxpayers would like to know if they’re shouldering an unreasonable burden of property taxes.”

Bertino-Tarrant and VanDuyne both pushed members toward committee. “Clarification questions, I get it. They’re fine,” the executive said. “But detailed questions, they need time to look in.” VanDuyne was blunter: “There’s a 33-page document on the agenda. All the information is there. We’re talking about a fourth extension here. This is not the time or place to be asking minute questions just to prolong the procedure.”

Member Destinee Ortiz then called the question, seconded by Member Mark V. Revis. That motion carried, and the board approved the extension with 14 votes in the affirmative.

The next Land Use & Development Committee meeting is scheduled for Oct. 1, 2026.