Developer wants to put 70 houses at former Batavia factory site
An earlier version incorrectly described the proposed housing. Pulte is proposing to build detached houses.
A developer wants to build 70 houses where the former Siemens-Furnas factory complex was in Batavia.
Pulte Home Co. proposes to build them on 18 acres at McKee Street and Van Nortwick Avenue. The development would straddle McKee, with about half of the houses being built next to H.C. Storm Elementary School.
The city council will hear a presentation about the idea at its committee of the whole meeting on Aug. 22. The meeting is at 7 p.m. at the Jeffery D. Schielke Government Center, 100 N. Island Ave.
To build the houses, Pulte would need to get the council to rezone the land to a single-family residential high-density district. It currently is zoned for mixed uses.
Furnas Electric Co. began building on the southern part of the site around 1940 when Van Nortwick was on the western edge of Batavia. Siemens bought Furnas in the 1990s.
In 2002, a developer proposed building 53 townhouses on the 8 acres on the north side of McKee.
The plant closed in 2006, and the buildings were torn down in 2009. The city took away its industrial zoning because aldermen did not want to see another factory or other industrial business built there.
In 2014, foundations were removed. The company removed contaminated soil in 2017. The land contained foundry sands containing black sand and black powder. The sands had hydrocarbons with levels too high to permit residential construction over them. The sands were used as fill as the factory expanded.