LAND FOR THE LAKE

Springfi eld’s decades-old proposal to build a second lake remains a distant prospect, but the city is moving ahead with land acquisitions nonetheless. On Aug. 18, the Springfi eld City Council approved the purchase of a plot of land owned by Carl Tega of Springfi eld. The land is on the projected shoreline of where Hunter Lake would be. Tega purchased the land in November 2014 for $116,000, according to property tax records, and the city is paying him $160,000 for it less than a year later. It’s a nine-acre strip at 7020 Brunk Cemetery Road near Rochester, zoned as farmland but with only a narrow strip of farmed acreage cutting through a fi eld with different owners on either side of Tega’s strip. The $160,000 price that the city is paying Tega breaks down to about $17,817 per acre, which is higher than even the best farmland price of $16,150 recorded by the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers for 2014.