Buying Land in Lee County, Illinois

Zoning: one countywide ordinance dating to 1961

Lee County's Zoning & Planning Office, headquartered on the third floor of the Old Lee County Courthouse (112 E. Second Street, Dixon; (815) 288-3643), administers the county's zoning ordinance -- adopted in 1961 and covering unincorporated land under 55 ILCS 5 Division 5-12. Land inside an incorporated city or village (Dixon, Amboy, Ashton, and the county's other towns) is governed by that municipality's own zoning code instead.

Lee County has 22 townships and uses Illinois's standard township form of government rather than the commission form used by 17 of the state's 102 counties. Because Lee County has adopted countywide zoning, Illinois's Article 110 township zoning does not independently apply in any Lee County township -- the county Zoning & Planning Office is the operative authority for unincorporated land regardless of which township it sits in.

Where Illinois's wind industry started -- and kept going

Mendota Hills Wind Farm, built between June and November 2003 near the village of Paw Paw, was Illinois's first utility-scale wind farm. It originally ran 63 Gamesa turbines; in 2019 the count dropped to 29 turbines while nameplate capacity actually rose to 76 MW, and the project is now owned by Leeward Renewable Energy. GSG Wind, spanning Lee and LaSalle Counties near West Brooklyn, came online in 2007 with 40 turbines and was repowered between 2022 and 2024 -- down to 26 new GE turbines at 80 MW, completed in January 2024. Shady Oaks (later expanded as Shady Oaks II) is owned by Algonquin Power & Utilities through its Liberty subsidiary, with JPMorgan Chase purchasing roughly 70% of the roughly 118 MW project's output; the original Shady Oaks was developed by Mainstream Renewable Power, sold to Goldwind International in 2011, and bought by Algonquin in 2013. And Big Sky Wind, spanning Bureau and Lee Counties, was originally built around 2012 with 114 Suzlon turbines and repowered in 2022 -- replacing most of the fleet with 109 Vestas turbines and boosting annual output by roughly 60% -- with Potentia Renewables taking over operations in late 2024.

A fifth project, Bison Meadows Wind, is now in active development by Enel Green Power in western and central Lee County: fewer than 50 turbines are planned, with roughly 7,000 acres already under lease or commitment and multiple meteorological towers built as of mid-2021, targeting commercial operation by the end of 2029. See our dedicated wind and solar leasing page for Lee County for what buying land near any of these projects, or evaluating a lease offer, actually involves.

Three solar projects in the pipeline, one of them enormous

Steward Creek Solar, originally developed by Hexagon Energy and acquired by TerraForm Power in early 2026, is planned at up to 1.56 gigawatts across roughly 9,500 acres in Alto and Willow Creek townships -- among the largest solar photovoltaic projects in the United States, with Phase 1 construction targeted for 2027 and commercial operation in 2029, and Phase 2 following in 2028-2030. Prairie Brome Solar, a smaller 180 MW project on about 1,816 acres in Alto and Reynolds townships, received county board approval in June 2026. And South Dixon Solar, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, has been in development in South Dixon Township since 2020 -- a $450 million, 500 MW project on roughly 3,838 leased acres, still awaiting grid interconnection approval as of the most recent reporting found.

The statewide rules behind local wind and solar siting

Illinois counties don't have unlimited discretion over commercial wind and solar siting. Public Act 102-1123, signed January 27, 2023, amended 55 ILCS 5/5-12020 of the Counties Code to set statewide siting standards -- covering setbacks, turbine height, decommissioning, and agricultural-land considerations -- that a county's own ordinance cannot exceed in restrictiveness, and it bars counties from imposing outright moratoriums on wind or solar development. Given how much wind and solar development is already active in Lee County, confirm the county's own current, specific ordinance provisions directly with the Zoning & Planning Office.

Septic, GIS, and other departments to know

Septic (private sewage disposal) permitting in Lee County runs through the Lee County Health Department (LCHD, established 1947), which administers a county Septic Code under the statewide IDPH Title 77 Part 905 framework and also handles private well permitting and inspection. Lee County's Assessor and Recorder both operate out of 112 East Second Street in Dixon, and the county's GIS portal provides parcel mapping. University of Illinois Extension serves Lee County jointly with Carroll and Whiteside Counties, with a local office in Amboy.