Buying Land in Montgomery County, Illinois

Zoning and building: a county resolution plus a separate notification requirement

Montgomery County has its own Zoning Resolution applicable to the unincorporated area, developed with the Christian-Montgomery Counties Regional Planning Commission, which serves both Montgomery and neighboring Christian County. Montgomery County uses Illinois's standard township form of government -- 19 townships, with a 14-member County Board elected two from each of seven districts -- so there's no commission-government wrinkle here, though township plan commissions retain the standard 55 ILCS 5/5-12007 objection mechanism (a 3/4 county board supermajority is needed to override).

One detail specific to Montgomery County worth flagging: separately from zoning itself, the county's Supervisor of Assessments office requires anyone building or improving real property -- houses, garages, barns, sheds, storage units, commercial buildings 10 feet by 10 feet or larger -- to file a Notification of Building Construction/Improvement before starting work, primarily for assessment purposes. Skipping that filing is punishable by a fine of up to $500 for each day work proceeds and each day after completion that the notification remains unfiled. Agricultural buildings, fences, decks, swimming pools, gazebos, picnic shelters, and open porches are exempted from the underlying permit requirement. Confirm both this assessment-office notification and any zoning permit with the relevant offices before beginning construction.

The Virden Wind Energy Project: part of a $450 million regional buildout

Montgomery County is one leg of the Grand Prairie Energy Park, a multi-phase, roughly $450 million wind development being built by UKA Group's North American affiliate across Montgomery, Macoupin, and Sangamon Counties. The first phase, the Virden Wind Energy Project, centers on the area around Virden and calls for approximately 14 to 17 turbines generating around 100 megawatts, tied to a local substation; the Montgomery County Board approved the project. UKA's later, larger phase would add another 17 to 23 turbines, mostly in Montgomery County with some in Sangamon County, eventually bringing the full project to roughly 350 megawatts. Reported annual property-tax revenue from the first phase alone was projected at more than $1.05 million for Montgomery and Sangamon Counties combined, over more than 30 years.

Wind turbines proposed for this project are reported at roughly 377 feet at the hub -- taller than the Illinois State Capitol building. If you're evaluating land in the Virden area or elsewhere in Montgomery County near a proposed turbine site, see our dedicated wind and solar leasing page for what a nearby project or a lease offer of your own actually involves.

A distinctive solar story: a Superfund zinc smelter turned solar farm

Montgomery County's most distinctive solar project sits on 33 acres near Hillsboro that once housed the United Zinc & Associated Smelters site, which produced leaded-zinc oxide from 1911 to 2003 and generated more than 40,000 cubic yards of hazardous waste improperly disposed of on the property. After EPA-led investigation and cleanup, remedial action was completed in 2015, with the EPA reviewing site conditions every five years since. Standard Solar's AC IL Hillsboro Solar Project now occupies that site: a 6.9-megawatt (DC) single-axis-tracker array with more than 11,500 solar modules, generating roughly 11,550 megawatt-hours a year -- enough to power about 1,250 U.S. homes and displace an estimated 9,985 metric tons of CO2 annually.

That project sits alongside several other solar applications filed with the county in recent years, including Montgomery IL Solar 1, Montgomery Springs Solar (on parcels in Taylor Springs), North Sun, and Oil Sun -- all reviewed under the county's own Wind and Solar Energy Ordinance (revised August 2024). Together with the Virden Wind project, this makes Montgomery County a genuinely active renewable-energy county rather than one with a single isolated project.

The statewide rules behind local wind and solar siting

Illinois counties can't write wind or solar siting rules stricter than the statewide standard. Public Act 102-1123, effective January 27, 2023, amended 55 ILCS 5/5-12020 of the Counties Code to set uniform standards -- covering setbacks, turbine height, vegetative screening, shadow flicker, sound, decommissioning, and agricultural-land considerations -- and bars counties from imposing outright moratoriums on wind or solar development. Confirm Montgomery County's own current Wind and Solar Energy Ordinance provisions directly given how much development the county has already approved or is reviewing.

Septic, GIS, and other departments to know

Septic and well permitting in Montgomery County runs through the Montgomery County Health Department under the statewide IDPH Title 77 Part 905 framework and IDPH's water-well permitting program. The county's GIS office (Kevin Brink, GIS Technician and Plat Act Officer, #1 Old Courthouse Square, Hillsboro) and the Supervisor of Assessments (#1 Courthouse Square, Hillsboro) handle parcel mapping and property valuation, alongside the building-notification requirement described above. The County Clerk & Recorder holds recorded deeds, easements (including any wind or solar lease documents), and plats for a specific parcel.