Thank you Irv for your honest and enlightening article about the developers and Northbrook politics. They are not interested in anything other than their projects so it is up to our village trustees to protect our homes and businesses as they did by rejecting the Techny/Shermer project.
We must elect officials whose decisions will positively impact our town and not their wallets.
You are wrong about Heritage Woods. It definitely would have been built without massive residential opposition. The developer spent $300,000 trying to get the project approved. Why would the trustees have encouraged him to keep pursuing the project and waste all that money if it was doomed from the start? The first time the plan was presented to the trustees, they were intrigued by the idea and sent it to the Plan Commission. Why would they have done that if they didn't think it was a good idea? Of course the developer was angry. He himself said that it was all of the community opposition that defeated the project.
The Nbk board made it clear from jump that if the project wasn't smaller, it wouldn't go. The developer refused to shrink it, so it had no chance. Nbk government never gave the project a green light, and didn't try to shove anything down anybody's throat.
You are missing (or choosing to ignore) the main point, which is that to build this facility in the first place, 4 residential lots (three of which had single family homes on them) would have been consolidated and rezoned. This is called "spot zoning." If this facility had been built, the precedent would have been set that any residential area in Northbrook could have a section "carved out" for anything....a commercial building, multi-family unit, assisted living facility, etc. providing no protection for homeowners. The neighbor to the west would have had a truck loading dock 10 feet from his property line. Obviously the trustees had not issues with rezoning a single-family residential area, or they wouldn't have sent the project to the Plan Commission.
You don't understand the process well, which is understandable, because it is complex. But a proposal has to be very bad to get dumped on first hearing -- not sent to the plan commission -- because that would invite a lawsuit by a developer.
Thank you Irv for your honest and enlightening article about the developers and Northbrook politics. They are not interested in anything other than their projects so it is up to our village trustees to protect our homes and businesses as they did by rejecting the Techny/Shermer project.
We must elect officials whose decisions will positively impact our town and not their wallets.
You are wrong about Heritage Woods. It definitely would have been built without massive residential opposition. The developer spent $300,000 trying to get the project approved. Why would the trustees have encouraged him to keep pursuing the project and waste all that money if it was doomed from the start? The first time the plan was presented to the trustees, they were intrigued by the idea and sent it to the Plan Commission. Why would they have done that if they didn't think it was a good idea? Of course the developer was angry. He himself said that it was all of the community opposition that defeated the project.
The Nbk board made it clear from jump that if the project wasn't smaller, it wouldn't go. The developer refused to shrink it, so it had no chance. Nbk government never gave the project a green light, and didn't try to shove anything down anybody's throat.
You are missing (or choosing to ignore) the main point, which is that to build this facility in the first place, 4 residential lots (three of which had single family homes on them) would have been consolidated and rezoned. This is called "spot zoning." If this facility had been built, the precedent would have been set that any residential area in Northbrook could have a section "carved out" for anything....a commercial building, multi-family unit, assisted living facility, etc. providing no protection for homeowners. The neighbor to the west would have had a truck loading dock 10 feet from his property line. Obviously the trustees had not issues with rezoning a single-family residential area, or they wouldn't have sent the project to the Plan Commission.
You don't understand the process well, which is understandable, because it is complex. But a proposal has to be very bad to get dumped on first hearing -- not sent to the plan commission -- because that would invite a lawsuit by a developer.
I thought you died - sorry about that!
Reports of my demise were exaggerated.