City Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order the city council meeting for the city of Highland Park, Illinois, October 30th, 2025. Will the clerk please call the role? Council member Center, present. Council member Buckman, here. Council member Ross here. Council member Tapia, present. Council member Little here. Council member Bloomberg. Mayor Roing

here. We have a quorum. Everyone, please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Um, before we continue our business this evening, on behalf of the city council and the city staff, I'd like us to pause for a moment. Uh, many of our neighbors have experienced significant stress, concern, fear, and outrage over the past few months as actions taken at the federal level have directly impacted communities in Illinois and across the nation. As a city council and as a city staff, we share those concerns uh from fears for the safety of our immigrant neighbors to the uncertainty facing families affected by the federal government shutdown. Highland Park is not immune to these national events, but we can choose how we respond together. In the city of Chicago and throughout the Chicagoland region, communities have experienced an unprecedented level of federal immigration enforcement activity that has disrupted daily life. At the same time, many residents are feeling the financial strain of the government shutdown, worried about paychecks, benefits, and how to make ends meet. While we are not aware of any confirmed immigration enforcement activity in Highland Park, we know this is a time of uncertainty and fear for many law-abiding immigrants and Americans alike, including right here in our hometown. Highland Park has a long-standing legacy of inclusion. Since 1869, when we were founded, immigrants have been at the heart of who we are. From the earliest German-speaking settlers to families of Irish, Italian, and Jewish descent, and today to residents from around the world, our city has always drawn strength from its

diversity. Our children benefit from classrooms and playgrounds filled with classmates of different experiences, and our local businesses thrive because of immigrant- entrepreneurs and employees. At the core of our value statement is the commitment to honoring and affirming the intrinsic worth of everyone who works, lives, studies, and visits our town. We know that words alone are not enough. It's so important for each of us to live out our values, to speak out against injustice, to stand beside those who are vulnerable. True allyship means listening before acting, understanding before deciding, and supporting others based on their needs, not our assumptions. Every moment we take to listen, every act of kindness, and every voice raised for fairness strengthens the fabric of our community. Most importantly, every person who lives, works, studies, and visits Highland Park has the basic right to feel safe and welcome here. Highland Park has long affirmed its commitment to being an inclusive and respectful community for all. Our city follows state law, including the Illinois Trust Act, which guides how local governments interact with federal agencies and helps ensure that residents can see seek help from local authorities without fear. We encourage everyone to stay informed and understand their rights and to rely on trusted community resources and organizations for accurate information and support. Our goal is to make sure that all residents know that Highland Park is here to serve and protect every member of our community with fairness, respect, and compassion. The division of power and responsibility between federal and local law governments is clearly defined, and the law limits how local governments can interact with federal enforcement activities. While the Illinois Trust Act prohibits local law enforcement from assisting with federal immigration enforcement activity, no

state or federal law grants local governments the right to restrict or prohibit this federal activity at the local level. Much to our frustration, we continue to evaluate how best to support our residents while remaining within the framework of state and federal law. Our priority is to ensure that our residents have accurate information about their rights and access to trusted community resources. If you are an immigrant or an ally, know that Highland Park's first responders will never ask for your immigration status when you call 911. If you or someone you know relies on the SNAP program or is struggling due to the government shutdown, the Marine Township and West Deerfield Township Food Pantries are ready to help. If you need financial support, 211 Lake County and the townships have resources available. If you need free confidential legal support, the North Suburban Legal Aid Clinic is available and they've posted information on their website which is nslegal.org. From from know your rights to emergency planning to how to be an ally. If the events of these past months have taken a toll on your mental health, Joseline or 211 can connect you with confidential support. I cannot emphasize this enough. You are not alone. Highland Park stands together. Information about each of these and other community resources can be found on the city's website, cityhil.com. In particular, there's a wealth of information concerning immigration at cityhpil.com/nowights. Thank you for your continued support of our community and of one another. As we have in every difficult chapter our town has experienced, we will move forward together as one Highland Park, true to our values and unwavering in our care and concern for our neighbors and united in our commitment to justice, compassion, and hope. Thank you for listening this evening. Continuing on with our agenda, we have no appointments

this evening and we have no proclamations this evening. We have no other business than that which is scheduled this evening. And now I'd like to ask assistant to city manager Pablitzka if you could please introduce the next item on our agenda, business from the public.

Thank you, mayor. The next item on the agenda is business from the public. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the city council on a topic that is within the council's purview and jurisdiction, but is not listed in another location on the agenda. If you would like to speak about a matter that is listed on the agenda, we ask that you wait until the agenda item is called and we will give you an opportunity to speak then. If your matter is on the omnibus consent uh agenda, please let us know if you would like us to remove that matter from the consolidated list so that you can speak about it. Please be aware that business from the public is not intended to be a forum for open dialogue or engagement with members of the city council. Rather, it is intended as an opportunity to make comments to the city council. Please do not expect a response from anyone tonight. If appropriate, questions may be directed to the city manager or other city staff. All comments should be directed to the city council. All speakers will be limited to 3 minutes. We request that speakers refrain from throwing objects or using noise makers and that the public not applaud or make other comments after any speaker. We ask that everyone be respectful, civil, and non-repetitive. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who wish to be heard this evening on an item not on tonight's agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll continue with our scheduled business. Under other business, the item that we're discussing tonight is a resolution approving a preliminary development plan and a preliminary plat of subdivision for 1660 and 1700 Old Deerfield Road. Um, I want to thank everybody for your emails. I want to thank you for your comments. We've read all of them if they came in before 6:30 this evening.

Um, I want to thank you for your time and your interest in the subject matter. Um, Director Fontaine, I don't think we were expecting a presentation. This is really more of an opportunity for council to ask further questions. However, you'd like following the presentation of the resolution that we received in our agenda packets. Mayor, we do have follow-up information from the last city council meeting. I don't know if you want us just to highlight. That would be great. I think that would be terrific. Thank you.

Okay, just quick follow up on last meeting. So, um just you all know the development in general in terms of the project. Um since last meeting um of the city council, um this housing commission did have a meeting on October 8th and voted 6 to 0 to recommend approval of an amended inclusionary housing plan for 34 units to be provided on site and 1.2 by payment aled uh uh amendment based on the reduction of units to 227. Um, we did receive public comment from several uh people including um Butters to the North um represented by their attorney and other residents in the area. Um, I can go through just a a a summary of the conditions, mayor, or you can have council ask specific questions. I'm prepared for either. Which would you like? I think it would be helpful to go through the summary of conditions and I think there might be a couple of questions that come out of that

and I do want to make mention of a couple of um additional items that we we'll need to have prior to the final consideration.

Okay. So, in terms of summary of conditions, um we painstakingly um listened to what council said um at the last meeting and incorporated a whole host of conditions in the resolution that's before you tonight. This is a preliminary approval of uh several items as as mentioned and also acknowledgements of several others that will will need to be part of final decisions um when final plans are provided and presented to you. So in terms of public benefits, there's access road easement and improvements, parking and vehicle charging related. There's 14 spaces for city use and a parking lot on site. uh 12 uh public parking spaces uh on the access road uh four EV stations um locations of which and and such will be negotiated as part of development agreements um bike and pedestrian improvements share and crosswalks um west tot lot it's a tot lot um available uh to the public uh through an access and use easement clubhouse and a comm community room uh public benefit as well talk about that in a minute. Conditions uh importantly there were a number of conditions um placed on the property um having to do with the zoning uh particularly um so there are further use restrictions um on the RM1 portion of the property uh the RM uh the R seven portion of the property as well. There's also use restrictions related to an emergency access. there are parking related use restrictions and there's a city access easement in that that category there in terms of emergency access. Um in addition, landscaping and garbage services are only uh allowed to uh enter the site via the access road. So these are all further use consider uh restrictions and I'll talk more about

the zoning ones in a moment. Okay. So the additional use restrictions um with regard to the zone change uh in in addition to the change of zoning uh for the property that's being requested. Um there are further restrictions specifically notwithstanding anything to the contrary related to the RM1 and R7 zoning districts. The following will apply in the RM1 portion of the property shall be limited to 227 total single family attached units, town houses and accessory structures, etc. Um, and so what that's doing is it is when you when you change the zoning district, it comes with a collection of uses and rights. This further restricts that. So you're so this portion of the consideration um would restrict from what is otherwise allowed in an RM1 district the following the number of units and the building form single family attached is what's called aka town home so it needs to be in that form that 227 units can't take another form it will also of course as standard with all peds have to be tied to plans provided and final engineering and all that In addition, on the RS R7 portion of the property, it's limited to open space, a tot lot, a dog run, lighting, and fencing. Okay, so that's that's all that will be able to be there. Um, so RS R seven allows for a collection of uses, but those are being further winnowed down to the ones that I just mentioned, open space, hot lot, dog run, lighting, fencing. So these are additional land use restrictions being placed on the property. And as you know, there's already a covenant uh along the western portion of the property that the city holds, the 100 foot covenant. Um, and that's that's still going to be there. There will be

some amendments to it, but it'll still be in place. So, there'll be additional covenants applied to this area, uh, the RS the R seven uh portion of the the lot. Um in terms of other uh restrictions I I talked about emergency access parking related and city access easement. So parking related throughout the development there's on street parking and in certain areas there can't be parking due to need for emergency services access. So those will need to be appropriately signed and and uh throughout and so that will be part of the final plans. We've already reviewed this from an emergency access safety point of view, but you need the signs to ensure that those places that can't have parking don't have parking in the future and that all residents are aware of this access easement. There's an access easement that is uh in this resolution of 26 ft wide that goes from the development to Ridge Road at the Devonshshire intersection. Um that is only a contingency. Uh this has been reviewed by police and fire as well as community development and there's no need for that access easement for emergency services. However, in the abundance of caution and future planning, there will be an access granted to the city that the city would then be able to improve should it ever deem necessary for such matters. Landscaping and garbage services. This was discussed uh about how to uh control traffic in the neighborhood. And so those two types of services are under the control of the applicant unlike let's say an Amazon or a UPS delivery. They can dictate through their contracting with those companies what way they access their property. This would add that restriction to the approvals from council and require that. Okay.

So there are a host of conditions that are summarized here and these are just summaries but they are in great detail in the attached resolution conditions related to inclusionary housing payment in L for 1.2 units. One unit is that discretionary approval the council has uh uh to make uh to allow and that uh involves $185,400 of this $222,480. The rest is for the fractional 0.2 units. Okay. So that's how we get to the 222 and change that was recommended by the housing commission. Uh as as stated um conditions related to environmental matters. So site remediation, no further remediation determination is required as part of of this development and that will be negotiated through those final documents as to the timing and they do need to follow best practices in terms of obtaining those uh that determination from the state EPA tree preservation. Our forester had talked about preventative tree maintenance plan uh treatment plan rather for the two lined chestnut bore. So to make sure that we're protecting the existing trees out there properly, um light lighting um will be in compliance with city code, but in addition, nothing higher than 3,000 Kelvin in terms of the the uh the temperature, the color temperature of the light. That's important. And that is a standard that we've applied for uh PUDS um for many years now. And so they will be complying throughout the development with that that as well. In terms of construction conditions, we have compliance with OSHA regulations uh for dust and debris. OSHA has a whole host of of things, but there was particular concern about dust and debris during construction. And so we're adding this extra layer of regulation on

that and ensuring that we as the city have the ability to act on those matters as well as of course the state and others. Um hours of operation per our city code um no construction it shouldn't say not I'm sorry no construction traffic on ridge road with exceptions uh for required rightaway and utility improvements so if there are any access to that road for those matters that that would be the exception otherwise that will not be utilized and then throughout this development which will happen in one continuous multi-phase uh project. Okay. So, it's one phase with multiple parts, let's say, is a better way to put it. And so, we will have the parts that are not under construction maintained in park-like condition. Okay. All right. And additional conditions, open space. So, there's 12.9 acres of open space total in the development. Okay. All areas 10.96 within a conservation ement. The rest is this park area. the top lot and other areas within the built portion of the development. The 10.96 is the conservation ement that green band around the entire uh built portion. Now I want to make mention that that's a correction 10.96. There was a state it was stated in the memo and the resolution 9.11. That was an error. The staff and and the uh developer talked about this today and we all agree it should be 10.96. And so, um, we just want to make sure that that correction is made here tonight. Uh, as well, this shall be dedicated or donated by the applicant to an entity designated by the city in the city's sole discretion. So, that's what that conservation easement is going to do. And it does limit further, like we talked about, um,

the uses of that land and restricts it quite significantly. And so it needs to be open space with some limited things. We also have in here in terms of incorpor the open space incorporating Lake County stormwater management comments. Okay, these have been agreed with uh the developer agrees to these and you know he can speak to anything if if he uh he chooses conditions uh related to the wood woodland path. Um, it must comply with the accessibility requirements of the American Disabilities Act and that was was stated at last council meeting. Traffic study. The applicant to conduct professional study and construct or or perform any traffic improvements recommended by updated traffic study must be conducted while schools are in session. This was an important part that had been talked about throughout this process. And it should happen at 90% occupancy or at such earlier time the city manager deems may be necessary or warranted. And so if there is a problem that occurs or is perceived to occur that we need to have this study done sooner to make those traffic improvements, we can at the city's option. Okay? And of course the city manager, you know, will be able to make that choice and we'll effectuate that. And so if that does not is that's not deemed necessary regardless it will happen at 90% once they strike 90%. If they go over it that's fine but at least 90% occupancy. Why? Well that gives you the full sense of this development's impact. So we certainly want to do it then. Um so that that's the provision related to the traffic study conditions uh a condition related to ridge road deccord crosswalk. So there was much much discussion about this and there was quite a bit of comment public comment uh

on multiple occasions. So the applicant did assess the safety of this this matter since our last meeting was able to accomplish that. We did send that to our third party and our traffic engineer um and and we concur. The crosswalk and signs that are needed to be provided will still be reviewed as part of the final engineering, but the safety of this access this crosswalk um is not an issue from staff's perspective. Um access road and what we mean by that is along the railroad um there'll be a public access easement for ingress, egress and parking. Uh final engineering's plans must depict improvements including the paving, parking, loading, landscaping along that access road, whatever is is in within that right away. Okay. Condition with regard to 1636 Old Deerfield Road. This is this blueg grass next door. Um there was concerns about impacts to existing landscaping located in the rightway. There's a condition that that be minimized. So, what the aim is is that there's a sidewalk that's to be included, but that that sidewalk not eliminate or damage or or or um affect that landscaping in any significant way so that it still preserves that buffer that the restaurant, the outdoor area has and just that nice flow. It does look very good and so that's uh being sought to be maintained and minimize any impact to it while still providing the sidewalk which the applicant looked at although does not have final engineering but believes there is sufficient room to have a five or six foot sidewalk there and not impact that landscaping in any significant way. Um, in addition, notwithstanding the relief granted, uh, the final landscaping plan for the applicants, a budding parking

lot must include some landscape buffer between and additional internal landscaping. So, this was a concern. There's currently a strip of landscaping. It's not very wide. It's about 2, three feet wide between these parking areas. And so the the applicant is going to essentially when doing this reconstruction include a landscaping strip like that with drought tolerant grasses etc. things that can survive in in that type of environment. And then also in the parking lot although there was landscaping proposed already additional landscaping although having said that not fully compliant with the zoning uh code. So the relief is still necessary,

but that's why I said notwithstanding, they're still going to add some more. It's just not fully compliant with code. Okay. So it's more compliant. Okay. Other conditions. So there's a number of other conditions and it just it grouped as other here. um related to a number of matters and we've got the requirement to incorporate comments from the Illinois Commerce Commission regarding railroad uh as appropriate and to the city satisfaction. Um we did reach out to them, the applicant reached out to them, we got comments and so those will be part of the final engineering consideration. Um additionally provide specifications for sound mitigation for the town homes nearest to the northern and eastern property lines. This had been talked about at the plan commission meeting. The applicant agreed to do that. So that will be essentially additional uh provisions in the construction of that those homes to mitigate sound. Um provide final engineering for all improvements on the property and the police station. This goes without question. It's a standard condition. Um provide evidence of financial wherewithal. So you know at the time of of of issuing permits and such council there was some questions from council and others. Are they going to do they have the wherewithal to do this project? This is you know a large project and so there'll need to be some evidence shown to the man at your satisfaction about the financial wherewithal for this particular project and whether it's financed properly and all that so that it can get completed. Um south property line this came up. What about what's going to happen with the south property line? There's not much shown. This is true. There's not anything shown really. It's it's just there and it's green and it's several hundred a couple hundred feet away from where the development is going to be happening. Um there is property line obviously and letters were sent down in June and July of two 2024 from the

property owner that's not the developer at this time. Um, and that letter was sent with the purpose of which was to let the Butters know about a proposed property line fence and to remove encroachments that they may have as applicable. So, some property owners along the southern property line have some things that have migrated across the line. And so, that was sent out then. And the intent at that point was they were going to install a fence there. As you know, the property owner has installed a fence in some portions of the property. They I to the best of my knowledge I don't believe they installed anything down there as of yet. The developer would like to to install something to create you know to have a visual you know u barrier or or delineation if you will for the property. And so taking up where this left off there would be some type of fence. And so as part of final approval they'll propose a fence and tell us the materials and you know what it looks like. Okay. All right. the revised resoning request. Okay, so the reasoning I'll start with the revision and then talk about the rest. So the revision involves the I light industrial zoning strip. It is now 0.24 acres. It was 0.42 acres. There was some question about why was it 10 ft wide, 5t wide in some places. So now it's all just regularized as 5t and it does not change the regulatory impact on the properties to the north. and just make that note. But there's more on that just later about some test uh some comments that were received about the impact there. Minimizing impact does not eliminate all impact to just summarize that. Um and we'll talk more about that in a minute. So that's what happened there. So that's why it's recalled a revised resoning request. It was responsive to council saying, "Well, which is it? Does it have to be do different? Why not why isn't it all the

same?" essentially. So now it's it's it's that. So the request is 19.26 acres to be reszoned from I district to RM1 and 9.11 acres to be uh zoned from I district to R seven. And as you recall before, there will be this conservation easement that will be applied to the entirety of that R seven and more because the conservation easement actually includes land beyond just what's being zoned R seven. So it's 10.96 acres as I had said before, the corrected number for the conservation ement. So it's actually a larger area than the zoning that is R seven. Okay, again to just recap what further use restrictions are being applied to that zone change. So as part of the plan development, the RM1 portion of the property will consist of 227 single family attached units. So very specific about the building form and the number of units not withstanding what otherwise could happen in an RM1 zoning district. That's what's required here in part of this development. R seven portion of the property will be open space. The tot lot aka called the west tot lot because there is another tot lot in the development in the developed area but that's that not in that zoning district. Um there'll be a dog run and a light lighting and a and and fencing. So and of course it will all be subject to in accordance with the terms and provisions of the development agreement which we will be negotiating should this uh move forward. And it's tied to all those exhibits. So there's a host of exhibits that the development agreement will include and this these approvals would have as as it's a standard practice. Um so just a little bit to explain about

the zone change proposal and what what's like rationale and why is it R seven and RM1 and why does that make sense? The proposed zoning map amendment provides what's what we can refer to as a regulatory ladder. And as a property goes up or down, the rights conferred generally increase or decrease the with exceptions. Okay. This resoning request represents a downzoning from I to RM1. Okay. And so the RM1 district is generally more restrictive than the I district. Okay. with the exception as I said earlier that the I district doesn't allow residential but the RM does. So that's why the exception general rule but there's exceptions. Um so it creates a step down from industrial to multif family residential the lowest RM1 the lowest intensity version of that and then to R seven which is one step down from the RM1 on the subject property and then essentially if you look across the street you've got R six and then R5 kitty corner to that. Uh the density is 11.8 8 units per acre for the RM1 area. Specifically, RM1 districts allow 15 units per acre. So, they're not um utilizing the full density there, and nor will they be able to because of the 227 unit specific limitation that's placed on the property. And it's 7.9 units per acre if you look at the site in its entirety, which is appropriate because this is an entire development that consists of open space and the developed area. So it just gives you those those two reference numbers. So if one were to ask, so in the RM1 district, are they compliant with the density? Yes, they're below the density that would otherwise be allowed in the RM1 district. Overall,

it's 7.9 when you include the entirety of the land area involved 28.6 acres or so. In general, fewer steps in the latter represent less change in terms of land use regulation. So when you have, you know, adjacent zoning districts that are one step away, they they're closer in in use rights than than further steps away, if you will. So let's look at just some quick examples here in Highland Park of some step down zoning. As you can see here, this is Central Business District in B5, the red in the middle. And what radiates out from there is various B districts. B4, we call them the B4s, right? and they have various intensities from five, four and and and such going down. So B45 is more intense than a B44. Um and then around the outside toward the south you can see that there's an RM1 district residential multif family one the lower left hand side here and it does abut the R seven R5 R4 to the south in the yellow. Um, similarly next door to that we have an RM2 that's ab budding uh the R5 R six districts to the south there as well and you could see the ring of various R districts around these more intense districts and the RM1 is abuing them in many cases. Okay, another case is up on Waggan Road near Temple and right at the the Highwood border we have RM1 abuing R seven abuing a business zone abuing another RM1 which abuts an R six to the east as you could see south and east there. Okay, so those are two just local examples. Um, in terms of additional considerations, staff have identified that the applicant needs to formally

apply for the special use permit for conditional use for an off- streetet parking lot freestanding to effectuate the proposed 42 space off streetet parking lot northwest corner of the property. It's part of the final consideration for this development. So, this parking lot was certainly talked about. It consists of two parks and it consists of a 28 parking space. uh of that 42 spaces, 28 spaces are subject to an easement with the abuing land owner with regard to its use for parking like um for that use. In addition, there's a 14 space portion of it and it's delineated in the parking lot so that it's clear that 14 spaces is part of a public benefit. The police department and folks visiting the police department can utilize that. It's basically being able to be used by the public. And so that's the 42 parking space uh lot that needs to have this formally considered. This parking lot was talked about tremendously throughout the public process and I know the applicant worked closely with the easement holder to satisfy those private needs and with the city with regard to the 14 space um city portion that that would be able to be used. Okay. Um the Butters to the North have provided uh at least one of Butter to the North uh has provided um a letter uh expressing concern um that they're not adequately held harmless, if you will, from increased regulation due to these changes. You may recall the I zoning strip was uh included by the applicant to mitigate or to minimize that impact to the abuter and it does do that in some cases where it does remove what is a required setback. But there are other setback requirements and buffering that it does not address. And so staff and

corporation council um will consider this further um as part of a final consideration should council direct. But we do we we've talked about it and and there may be ways to to address this this specific matter as part of the final consideration. Just defer to corp counsel if there's any other additional information that you'd like to Okay. Okay. So in summary and conclusion, recommended adoption of the resolution granting preliminary approval for the following preliminary development plan for plan development, preliminary plat subdivision subdivision and acknowledgements of city code modifications, variances and waiverss. Acknowledges resoning request acknowledges an amendment of a covenant that city holds and acknowledges payment in lie for affordable housing as described. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Appreciate the time and here for any questions.

Great. Thank you, Director Fontaine. Um, most particularly appreciated your statement about clarifying resoning. I thought that was a question that's been outstanding, not just to members of the council, but also to members of the public, and I thought you did a nice job of explaining why. So, thank you for that. Thank you.

Um, I have just two questions for the applicant. Um, but I know my council colleagues have questions as well. So, we'll hear from them next after I ask mine and then we'll go to the public if you have any further questions. Um, and I'll just say this is not a public hearing. So, there is no requirement of having public comments, but I appreciate the time and the concern that you've expressed and the interest that you've had in this project. So, we're happy to hear from the public. um would ask that you not repeat something that you've said in a prior meeting because obviously we've taken those elements under consideration. Uh and my two questions for the applicant are pretty straightforward. I asked one of them earlier. Um you've got this sidewalk going part of the way north on old Deerfield Road on the east side. Is there any way to continue that to old Skoi? One of the questions and concerns we have about this new development is how can we make sure that it's integrated into the neighborhood? How do we provide continued connectivity? And so I know if you're doing part of the sidewalk, I don't know if there's any feasibility to just continue that sidewalk to the north to connect all the way to Old Skoi. Um there's a bike bridge there, so forth. And if you if you're coming forward to answer, feel free to come to the podium. And

my name is Thomas Black. Uh I'm retired from the Habitat company, but I was a senior vice president of development for the last 40 years. The company developed a lot. I'm working with Zack Zer on this. Um this is sort of a new question, but I am familiar with the route you're talking about. The reason we took it up to Old Deerfield Road is so there was a crossover from our side of the site over to the police station side of the site, which also then continues north on the northwest side of Old Deerfield Road going all the way up to the railroad tracks all the way up across into the area across the railroad tracks towards the 41 Expressway.

Okay. On our side of the road, there are a number of parking lot areas of the industrial users and the lumber yard that occupy that rightofway area. And so it would require them to abandon that area. There also some pitched areas that would have to be regraded and we just never considered that really relevant to our users. If they're going to the grocery store, which I think many of them will walk, they'll do it on the west side because it is the west side. Okay. And the bicycle riders could ride in the road on the east side in the shared lane to get to the overpass over Eden's 41.

Great. Thank you. Um, my other question comes out of exhibit B and you had a sort of chart that showed the full development along with street names. Were those just placeholders or were those the Okay, thank you. because you had one in there that was Park West Drive and we already have Park Avenue West and I was like, whoa, that's not helpful. So, okay, just being reviewed by staff to sure that they're not like you're saying with other street names.

Thank you. Um, and again, I just want to thank you for hearing our questions and thank you for hearing the community's concerns. Um, obviously this is a tremendous undertaking. Uh, and we appreciate in particular the amount of affordable housing that's being brought on board through our inclusionary zoning. So, thank you for for bringing this project to light. Um, with that, I'll take questions from the group and as I have been of late, I think we'll just go down alternating. So, we'll start with Council Member Bloomberg and then Council Member Leor.

Thank you. Um, I I don't have too many questions. I'll have comments later. Um, I had a quick question about the EV charging stations that you've agreed to install, and I I appreciate that. And those are going to be for the general public, not just for residents within this development. My question is, who's going to maintain those? And and if there's a homeowners association, will that be the who maintains those? Um, having EV charging stations in a community is important, but as we all know historically, sometimes they don't work. So, I want to make sure that this this is something that's going to be an existing benefit. Sure.

So, the likelihood is that we will engage with a third party, you know, professional group that, you know, is a name brand that will maintain them. I I appreciate that, but somebody has to take responsibility in the event that they remain broken down for a long time. Who does the city have to contact if that occurs? It it would be the property owner.

Okay, that's great. Um I I do want to highlight um this isn't so much of a question, but I want to highlight an issue with respect to the zoning and corporation council. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Um there's been some concern about whether the underlying zoning may in the long term allow greater density and more development of the property. Overall, this is a planned unit development which includes an agreement for the development of this property between the developer and the city that overrides everything and what's there cannot be changed without public hearings and an agreement to change the agreement. That's that runs pretty deep. That affects large properties like the Revina Festival. Uh it affects Renaissance Place. They have occasionally wanted to make changes on those properties. They have to come before us. They have to go before the planning commission. They have to take public input. So regardless of the underlying zoning and the zoning is there for the purposes that um uh director Fontaine discussed the plan for the site is the plan for the site and that can't be changed without your legislative representatives approving that. I I want to make that very clear.

Council member Bloomberg, that is 100% correct. Um, and that alone should have been enough. But at your last meeting, there was a request by council members to make that abundantly clear. So to provide you with the belt and suspenders that I usually do, I added section 11B that your concept is right, but if anyone doubts the concept, there now is a specific provision that says that um very provision that's going to be incorporated into the development agreement. So we'll have a contractual agreement with the owner saying the same thing.

Okay. Um those are really the only overall comments and questions that I have right now. I'm interested to hear what my colleagues will ask about. Great. Thank you, Council Member Little. I just want one point of clarification. You'd like our questions now. You want us to hold our comments? Questions and comments are fine now.

Okay, great. Thank you. So, a couple quick questions. Um, the south border. Um, I appreciate the clarity that perhaps there'll be a fence now. Um, is there any consideration of perhaps instead of a fence to be a more welcoming neighbor that it would be BMS or it would be green or it would be instead of it being a hard fence, I'd rather see a lot of plantings there instead. But I I do like the idea of a border. So, I guess one of my questions is would you consider something like that? If I realize I haven't identified myself, I'm Zach Zer with the Habitat Company.

Um, the intent is to not disturb that area as much as possible. We think the best solution to, you know, provide that border is with a fence. Uh, I guess we'd be open to hearing other suggestions, but I I think offense is in order.

Okay. All right. I mean, I I just want to clear demarcation. And I do think that that tends to be more welcoming. And that actually is sort of the crux of what I'd like to look at this from the opposite point of view. But let me ask one question on it first. Um, two of the variances that you're asking for are having to do with on the perimeter, the bearing of the lines and the sidewalk extension on Ridge. And those are very, very costly. And those are things that should we grant you this variance, which frankly we have to grant you a variance because you're obligated under our current ordinances to put those in, um, then I would like to see a public benefit that is greater to this particular community. And I don't just mean your development, I mean to the neighbors because this is all the perimeter that you are obligated to actually comply with. And that in my mind would again take on plantings and BMS and and beautifification. And so one of my questions is whether there could be an increased public benefit which whether you want to quantify that in dollars to be spent toward um beautifification of the area and moving it into the neighborhood. And along those lines, and I' I'd like you to address that public benefit first, and then I'll go into my other part of fitting into the neighborhood.

Hello, uh, Paul Shadel with DA Piper. I'm standing in for my partner Katie Jenke Dale. So, hello. Um I my understanding and we've talked about this is that the landscape plan that they have including the whole area the the let's call it the open space area has been pretty extensively reviewed at plan commission and with staff and I think the the goal is through that to provide pretty substantial beautifification at the boundary and I think they'd really like to stick with the landscape plan that they've presented and I'm just questioning because I didn't hear much discussion about those to variances that we as a council, not the PDC, have to grant to you. Understood.

Um that I I don't think that the benefit is sufficient. And so I'm questioning whether in fact that couldn't be increased as a public benefit to our neighbors uh beyond the outside of the property.

Yeah. On the perimeter. Yeah. Because the sidewalk and the lines are actually you're doing that totally in compliance. They'll be buried in the development. but beyond the development and to be a good neighbor. I think that those kind of buffers, whether it's at Bluegrass, whether it's on the south border, or whether it's just on the periphery, would really help your neighborhood, become a part of the entire neighborhood that's currently existing. So, Councilman Lawir, you are absolutely correct that the bearing of the utility lines would not make this project feasible, but we have implemented and I I believe we have a slide on it, Joel, if you want to pull it up. I think it's more in triple what the landscaping requirements already are.

So, we feel like we have gone far above and beyond. And then in regards to the border with blueg grass, we're going to have about 18 in in between the easement holders lot and the current paving on blueg grass. So we're going to make it, you know, full of grasses that will survive. If you go there now, you'll see that it's not surviving. Almost 3 ft. Oh, it's it's almost 3 ft in between. We will make it, you know, substantially nice. uh especially better than what it is currently.

Okay. So that I just want to make sure that those kinds of things are added in there and and frankly again and I don't know if it needs to be in a dollar amount that is sort of put in reserve to add to the greenery and everything else to make sure that it's compliant. But that is something that I I think that my council members might want to consider in terms of a public benefit because I'm I'm this is we're really these variances are very costly and and I feel so that's going to take me to the other part of this and this is my last part. Um, Council Member Blumberg, you really summarized it very well in terms of the limitations with the covenant with regard to the RM1 and the R7 zoning. And I do think you have it right and it it makes me feel better to know that there's a limit. But instead of this being a step down from light industrial to residential, I would look at this in the exact opposite way, which would be right now we have a neighborhood and it is single family homes and what you are doing which is really wonderful is you are still including single family homes. They're town homes. So it's a step up. So it's an R seven in my estimation if the numbers work. And even if they don't work, there can always be a variance that gets you to that 227. But instead of going down from light industrial, I'd like to go up from R4 or R5 or R six where the neighborhood is currently and look at this as single family rather than having the RM1 in there. So, I really do appreciate the work that staff has done to show us why this fits into the neighborhood, but I'd like to take it from the other end and say you are making a development that is further independent single family home living and that's really great. That's what we as a community have really wanted for the site. I love the work

that you've done on this, but I'd like to see it all as R seven capped so that what we're really looking at is residential and at some point in the future perhaps this area instead of being part of Briergate is really part of is it the southwest Highland Park

Highland Park community. So, it's all residential so that our current neighbors know that they're getting more neighbors without additional density, without, you know, 10 years down the line, and I know there will be covenants that, you know, god forbid, you know, a high-rise or whatever comes in, but that we're really limiting it to single family housing, whether that's single home or um town houses. And so I would still ask my fellow council members to consider this as purely an R seven. I I believe the numbers do work. There may be something with regard to height, but we're already giving you a variance with regard to the height. So if it's another 5T because it's our seven, I don't think it really matters. And what I'd really like to see is that this truly be zoned residential and that your development becomes part of our community as a housing area rather than as it formally was light industrial. And I believe that concludes my comments and I would like to see that considered as R seven alone. Was my calculation uh correct that R seven would yield 198 units? I don't remember what the density

I don't think so mayor director Fontaine. So the answer to that question is not a simple one and we do not have enough information to answer that question. There's estimates that say that it could maybe accommodate the number maybe not. It depends on what's called a subdivision sketch plan for any the single family zoning districts. That's required to determine your ultimate density. And so what that requires that you lay out a subdivision and subdivision roads to public street standards, which these are not. Okay, I just want to make mention of that. It'd be far less of the open space because you

right. And and what you would do Well, let me just say this. It wouldn't be less open space. The development can look just like this. The question is the calculation on the density. Okay. So the calculation on the density for those types of zoning districts R seven and the other Rs. Um these single family districts requires this additional information. It's a subdivision laid out to city standards with lots require any variances to be placed on that. um it requires you know a land surveyor and and you know a lot of time and effort to do that and then what what happens is we look at that make sure that that loting meets all of the code and that those roads do and then that's the density that can be allowed. There are things that are taken out of that such as wetlands and other things that would not be able to be accounted for in the density calculation. There are other aspects of it that, you know, we'd have to see whether or not they could lay out the number of lots that would accommodate the number of units that that they're seeking. We just don't have that information. So, there are some estimates and, you know, folks have kind of spitballled including, you know, the applicant staff just very high level, but that's not definitive. So, I I can't answer definitively.

Okay. Council member Boover,

I I'd like to add uh without necessarily advocating on behalf of one party or the other, this is a project that's gone through numerous meetings at the plan and design commission where zoning has been discussed. Before that, uh there were lengthy meetings with staff to determine appropriate zoning to accommodate this plan. If you change the zoning now, you have to go back and look at the variances that are going to be necessary because even though the planned unit development remains the same, the relationship of that development to the underlying zoning determines the variances that the applicant has to request to build this application, to build this development. And that's going to change the public benefits that they have to provide. It may increase the cost to the developer in more than a modest way. And while I'm not advocating strictly based on the economic benefits to the developer, it still has to be considered that this process has to be relied on by all parties. We have to know what we're dealing with by the time we get to the city council level and what is being asked of the developer. Um there are relationships between the zoning on the property and the adjacent abuing zoning that has also been addressed to make the interaction between this site and the surrounding community one that from a zoning perspective allows for stability in the surrounding community and has provided certain kinds of buffers for the existing remaining industrial district. I'm not willing at this point without having to completely undo the entire consideration of this development to ask

the zoning to be changed at this point. I understand we have a couple of zoning districts. There's a good rationale for that. I'm comfortable with that. It allows this development to interact with the surrounding community as a neighborhood and to interact with the adjacent businesses in a beneficial way to the businesses and to this new development and to accept whatever development may later occur in adjacent properties that are hopefully going to be considered in the future. For that reason, I would prefer to stick with what we have in front of us and determine whether this development as presented is appropriate. Thank you, Council Member Tapia.

Yeah, I have a couple of just process questions. Uh not very major. Um considering this uh zoning uh question about RM1 and R7, just from a process perspective, when we met last time and this was a point of discussion and explanation, um you know, there was uncertainty and you went to go clarify it and which you did here. Out of curiosity, what you presented today, was that already agreed to the last time you presented or is this a new agreement? Like, did you take into account the questions and said, "Well, we met with the developer and here's where we landed or is that what was in front of us last time?"

This was largely what was in front of you last time, but for as I pointed out the change in the I zoning district, that zoning I district strip that that did change otherwise nothing else changed, right? Okay, great. And another process question regarding the abuing properties or even the the the like blueg grass um you know the accommodations that have been presented here. How much conversation was there between the developers and those businesses uh to get to this place?

I don't know that all the conversations that the developer had and I defer to them on that. I know that folks had been contacted or not on various things um throughout this process. It's been since April. So, I'll let the applicant speak to that. But I can say that staff did talk about the things that council mentioned and one of which was I think council member Ross had mentioned at least one member had mentioned, you know, the butter to the north that is blueg grass and and that and what about the parking area there and what can be done. So yeah, staff did talk about that with the developer amongst a whole host of things as you could see by the resolution we have into the double letters worth of conditions and so yeah a lot of things were discussed after the meeting. Absolutely. So, the operator of Bluegrass Restaurant did reach out to us. Um, I think it was October 14th, forgive me if the exact date is uh correct, and asked if we would be willing to meet with them. Um, we said we would, we'd like to see an agenda of items that would be discussed. He then followed up with a list of items, which we responded to and said, "If you still would like to meet, we'd be more than willing." We never heard a response from that. But as we stated before, our intention is to maintain a better landscape uh bar or not barrier, but you know, separation between the two prop the two uh lots, the existing lot and our future lot to make it, you know, soften it from what it currently is.

Okay. Well, in terms of uh process, not sure when is, but I would like to hear at some point from the owner of Bluegrass to see given what's been presented and any other business owners how they feel about what is being proposed here. If they're not here, they're not. Well, one of them is here. Are they here? Yeah. Jim is here. You're way back there. Sorry. You look familiar to me, Jim Letterer. Um or do you want to wait till public comment?

Let's wait till public comment. All right. And I just have one more item. Uh from the last time there was a loose end regarding the materials to be used on one of the pathways and we had a little bit of a discussion about that and you were going to look into some whether it was an alternative and there was sort of some engineering issues or durability issues. Where did you land on that? So, we're still working with um the city's um arborist on what type of material we should use that will be ADA compli uh compatible compliant. Um there's some questions on um how we first proposed limestone and then there's concerns about the pH levels next to the roots. So, we haven't come to a final determination, but that will be done during final engineering before uh resolution. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Ross.

Um thank you. Uh, I guess I'll start with um the uh appreciate that the um the access easement road um is well was made an easement and I was just curious about the the language because it sounded based on what I read in the packet that the the city would would pay for that uh road and and um I I I believe the uh the developer should pay for it if it ever had to be built because it would be a problem that would be caused by this development, not by the city, not by anything the city did. Um so I'm hoping that that language can be um you know put in the agreement that if if it were ever necessary that it wouldn't be at the city's cost. Um and then uh I I guess in general I remain um concerned about the the uh traffic and um I I read the packet. The packet said that the north access road can't be widened without an easement from the um from the railroad. And uh it sounds like that some contact has been made with the railroad. Um I but you we weren't told what the answer to that was. Um, so I I'm I'm curious about that because uh I think we have to consider um although you know in in fairness to the developer it isn't uh they're they're focused on this development but the the um the the Toys R Us site is going to be developed. I mean, we know it's going to be developed and and I it it does seem reasonable that that north access road

be a substantial one and that we use good vision, city planning vision to to say that we know that there will be more traffic from that. And while the packet says that it's, you know, two lanes is enough to accommodate what's proposed, it it I don't think it's enough to accommodate uh, you know, future. Um, so I I I guess my question that's my second question is what what did the railroad say um about an easement for a wider road? Um, and I think um I I feel that in in all honesty that 227 has buted up to, you know, frankly more than more density than than I would like on the site, but but I certainly don't want to see more than 227 uh units there. And I'm I'm interested in as stringent, you know, conditions on uh the the uh wetlands area as as possible. And honestly, you know, stringent conditions on on the site for it to be really seen as one whole site um not two separate sites. uh that that um you know what if a future you know there's all these whatifs. What if a future council saw fit to you know put more density there even in even in the the uh project area of the the houses. Um, and you know, uh, so that that's a a sort of a what if question I have that a future council may, you know, see this

differently and I think that 227 is is butdding up against um the the highest density I would want to see there. Um, so, uh, you know, I I I would love a a zoning category that just doesn't allow development in in the wetlands. Um, the, uh, so to my questions, the the two questions, one is who would who would pay for the access road, uh, the southern access road off of Ridge? um we we by all accounts the traffic analysis habitat that's never going to be needed. So if it's never going to be needed, it should be an easy yes, we'll we'll cover it. Um uh and and have we heard from the railroad? If you've if if we've reached out if the city and Habitat has reached out to the railroad you want.

So, I'll I'll let the city respond to about the um ICC comments. What we have stated is that we will work with city staff and city staff will work with the IC to make a final determination of any signage that is needed, any um road markings to help protect. Um but um city staff will have to answer the question who's had very direct com um conversations or communications with the ICC in regards to the access emergency access easement. Um just as a reminder um fire uh um police and public works have all reviewed and feel that this access point along with our traffic engineer and the civ city's traffic engineer civilte that this access is is not needed. So to your point, we can agree that it would be a cost. Should the traffic study in the future determine that is needed, we could bear the cost of that.

Thank you. Uh and and can uh director Fontaine answer as far as the railroad? Um, the correspondence, the comments from the IC were precipitated by a direct conversation I had with the individual who wrote them. We had a monthly conversation, asked that he provide comment and he did. And so those comments are what we're going to be looking at and the applicant has those and we ask that they that they look at those and come up with a proposal on how they're going to incorporate where appropriate what was said. That's that's how that happened.

So we don't have any they also spoke with the ICC. I don't know if they spoke with the same individual though. But the letter the information in the packet from the ICC is was precipitated by my conversation directly with him. So I I I don't really know where that uh

that means as part of final engineering. They're going to look at what was said by the ICC, which is not regulatory, not mandatory, but rather advisory, if you will, and they're going to incorporate make a proposal on what they're going to incorporate. That will be reviewed by our civil engineering division and our third party consultants and and their third party consultant obviously will will come and develop this and then that will be reviewed and determine whether or not that is adequate. We'll consult with the ICC along the way too with what what they're proposing.

Then then um I mean we could in theory move forward with that process in in play. I mean that that that a threelane could still be considered.

Well, a three lane is is different than than what the ICC concern is with regard to markings and the railroad crossing, right? Um, so the three lanes on the access road, there is a there's a rightway there that the applicant owns and that rightway is being impinged upon by the abutters, the businesses along that rideway in in more than one spot. And as a matter of fact, I believe um and the applicant can confirm, but there might even be a building that it it protrudes into it. So, the applicant's seeking not to upset that situation. Uh, and and we wouldn't want to precipitate anything that would change the utilization of parking along that way for those abing businesses. In one case, that business to the northernmost part of that uh that um access road um the parking along there is half in and half out of their property. So they're half on their property with like if you have a vehicle, you've got a car split like half on the developer property, half on their own. So these parking arrangements have been around for a while and they have a private understanding about that, but from staff's perspective, we weren't looking to see that that changed so as not to impact those debuters. There may be room in the right of way to expand it in certain the paved width in certain areas. That's different than expanding the right of way. They're spanning the rightway then starts to get into the railroad right away. And that's a whole big thing that I would respectfully say is is a non-starter, but within the rightway that they own, not all of it necessarily is paved. And so that's going to be looked at as part of final engineering to see what improvements can be made within the rightway that they do own. And so there's a number of things being balanced here. We want to maintain that parking arrangement because it's very important to those businesses. They also have loading doors that they have to

access through uh their property or what would be their property. My sense is that businesses would welcome a a wider road. I but I haven't talked to all of them but that's my sense. Yeah. That they would be very accommodating. Are you talking about the extension of Richfield or the part along the train tracks? I'm talking about the aren't we talking about the north access road? There is the north access road, but there's also access via Ridgefield in terms of where people have been parking. There's a wall that now goes into part of the road to separated and so forth. So,

I mean, I guess my question is I'm not sure why we need three lanes in that area when it's pretty much landscape or garbage and people live. I'm I'm picturing I mean I I I could well picture and I know others have as well that that the that whole site with Toys R Us and Juul um you know well certainly the Toys R Us site be developed

and traffic you know at at in some in theory that that private road could become a city road that there that that there be a shift in terms of where people think to access the road and not so much in from in front of the police station or from the north access road. And I feel like good city planning would be to plan for that and um and and make sure we've done everything, you know, possible to to accommodate that. And I do realize other people wanted

Oh, no. This is fine, but I just I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. So, right now, you have all Yeah, thank you. you all those businesses along there. As you can see here, this is the the business I was referring to, mayor. This triangular shaped building here, you could see that there's existing parking, right? That straddles both the developers what would be the developer property and and their own, right?

Um very important parking to them. They they they really don't there's very little other opportunity there. Um, and then then you could see here that there are these white these white lines represent the right of way, right? So, as you can see here, the rightway is here and then that's the railroad, right? So, that area there, there's not a lot of space there. There it is. And it's paved

in this area. It appears to be paved entirely within the rightway owned by the developer. I mean, we can we're going to look into all these things as part of final, but it's paved in a lot of this. Now, in some areas, it's not and there may be opportunities to widen and developers looked at that and talked about possibly doing that. But you can see here again, folks are parking kind of, you know, it's it's a little bit it's utilized a lot for parking is all I can say up in this portion of it. Now, mayor, you mentioned about Richfield. So, this is not the Richfield area you were talking about. This is Old Deerfield Road where it intersects with what's called the access road as we've defined it in the resolution. If we go down to Ridgefield like you were talking about there along this entire way, we're going to have a access easement for pass and repass for the public, which you're right, that wasn't the case and there were Jersey barriers and all that. We want that to go away. Don't want that to happen again. Here's Richfield. So this will allow folks to come down Richfield and then go back up this way and freely flow like they had been for many years informally. This will formalize that. Okay. The applicant's also going to put parking 12 parking spaces along this access road down in this this area. Not not up there. They're they're already there. But so this is the access road. So there there are portions of the access road that may have a greater pavement width. That's different than expanding the right of way of the access road.

Not all of it may be paved within that. So I mean I don't have you can't really you can't right because there's like concrete barrier. There's all kinds of stuff going on. But I think for a lot of those businesses, a lot of um the startups start up over there because is easier and cheaper and parking for employees is part and parcel of what now we're going to be dealing with.

Surely we would want to hear from them. I mean, of course, what you know, what what works best for them, but I anyway, I I I think that it it should be as significant a road as we can make it. Um it because it it is another it takes you know some of the weight off of the other the main entrance off of um old rich uh old Deerfield. Um we need something in my opinion that takes some weight some of the traffic off to the um and bless you.

Uh and that that I'm curious to hear from my colleagues. I I uh I am concerned to to make it as difficult as possible to develop the the wetlands. Yeah. Or or to expand on wetland. So the wetlands have a conservation ease. I'm I'm aware of I'mware. I I just that's why I I I am interested to hear what everybody else has to say. I am I still am sort of leaning toward that R seven for the entire site, but I am interested to hear what everybody else has to say. Um Okay. on at on the deis. Um, but whatever is, you know, as restrictive as possible. Thank you. Uh, council member Brockman.

Thank you. Um, so I'm actually I'm not interested in belaboring the conversation discussion anymore. Um, everything has already been asked by u my colleagues and the city staff has answered all of the questions that I had. Um, I'll have further comments later, but I'm satisfied right now with with everything that I've received. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Council Member Center.

Thank you. Um, Director Fontaine, just a quick point of clarification. I know we're going to hear from the owner of Bluegrass shortly and and it's already been a topic that Zach has addressed as well, but you made a comment during the summary of conditions around the fact that the landscaping buffer and plan there is more compliant, but not necessarily fully compliant with zoning. C. Can you can you clarify kind of what that means and what is not compliant about their plan? Oh, they don't have an interior landscaping island. They're missing one of those. And um there's Yeah, that's what they're they're missing there. And then there's the buffering between the properties that's not there. But mind you that it's anzoning district now, right? So that buffering there's certain things that are being introduced because of what they're doing.

Right. So but is that is are we not able to be compliant, Zach, with with That's correct. And so there's still a request for a variation on that. I'd have to go dig to the slides to get to that specifically if you'd like and I can try to do that. Good. Yeah. Yep. There's certain space limitations.

If you could find the uh in our presentation we have it zoomed in. So um in order to provide the adequate amount of spaces for the easement holder, we can't be completely compliant and that's why we asked for uh the modification in the planning and design uh process. So hopefully we can find a slide we can zoom in. the easement holder is willing to he has a hashed uh area that he asked us to put in to help with radius from him uh traversing from his property onto the easement area for his tenants and guests to park. Um he's agreed to allow part of that to be, you know, some type of evergreen low landscaping or grasses um to help soften that area and come closer to being compliant. Oh, go back. There you go. So, you see in the uh the little grate right there, uh he's agreed that we'll, you know, uh put a curb around a portion of that and install some landscaping,

right? And also, um Then also along this area, that 3 ft that they were talking about um with the grasses, there's currently a small um landscape area there as well. So that wasn't proposed initially, but through these conversations and and these concerns that was that was introduced. So they are providing, you know, landscaping in other parts, but just not this one. and they're going to introduce that uh to some extent in that gray area. And then along here is about a 3-ft strip or so that they're going to put in uh grasses to separate the parking lots. Okay. So, that's that's

Okay. Thank you. And I and I know we're going to hear from somebody who knows that site uh very well. So, thank you. um on the zoning piece. So, Director Fontaine, again, really I I think uh Council Member Bloomberg commented on on you providing that great detailed explanation. Uh I agree that was incredibly helpful. I'm I'm trying to sort of digest the comments from my fellow council members and think of a practical solution kind of given the given the difference of potential schools of thought we have on this. Um, I mean, look, we we've we've certainly heard plenty of concerns from the neighbors around the density of the project to begin with and and and I think the applicant has done a really admirable job of of working together through multiple iterations to get to uh, you know, a project that um, is is is palatable. That said, I think there's concern of the neighbors that we need to really think through of future potential multi-unit residence development. Um, Council Bloomberg, I heard you and Corporation council sort of explain the challenges of that even potentially occurring and I totally appreciate that, but also would we not want to just prevent that from happening, the possibility of that even happening in the first place?

May I

um I would give you this observation. You can never guarantee something won't happen. It turns out the constitution is more flexible than I think some of us thought it was going to be. Um, a plan unit development with a with an agreed development plan that is signed by the city and the developer cannot be changed absent the public process. I didn't say it cannot be changed and I and that's a very important distinction. There are unforeseen circumstances. Uh, I have no idea what any of our successors may think in 25 years from now when somebody comes in and says, "I'd like to build three more units on this development. I'd like a uh change to the development agreement, not a variance." This can't go to the CBA. It goes to the plan commission for a recommendation and back to the city council. We won't be here. I know I won't be here. Um, so there's no way to guarantee there will never be a change,

but but in my experience, I'm sorry. Finish your thought. I'm sorry. I was just going to say in my experience, the avenue to pro that is most likely to prevent change particularly in the foreseeable future is a planned unit development with a development agreement because it requires your elected officials to hear you and make a decision as to whether it's going to be changed. corporation council.

Look, I we can accomplish this in any way. Um either the R seven with variations or stick with the um or stick with the current plan, but I do want you to be aware that your comment about anything can change applies also to the zoning district. The same process for changing zoning from R seven back to RM1, it's exactly the same. It's the plan commission public hearing recommend. So our our the process is is the same either way.

Any law can be changed. Any law can be repealed. We have changed the restrictions within existing zoning districts. I just I just want to point that out zoning districts. I can't think of a way to more solidify the existing density on this property than through a PUD. the the value of the underlying zoning has more to do with the interaction between the surrounding properties and the level of variation or variance that the developer has to pay for in public benefits and seek through permitting processes and so forth. That's why I'm

the and let me reiterate a point I made before. The one difference what we have attempted to do here um if this goes through as is with the language that I added I would add it into a development agreement that is not a regulatory document that becomes a contractual document. The significance of that is that if a developer were to ask, a future owner were to ask for the change to add density or and the city council could unilaterally, arbitrarily, capricciously refuse it because it is a bilateral contract. And un conversely, if we were simply talking about it being in the R seven district and a property owner, future property owner came and asked for a zoning code amendment, we would be subject to a reasonleness standard. Um, and so the way we have set it up now with the language that I added, I truly do believe binds this property stronger than it could ever be bound because it it it has both a regulatory aspect and a contractual aspect.

Thank you. Um, I just want to let Council Member Center finish his questions, comments. That was incredibly helpful. Thank you. I'm good. Okay.

Which one? Um, the only thing I wanted to respond to and and I appreciate the efforts of council because I do think we're trying to lock it in and and create basically what's legislative history so that people future councils will look back and say this is what they wanted. They wanted a limit. They wanted to have this be a part of the neighborhood. So, I agree with all of that. The only thing I don't agree with is this has been through a process. It's been through all these PDC hearings. It's been through us now two and three times and yet every single time we have asked look at it just for R seven see if it fits into a residential we don't get an answer we had well this one has to request it to figure out the numbers or we can't go ahead and ask for that that's not our job and so I would like to see this move forward I'd like to see it move forward tonight but I don't think we've answered that question and I don't think that that's Right? Because if in fact it does fit like many of the neighbors who've tried to do the numbers because they haven't gotten numbers from anybody else and if in fact it does fit and actually I don't think PDC asked for this cuz when I was going to all the hearings I didn't I specifically waited cuz I knew it would come before the city council and then I thought that we at that point could check into the numbers and see if it would fit in an R7. seven and we haven't gotten an answer. And all I want to do is if in fact these numbers are correct, then there's no reason for it not to be one zone district that's really residential. We are moving off of industrial. We are making this residential. So if we're moving from residential, instead of looking at what are the requirements for industrial, we should be looking what are the requirements for R4 and R seven and moving it along that way. So, I am very happy with what we've done and I feel

there will be a record, but I don't think we've had our question answered. And what I'd really like to see done is that we passed this, but that we, you know, really see what it could be as an R seven rather than accepting it in this format. But I do think we've made a record and I'm very pleased with that. So, going forward at least we're protected in that regard. Can you clarify for me? So right now we're talking about RM which is residential. Correct. RM1 and R seven which is residential and then a tiny piece is industrial for purposes of the regulation. Right. So I'm I'm confus because you keep saying you want it to be residential.

I want it to be R seven. I want you us to have the light industrial. I understand the reasoning for that. That makes perfect sense. I'm very grateful that we've got it down as minimally as we can. I see no reason for this to be RM1. It could all be R seven and then light industrial pressure. Yeah, it it could change.

Let me let me now argue the opposite side and and to maybe help Councilman Little, but I'm just going to throw this out because I want you to be fully educated. I don't think you need to delay anything. I I I could tell if you are willing, you're we're a home rule municipality. If you are willing to grant all of the necessary variations, which could be 10, 20, 30, um, to the R seven district to allow this plan and not delay the developer so that his timeline doesn't change.

Um, and we end up with the same product. I'm not sure that it matters to them whether it's R seven or RM1 just so you can have the debate among yourselves of of which to go. I and and that then gets so I want to I want to clarify that to to allow you to have the debate without a concern that questions haven't been answered. I think you can make the assumption and proceed. I still believe a as your corporation council that if you're looking for what's the stronger approach from a legal perspective, what gives you the most protection, it's the one that has the contractual um uh provision on top of it.

Right. Okay. Um curious to know if any members of the public want to be heard on the subject. I presuming that Jim Letterer is coming up. Um, but did know if anybody else has new comments that we haven't heard from you in the past. Uh, please come to the podium, state your name. Um, and per our tradition 3 minutes or less for comments. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Letterer.

Possibly you don't need a picture if you can get there. See if that works.

Yes, I am Jim Legrass. I just happen to be in the neighborhood today. Stop in, see what's going on. Um, of course, my concerns on landscaping in my neighborhood in the area. Um, that's one thing you brought up. Another concern of mine, very small minor, the lack of green space and recreational space. It's got a really limited purposeful green space, gardens, herb gardens, flowers. In the suburbs, we have botchi courts, we have bags, we have different types of recreation. I think they're missing a little bit of that. The existing dog park playgrounds are positive, but just insufficient as far as what a community, a suburban community would actually need. The future concern of Toys R Us. I think you've got right on. That is a big concern of mine. The perception of this project. It's a huge project. I'm not sure why they haven't really brought 3D imaging in. I can see what it's going to look like. And actually, I had a drone shot that was taken a couple weeks ago. We had a an event bluegrass. I just happen to have a drone up and got a picture of our property and what it looked like budding to their property. and I sent it to Zach so he could see what it looks like and my concerns. And if he can bring it up and you can take a look at it, you'll see exactly what my concerns are. Um, and once again, I'm very concerned with my dialogue and habitat has not been very good. I've tried to communicate clearly

and they've been very clear. We agree to disagree. You have to go and that's about as far as we've gotten. What is it? Thank you, Joel. It looks like you're having trouble getting the picture. I am. Okay. One second. Well, you'll be able to see it and you can take a look. And once again, there is This is taken in October. There's literally it's all dirt in between our property and next door. Mhm. There's a little planting which is maybe 6 in wide, but there should be proper buffering for any new development if he's coming in and doing this new beautiful wonderful. and they're like, "Eh, I don't think we need to." And the code actually states

10 to one. So 10 parking spots, you should have one island. And this whole area, which is right abuing bluegrass, is just there's there's no landscape. Thank you. Like to see it addressed. Thanks. Thank you. Any other members of the public wish to be heard? Good evening, Daniel Kaufman. Um, Mayor Rotary, members of the council, and I just want to thank all of you and the members of the plan design commission, all the public. Excuse me, Mr. Kaufman. If I could ask members of the audience to keep it down so we can hear our speakers. I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, just want to thank everyone first of all, put all the time and effort, including all the members of the public who have advocated so hard about this development. Um just a few things. Let's take a step back because the council's really done a great job of diving into the weeds of this. Um as we know, one of the hallmark features of our community is that we move forward. We make progress to meet the critical needs of our community. And I was aware of that before I was on the city council and certainly very aware of it when I was served on the city council for 10 years and since then. And there is a huge need for housing for middle market housing in this community. It's a great thing. I just want to make sure everyone doesn't lose sight. It's a great thing that we have so many families who want to stay or move into this community. When we think of what residents in 227 units would bring to this community in terms of adding to those who live, work, or do business here, enhancing our economic development, fostering our community vibrancy, it's a great thing. And I understand that there are concerns. Traffic is is generally a concern when developments are raised. I think here that's been delayed by the studies that have been conducted or will be conducted. When I was on the council, traffic would often be raised as a concern about developments. And typically what happened is those concerns were addressed and didn't materialize to the point that people's concerns were realized. To those of you who have either opposed this development or advocated for changes, kudos to you because you've made a real impact. This development has changed. It's morphed to the better. It previously, as you know, was going to be two industrial buildings. Um, and now it's a thoughtful development with smart growth to meet a critical need in our community. As you know, the number of units in this development has changed four times from 262 units down to 227 units. We've got more green space, more

trees, lower density, and other features that have been added. The reality is because of this community's input, this plan is much better. This plan is because of the impactful public input and with significant concessions from the developer, a much better plan. And that's really a kudos to the community and everyone's involved in this process. So, I humbly and respectfully suggest to all of you who have advocated about it in any way, take the win. Let's all take the win as a community. This is a real win for Highland Park. Council member Ross said at a recent meeting, "This is a once- in a generation opportunity. So, let's seize the moment. Let's meet the moment. Let's meet the need." I urge the council to move forward to approve this development, to meet this critical need for middle market housing in our community to foster economic development and let's move forward as a community. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Kaufman. Any other members of the public wishing to be heard? I've been sworn in before. Please share your name for the record.

Lisa Raiden. There's an old saying in sales. If you throw enough crap against a wall, something will stick. Meetings have been data dumps. Habitat has shown slides but unaware if some of their ideas will work. I've heard Habitat is great. I haven't seen that and honestly I have doubt regarding their capabilities given the multiple multitude of errors seen. They can't even determine how cars and trucks are going to enter and exit without major accident or hitting a freight train. You're still talking about using Richfield Alley as a two-lane street. It's impossible. They want a lot of variances. The latest is lowering the entrance for affordable housing. Most affordable housing is for low-income seniors or those who are disabled. Affordable housing is based upon a Chicago median annual income or MMI or a Highland Park area median income. There's a lot of information out there, but in general gen in general, Highland Park affordable income housing, a third goes to residents making 45% of area income, a third making 65% of area income and a third making 81 to 120% of area income. And you know that sounds okay. But in this last group, Habitat wants 33% of units to represent only 45 of Chicago AMI and the remaining units

at 60% of Chicago AMI, all way below Highland Park code. Now, the housing commission recommended that HP make these units even more affordable to the very low end of the income scale. And I'm asking why. In addition, no other affordable housing in HP targets extremely low income in this volume. And it makes me wonder what else you're going to do and who else you're going to go after relative your demographic for this community. Residents have repeated concerns. Yes, a lot of meetings, but a lot of meetings going nowhere fast. No one is listening to us. Too dense, too many cars. Eliminate the Devonshshire crosswalk. But I did read read that Highland Park does want this 26 foot wide emergency easement at Devon Chire Ridge. What about all those important trees that you don't want taken down? It's okay for you to get what you want, but you don't listen to what we want.

Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to be heard? Yes. At least one more. Hello everyone. Uh, I'm William Dixon. Uh, I'm also your neighbor. Um, I'm in a butter.

I live at 1649 Grove Avenue uh on the south side. And I noticed earlier uh when I walked in that there was a reference to the fence about receiving a letter. I personally did not see my address on the uh screen and I don't remember getting a letter. I do remember getting a letter in the way back machine about the perimeter fence that was going to be put and it did eventually go up, but where I live and all my neighbors live, I never got any drawing or location of where that fence was going to be. And I'd like to know um uh the house was built in 1949. There was a lot of junk in the back that area there. Not only am I a but am I in a buddy, but I am a an adverse possessor. So I put a fence up there and I built a really nice garden. I've got a some blueberries, a couple trees. I want to know if I have to move them. And uh so my property uh is the second property in on the line. There's a fence that is existing, a stockade, a stockade fence that is existing and I continue that fence on and that's where I put my garden. I just want to know if u I can get a call from somebody or have the letter sent to me.

Okay, that's all. Great. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Carol and I just I'm glad to hear that we are finally talking about what's going on with the Illinois Commerce Commission. What I don't like is it came to everybody's attention through a neighbor. What does that say about what is going on in terms of the traffic study that was done by Habitat? The approval of the traffic study that was done by our Highland Park City Council. Where where did the mistake happen and what other mistakes could there possibly be that we don't know about when there's something like this happened that is so important and that the commission is saying that having that access road is dangerous. It is dangerous because he warns that this could be a safety risk if trucks longer than approximately 50 ft, such as standard semitrs, which are typically around 72 ft, approach from the north across the tracks. What else could possibly be happening? This raises the question of can we trust anybody? I want you to think about that because here we're talking about safety, people's lives that are not being considered. Thank you.

Thank you. My name is Michael Turnoff and I have been sworn in before. Safety is not the only issue for the railroad crossing. Kind of continuing from where Eileen's remarks left off, Mr. Macowsk's letter from the ICC also states that the crossing and rail corridor in question are not part of an existing quiet zone. In his letter, he states that the access road for the development will have major implications for establishing the quiet zone in the future should the city wish to do so. What all of that means is that trains may sound their whistles at all hours of the day and night at this crossing, which would create truly significant disturbances for both current neighborhood residents and for the future Habitat town home residents. If this occurs, it will severely impact both the marketability and the livitability of both the new town homes as well as the existing neighborhood. So, I request based on Mr. Milkowsk's observations, we respectfully request an explanation from either or both Habitat and the city regarding why neither the major safety issues which Eileen just talked about or the quiet zone issue were raised during an entire year of previous discussions. If these two critical concerns were missed, as she said, what other issues might also have been overlooked? My personal conclusions, this project should not be approved until a revised

traffic plan addressing the ICC's safety concerns and evaluating the impact on the overall traffic patterns is presented, reviewed by the city, and shared with the neighborhood residents. Furthermore, approval of this project must include a commitment from both the city and the ICC that this area crossing will be designated as a quiet zone. Finally, in addition to these brand new concerns which were raised by the letter from the ICC, in a previous letter to the city council, which is in the information packet, I advocated for quote unquote meaningful compromises with habitat regarding zoning, density, traffic flow, the pedestrian walkway, which by the way has been addressed. Thank you. power lines, pest control, drainage, fencing, and access and exit points. Speaking for myself, if this city council, my elected representatives on this city council do not demand meaningful compromises from Habitat on these issues, then frankly, I would prefer an industrial development which requires no variances or no zoning relief rather than this overly dense, inappropriate, and unsuitable town home development. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, Director Fontaine and Habitat, how do you want to proceed in terms of the ICC letter? The questions that were raised, people are asking, how did we get to this point? Uh, don't know if you have an answer, but I want to hear it if you do. So, our plan is to work with city staff during final engineering along with them working directly with the IC to come up with solutions that meet the city's uh intentions um for safety. Uh we've already been discussing whether we introduce uh potential stop sign on Old Deerfield Road

right south of the entrance that will start to eliminate this. But I also would like to remind everybody that this road was a main access point for Solo Cup, right? And the IC's website says there's never been an accident. So there was I don't know how many trucks going up and down, stopping, you know, there's not been an issue. So I'd just like to appreciate that. Thank you.

Sorry, Miss Vassie. Didn't mean to stop you in your tracks. Okay. Good evening and thank you all for your tireless tireless efforts. We

Hi, I'm Ann Flanigan Bassie. I've been a resident of Highland Park since 1973. Um I appreciate your tireless efforts. When I moved to Highland Park in 73, ordinary working people could move to Highland Park. It's almost impossible for, you know, our positions back then to buy in now. And so this is a combination of both attainable housing and affordable housing. I was so proud of Highland Park. I think it was in 2005 when you passed the inclusionary zoning ordinance and as township supervisor, you know, we were deal for 12 years we were dealing daily with housing needs. Affordable housing is scary to some people, but it really means that the people who work in our community have a chance to live in our community. our parents when they retire can stay in the community and our children who we raised here have an opportunity to come back and get a start in the community they were raised in. I think while many of us might wish to be able to design what we want for a property, it's got to be a agreement that provides both what the community needs and an economic benefit for the owner of the property, which they're entitled to. I think this project really has come so far with the invaluable input of the community. The

changes that have been made have brought it to a point where it will be an asset to the community and I think much more of an asset than it would have been had it remained as an industrial zoning. And I support the project. I ask you to support the project and I'm so grateful for all the time you put in to make it the best project it could be. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yes, if I may interject. Thank you. Um I was able to reboot and I can pull up um Mr. Letter's picture. Yeah, we can we can get that up. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. Hello. I'm Susanna Miller. I've never spoke here before. Uh my husband and I immigrated to United States 35 years ago with two little kids. We lived in rental in Chicago for first few years while adjusting to our new culture. After five years, we moved to Highland Park into very old, very small house. What we could afford at the time. By the way, it's a lot of houses right now. Small and old houses, affordable houses in Highland Park. We learn from our neighbors how to be good neighbors, respect others, respect private property and privacy. We uh we did our best to follow their example. I love Highland Park diverse community. I know families from all around the world here living here from Romania, Poland, China, India, Ukraine, Austria, Australia, Mexico, Baltic countries and many many more. It's truly it's truly melting pot. We were told if properties don't sell it will be rented out. Bringing 227 families into compact mostly rental development in one place will break the balance and change the fabric of our community.

Additionally, our property values will go down and our quality of life will change dramatically. Highland Park deserves better. I ask that the number of rental units be limited to the same at least same percentage as affordable units. 36. I of course it worries me a lot of questions already asked about traffic but for a lot of rentals I I really um it's it's scary for me. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Any other members of the public? [Music] Uh my name is Dan Wagner. I've been sworn in before. Uh I would like to follow up a little bit on what she just said and the number of rental units that are going to be in here. I'm concerned about I'm not concerned about the tenants at all. I'm more concerned about the landlords. Um, is it possible for the uh corporation that builds this thing and does it to sell off set sets of them and say, "Okay, these four buildings are owned by this guy and these three buildings are owned by that guy." So, you've got multiple people, rentals, landlords, and so forth, and I'm concerned about that sort of thing. Um, I would prefer to see all of them for sale. I would prefer to have less of them there, but I've said that before. Uh, but I would prefer to have people to be able to own and buy and own something in Highland Park as opposed to rent it. Right. Thank you.

Thank you. Yep.

I'm Len Tenner. I've lived in uh Highland Park since 1968 in the same house in the district we're talking about. So, I wanted to just say a word about traffic. I've seen it all from the start where Solo Cup was still operating to today. Uh, you don't see a lot of the things that I see. As an example, during the summer when 41 backs up, all the cars come off up road, then they they wind through the neighborhoods trying to get around to go north. uh you put a project of this density in place and that's just going to compound what is already a very difficult situation. So I just want you to be sure you understand the implications of traffic from the standpoint of people who live there, not from the standpoint of a traffic study or numbers. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other members of the public? Oh. Oh, okay. Yes. That's how I broke this hand. Okay. Um, I have three pages that I timed out, but I don't think I'm gonna Please share.

Oh, I'm sorry. Sandy Lurri. Uh I live across the street on Devon Shshire and Ridge and you have my letters regarding the crosswalk. I want to uh follow up on what Councilman Lauer said and I appreciate everything that she said about the zoning. The reason we've had this is the seventh or eighth meeting and um some people think that's a lot of meetings. I'm a designer. It's taken a year to design a kitchen. So, I don't think seven or eight meetings is a lot for 227 units and 28 acres. And I appreciate what she said about it's zoned incorrectly. And the reason it is is because the zoning that they're asking for is allowing I'm sorry, I don't want to fall is allowing them to put more units in a smaller space. That's the reason. Um, you know, I I went over to Hyestinth Place, which was built a number of years ago, and it's affordable housing, and it's lovely, and it was built green. It has uh bamboo floors. It has geothermal energy. It has permeable um hard surfaces outside, and it's painted on the inside with non-toxic paints. and native plantings. Things I've asked Zach Zeller about. They can't do this. It's too expensive. Their floors are all going to be uh vinyl. Vinyl outges into the environment. I I know materials and that's what happens. I have a list. You know, we do have a master plan even though everybody says it's so old, but it does set down parameters for what to expect in this in Highland Park. some of them being um uh

in ch champion the needs of older residents for housing quality of life. You were talking about making this pathway ADA compliant, but this development isn't ADA compliant. Seniors aren't moving in there. Why is all the housing the same? 19 different color combinations is not 19 different kinds of housing. It's all the same type of housing. Seniors aren't moving in there. A people who are disabled are not moving in there. It's one type of housing. We could have used more um u uh variances. And we have been asking for this since the beginning. Councilman Littleower is correct. We've never gotten an answer. Reduce the density. Reduce the height, please. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, Michael. I'll try and be brief. Michael Waxner.

Good evening. Um, if you are so inclined to grant the waiver for the need uh for the sidewalk or the need to bury the the utility lines, then the public should know how much this waiver is costing our coffers. An estimate should be provided by the developer. I still haven't heard anything as to why this development can't be developed under R seven only with the removal of the RM1 zoning considering that 28.61 acres is available. I believe the density for R seven could be met if the additional requirements to provide a necessary determination is done. This isn't the first time R seven has come up. It has been discussed from the first meeting in the PDC. The community has a right to know if R7 is a possibility. As far as other regulations or variances needed, a city council has the authority to grant the necessary variances to make the R seven recommendation possible. This would limit the ability for the owners to come back for an amendment to increase the density irregardless of the d uh development agreement to limit the development to 227 dwelling units and staff's rationalization for the split zoning. Corporation council has laid out how the development agreement is a contract under the current conditions, but that would still apply to the contract if developed under R seven. The staff analysis um showed the central business district doesn't take into account the neighborhood districts of the comprehensive master plan. What is being ignored is that the Skoi highway corridor as part of the master plan doesn't include an allowance for a residential development. Period. This development shouldn't even have been allowed to proceed in the Brier sub area until that discrepancy had been dealt with. The southwest neighborhood plan is a residential district and would be the most appropriate district for the habitat development. The neighborhood adjacent to the development are developed as R six and R5 for only single family detached homes. Since this townhouse development is for single

family attached housing, it would be a better fit in the community with R seven zoning only. Our code doesn't address address split zoning directly and it is discouraged by many municipalities irregardless of any development agreement limiting the development to 227 unit. It is not ironclad and an amendment to the agreement is always a possibility. So respectfully I disagree that belts and suspenders will always discourage future development. Developers come back to the for development amendments all the time. I don't think the development would object to R seven, but you can ask them. You have an opportunity to provide the land usage protections the community has clamored for for time and again for R7 zoning. Will you ignore your please and turn your back on their simple request to reszone R seven and force them to oppose the resoning with the submitted petition when the reszoning ordinance comes before the council. Help us move this forward for all parties involved. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Um, are there any other members of the public who wish to be heard?

Uh, Scott Small. I live on Ridge Road and just uh slightly south of the Westridge Center and my big concern is the traffic. Um, six weeks ago, my wife got hit by a car on Ridge Road by a driver that was going way too fast. Luckily enough, she's doing well. But it's common for people to go way past the speed limit. She was actually in a school crosswalk. Jesus Christ.

Halfway past the median of the the street. a clear day and the driver had a clear vision. We just have too much traffic on Ridge Road already. And by adding this project, it's going to increase. People just don't pay attention to the crosswalks, the markings, the speed limits, and there's no way to keep more traffic off of Ridge Road, which is going to impact the safety of everyone in the area. And we've never seen a traffic study uh for the people that live on Ridge Road that are going to be subject to the traffic that's going to be generated by this development. And I, you know, am opposed to the idea of putting in that amount of units in a place where there's no real clear traffic pattern in and out. It It doesn't exist. You know, you don't have a through street going to Deerfield Road. You don't have any way to get in and out of that development without putting way more traffic on Ridge Road. And I oppose it for that reason.

Thank you. and I'm glad to hear that your wife is okay.

Good evening. I'm Janet Schwarz and I was plan commissioner and plan commission chair for a number of years in Highland Park. So, I empathize with all you've been going through and I know there's been a lot of mention as to how many meetings there have been and I know that that's frustrating, but actually it's sort of designed into the process of what has been clearly identified today as a downzoning. Um, it's really good that at last the council is addressing the need to downzone this area because until that is accomplished, we are at risk of many uses which are totally legal and can be done by right on this property. So there are it's a it's a it's on purpose really complicated and really timeconsuming and involves compromise because the property owner the existing property owner has lots and lots of rights which typically we all don't get up and talk about because we're looking ahead and it's not we don't own it. We're concerned about what our council can do to make it the best that it can be for us. And I'm really pleased actually by the discussion that I've heard tonight cuz I feel I hear you all really considering that and understanding it and knowing how important it is that we do move forward as quickly as we can because that eliminates what I think is actually the biggest risk to all of us in Highland Park, which is that we do nothing and we live with um the possibility of all sorts of uses that we can't control. So, I was pleased that even when you were dealing with the really technical aspect of um the best way to frame in words and accomplish the downzoning, it seemed to me that everyone was committed to making

sure that that happens in a timely manner because I do think that's the biggest risk to the community. And I really appreciate your dealing with all the late meetings and everyone's frustration because you know how important it is that we get this done. So, thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else that wants to be heard who hasn't been heard? Thank you. Hello, my name is Kenneth Tats. Once I heard that the the developer was building three-story town homes, which was my wife and my previous residence type, I knew we were talking about young families with kids, usually two cars per household. There's 227 town homes, probably about at least 180 cars, which means 400 cars. And that typically means driving kids to afterchool activities like soccer practice, music lessons, academic tutoring, and programs at the West Ridge Community Center. In other words, considerably more trips than are suggested in the KOA traffic study, which they admit doesn't even factor in the Toys R Us development, which we know is coming in the near future. At an early meeting, I earlier meeting I prepared a giant whiteboard showing all the streets around the development with arrows showing the paths of vehicular movement. This is at the planning commission and noted that it would lead to a bottleneck in front of their proposed entrance. I note I noted that that would increase police and emergency vehicle response times. I suggested that turns into and out of their main entrance be limited to right in right out. By the next meeting, the developer's plan included an escape route for those vehicles through the police department parking lot. A very wise in and inspired decision, but still no relief for residents of the southwest quadrant to a now acknowledged problem by virtue of the need for a driveway out of the police station parking lot. At

the next meeting, I begged to at least limit those left turns in and out to non-rush hour times. The developer refused to offer to conduct another traffic study. I'm sorry. The developer refused, but offered to conduct another traffic study once the project was at about 85% capacity. Still no relief for the southwest quadrant residents who will endure all of the burdens and none of the community benefits. We received true support from Steven Kirch and Ken Henry on the uh planning commission whom the residents of the southwest quadrant would like to thank. But the developer doesn't care about the quality of our lives. It's just business. They don't care about devaluing our homes. It's just business. So, we must count on the city council to protect the interests of the residents of the southwest quadrant. As none of our impassion pleas have led to substantive change yet, it has felt to us as if we are fighting city hall. But what we're asking for instead is for city hall via the city council to fight for us. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any other members of the public wishing to be heard? Okay. Well, thank you all for your comments. Um I do hope that you feel that your impassion please have been heard because I do know that this project has changed significantly from where it began, but I understand your concerns and thank you all for for coming. Uh this is a picture of blue grass from a drone. Um that's the picture we couldn't open earlier. I just want to make sure that you saw that as a council. Mr. Letter had emailed it to us during our

And so to the far left is what is the Ridgefield extension. To the right is currently the parking lot and that parking lot in the new development. Joel, do you want to describe the changes or what the variances are? I understand from Mr. Letterer and from the plans there's only the one little island and we have no changes in the plan. That's right. That's my That's your concern. Started. Uhhuh. Okay. When I saw this, I looked at it, this is really easy. This is not If you look at the plan, there is no landscape that came out in the middle of Right. Okay. Joel, I'm sorry.

So, as Mr. was saying just so that everyone can hear for through the mic. Um he was indicating that there's there's no plan for landscaping along these areas. So we did talk with the uh the developer about that and in the final plans they they're planning to include a a landscaped area along this area. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I look to the applicant as well as the island that was shown as cross-hatching to um put some landscaping in there. There's still going to be a bit that's cross-hatched for turn uh radius, but introduce additional landscaping there. The parking lot itself does have other areas that are landscaped, but these two areas were not shown as landscaped. So, this area is what's you see here? What's existing? So, my understanding is they're going to put up to a 3T here and then a portion of this cross-hatched area that they had shown will be green and we'll see what that is through the final engineering and that will be presented to council at the time of final consideration.

Thank you. And I defer to the applicant if I've said anything incorrectly, but that's my understanding of what they're doing. Okay. Council, I just have a question. Um, Director Fontaine, before you sit down, this is the condition that exists currently. This is a picture that uh, Mr. Lettera gave us. I I don't know the date, um, but it's the current condition, October 5th, relatively current. Yes. And so to the right of the that small line of little plantings there, that's a parking lot. That's correct. And that's part of the development, right? Yes. And that's going to be developed, correct? What is it going to be? Is it What part of the development is going to go there? Is that going to be the back of homes? Is it

the parking lot? It's going to be a new parking lot, but it's going to be 22 spaces. There's 42 spaces. 14 will be able to be used by the city and 28 is part of an easement agreement that the developer has with the abutters uh up here. Um Mr. Okay. And then there's now going to be some amount of landscaping in between there. My understanding is they're going to introduce something up to a 3 foot wide uh landscaping thing. I don't know what the dimension of this current situation is out there. Okay. Between 12 and 18 ft high twice or Please come up to the microphone. Yeah. I just want to make sure folks are at the mic. Right.

Uh the current planting runs about 2/3 the length of the existing parking lots. Yeah. It's in between the two. Rest of it is just asphalt to asphalt with a little curb. The area that's where the bushes are, that's about 12 to 18. We're going to widen that to about 26 to 30 depending upon where the final curb is on our lot. His lot will remain untouched. That currently is on the solo cup site. Okay. And so we're going to continue developing on our solo cup site, moving the parking lot further south, putting in grasses, bushes. We're not exactly sure of the plantings, but but something denser than what's there right now.

Yeah. And run at the full length back to the corner of both Jim Letter's parking lot and Joe Scarion's crossover where his property ties into that easement. Okay. Thank you. Um, thank you, Mayor. I I I'm just going to point out that whatever you plant there, there's you're going to be salting and it it's going to be hard to survive, but um I I assume maybe there's some heartier heartier landscape. There are I mean, we have a landscaping requirement in our parking lots generally. So I know that we have other plants and other trees that have survived.

We usually don't let two bites at the apple. If you could finish. Yeah. Take a minute and just for clarity. So this is present and if you look at the plan that they provided there was some dialogue today that occurred but I've been trying to get just some landscape. Just get code put in three feet. Put in some I mean block the headlamps that cross over. There was nothing there today. And if you look at the plan that they provided already, there's nothing on that plan already. And Mr. Letter, your use or your parking lot you go up to or you go We are asphalt to property line. Uhhuh. So therefore, what's on the other side is theirs. So all of this parking is not yours.

So where those little green things are is their property. Okay. To the south of that. Correct. To the right. And to the north of that is yours. Correct. Okay. We developed in in 2004 asphalt to property line that was all grass, greenery, and whatever. Okay. Mr. Taffia, sorry, council. Yeah, we can stay here. I'm just confused about you said that uh the the plantings that was just mentioned now are not in the plan that you saw. Correct. Is that true? But now that you know that that's going to be the plan, three feet of planting, is that address your concern?

That is a start. Yes. Because if you look at the plans that were provided at the middle of the month, there's no landscape and they're not even at code. But now that it's in the plan, it's going if they're going to meet code, I'm happy. That's all I'm asking for. I'm not asking for additional or extra. Just meet the code. Uhhuh. Properly, you know, 10 to one is the code for parking coverage. simple. I think thank you. A little extra wouldn't be bad. Well, that's fine. I just want to make sure that we don't have, you know, talking past each other.

We cannot give the ement holder his parking spaces that he needs by meeting the code and that's why we asked for the modification. We will make better than what you're see here. Mhm. Um but the bluegrass owner isn't meeting code either, right? So, well, I I don't want to get into a tit for tat, but the point that's important to me is you've made it clear that although you're not meeting code, you're putting in relatively dense landscaping to attempt to address the headlight issue.

You can't go too far because there's an easement. You can't do the full 3 ft because there's an easement which is beyond the city's control. Um, but you you are making an improvement to the existing landscape. And the rest of the rest of the condition on each side of that landscaping is essentially going to remain unchanged. Thank you. But you can do the 30 in and not encroach on the easement. No. Correct. No. He said 3 ft you can't, but 30 he can. That's why I'm asking because 18 to 30 is a significant improvement, right? Okay.

As a technicality, it's a 36-inch wide space. It'll have a concrete curb on the easement side and Jim's asphalt will be the property line which will if it gets damaged, we'll restore it along there. In between is where the plantings go between 27 and 30 in. Okay. That's the main variation here is there are two islands we're not putting in in the parking space in the easement owner's parking which would break up the run of cars in his lot. Those are the two main elements that we're deleting. Gotcha. Okay. I

But also please note that because we're creating a division between the two lots uh we have some landscaped areas in yours. Correct. You'll see the the hatching going. Yeah, right there. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from the council or any comments that you want to share? Sure. Okay. Go ahead. Um, first I have a question for corporation council. If we reszone this R seven, is that subject to change in the future? Well, subject to change. Yes, they can request. If we if we zone the entire thing R seven, could a future city council

turn it into RM1? turn it into RM1, change the uh requirements of R seven zoning. Yes, the answer is yes. And that would be through a public process. It would require a public process. That is correct. Um with uh and under those circumstances, it would still have a PUD and it would still have a plan uh a contractual plan with the developer. Correct. So the difference if we made it all R seven is the degree of variances that may be required at present would change.

I I I was just trying to get you past that answer. I know that you haven't it hasn't been examined as to how many but the answer to your question is yes the degree of variations from zero I suppose to how I don't know. Okay. Um a couple of comments. Um I I hear

those who do not want this development to go in or feel that it's too dense and uh in in some respects I agree with that. But my observation is that this is a difficult and complicated uh piece of property to develop. I am not in favor of allowing this to remain as an industrial use. Um that was considered by this council at one point and it was um I think appropriately rejected. It would have a tremendously adverse impact on the neighborhood and on the entire city. As a residential development, it has the complexity of being next to a railroad track and limited access. It has the added benefit of a large wetland which is being preserved and the opportunity to bring in a large number of residents to shop in Highland Park to uh be customers in the existing businesses, the restaurants uh that are there and hopefully will find their way in uh when property nearby at the Toys R Us is developed. It is impossible to predict what is going to go in at Toys R Us. And if a development comes along, they will have to go through a similar process that we're addressing now. We really don't know what's going to be there. So, it's in terms of advanced planning, it would be sort of an act of folly to try to guess what's going to go in there. And that developer, whoever that may be in the future, is going to have to address whatever winds up there following what we do today and in the immediate future with this piece of property. Um that said, I feel that the overall benefits in terms of the amount of inclusionary zoning that is going to be realized, general housing uh that is going to be realized and will be helpful I think broadly throughout the community is is very important to me. Um the developer has a known history of being

responsible and having created successful developments throughout the country. Um, that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's interaction with the developer here has been how we would like it to be. I understand that. I've been on the other side before I was an elected official. I was a resident in Highland Park. I moved here in 1962. Um, that said, I think this is a reasonable use. There's been an effort to reduce the density to a manageable level. I will not repeat all the discussions we had about traffic at the last meeting but I feel that was adequately addressed uh based on my experience with traffic studies again on on both sides of the dis I know that traffic studies don't always seem realistic but they have proved as a result of actual experience uh to be effective predictors of what traffic will be like in the future with the changes that we've suggested tonight and the develop ers agreement to uh incorporate these suggestions and suggestions that have been made in the future. I'm I'm comfortable with the project.

Thank you, Council Member Lor.

Uh so I I really want to thank both the community, the developer, um my fellow council members and staff cuz there has been a lot of work that's gone on. It's a big project. It's a complex project. I I I think we're very fortunate to have this opportunity because this is the last big piece that we've got in Highland Park. And while Toys R Us will also become an issue, this is what's before us right now. And I like the idea of residential. I like the idea of single family. I like some more inclusionary and more middle inome housing coming to Highland Park for opportunity. Um, so I'm very pleased with this project and I think this process has been become much better because we've worked together and and I'm really grateful really to the community for that and to Habitat for listening to some extent and I'm really I think that's wonderful. I still think that this is a philosophical question and to me it's about housing and residential and really making a whole change and we have a very old master plan that I am so looking forward to becoming a new comprehensive plan and instead of this not being a part of that future project I'd like it to become almost the first stepping stone of it in saying that we really want this to be a residential development. And because of that, I'd really like to see us look at I don't want to stop the time frame on this, but I'd like to see this approached as an R7 in totality. I'd like to see an increased public benefit from our developer because I think you've worked in a very complex situation and you've made significant inroads, but I don't think it's enough to bring you into our community in terms

of what I believe would be the types of philosophical changes that we've begun making in terms of plantings and BMS and buffers. I want this to feel like one community, one residential community rather than this development and the single family homes. That's like an other side of the tracks kind of feel. And that's not what we're about in Highland Park. Just because there happens to be a train line there, I don't want someone to feel like they live on the wrong side of the tracks. And the way to do that is to bring it all together as a residential group. And I think a really good starting place even if it means a little bit of more leg work to determine if in fact there are additional variances needed. I want it ironclad so that it cannot be any more dense. I think we look at the whole property as one zoned group in sort of instead of this very wonderfully manipulated way of doing it to make it work and fit. There's a reason there's 227. I don't know what that reason is, but I want to know how it fits into residential. Number one, and number two, I think the community's been really loud. I'm hoping you'll consider more and more ownership rather than rental because you've heard from your neighbors here, and they are your neighbors. You may be the developer, but in Highland Park, you're a part of our community. And that's how we want to work with you. And I think you've begun really doing that, whether it's in meeting with businesses or whomever. But we need more in terms of a public benefit and I want to see this zoned as our seven in totality.

Thank you. And otherwise let's go with it. Council member Tapia.

Yeah. I mean throughout this whole process you know we're dealing with a classic paradox of uh preservation versus growth and that is always leads to very difficult uh trade-offs and dilemmas and I felt that and I think all of us have felt it throughout this whole process. you know, you you bought your homes whenever it is that you w you did it, whether it was just a few months ago or uh 20, 30, 40 years ago. So, you know, the neighborhood and you love your neighborhood. Uh because you it's it's, you know, um recognizable and familiar and you you don't want to lose what you know, you've come to really love. And I I really feel the the weight of that. So, that's sort of the part of the preservation. Um but on the growth part um and you heard me say this last time but just to bring it forth again you know cities that don't grow wither and that is uh something that you know to uh some comments made here we do need more residents which by definition means more density and uh we need people to be in our cities to uh patronize our restaurants even Jim Letterers he's going to have a lot of new patrons just across the street there but not the only one Right. There's many other restaurants not only in that neighborhood that could use more patrons, but also in downtown and and in Ravenia District and, you know, and our other business districts throughout the city. So, it's going to benefit our businesses and not only restaurants, but you know, we always clamor for more retail, more attraction of stores. Well, stores are not going to come here and restaurants are not going to come here if we don't uh move up our density. now doesn't mean that we go um do more density without managing it right and I think a lot of the effort has been to bring down the density up to a point and there's the the push and pull of that but trying to manage a paradox is like how do we get more density without too much but how do we not bring down the

density so much that then we don't bring the other uh you know lifting the the tide to to have the economic benefit of having more residents so I feel that the the tension and the poll and I think this process where even though it may not land in all our wish wishes of how it should be I think it has been the outcome in front of us is a series of compromises on all the different stakeholders and when there's compromises no one feels that they got everything they wanted but how do we manage the different pools of the different stakeholders at at play here so um you know I do worry about the traffic um and at this point uh I've had enough experience over the last 5 years to see the the the results of traffic studies and you know there are professionals that have their degrees and their experiences and decades of looking at traffic patterns. I believe in data the traffic studies are based on big data across the country with communities of our size with that kind of traffic flow with that kind of uh residences you know take into account the kind of demographics in terms of income and children and schools and everything. So those traffic studies take into account the very things that you're concerned about. Um so uh there's been strike traffic studies. there's a commitment to a new one once uh uh there's 90% occupancy and in that whatever the traffic study says you know there there will be a willingness to I believe make accommodations or the city will have to and with the police need to really look at that and there there will be space to sort of accommodate right turn right left turn or no no no turns or during uh different times of day I think there's options but I think it' be premature to lock in the options when we don't really know kind of what how it's going to play out. So, traffic is important, but I think there's some mechanisms, right? Some checks and balances to make sure we we answer those questions. Um, you know, I got my start in municipal government here in Highland

Park, uh, as a commissioner in the housing commission. Uh, so that's near and dear to my heart as well it is for everybody here and to many of you there. And I tell you um as we've been having uh bigger developments and more luxury and we welcome those but if we have too many of those it means less density which account you know is a counter to the case that I made a little bit earlier but it also means less affordable housing because affordable housing is based on the number of units available and if these units are too way big we end up with two affordable housing units in one of the big footprints and several blocks of our city. So this this and so we now have a smaller percentage of affordable housing in Highland Park than we did a few years ago even though we have a very progressive inclusionary housing um zoning and that's because we need more developments like these that can provide you know a couple dozen affordable housing units in one development and that is very welcome and the other thing I would add and is that and and uh some of you in the audience said this we need more middle inome housing So set us at inclusionary housing which is for even lower income. But you know so many children adult children who grew up here love Highland Park. They're starting their careers. They cannot find housing that they can afford at their income levels to stay in the community that they love. The very community that you all love and that you grew up here when it was affordable to move in here. So, I think we need to increase our housing stock for for middle inome, you know, young career couples or singles so they can especially for those that grew up in Highland Park who really have these roots that mean a lot and they're our next generation and I really want to include um increase our housing stock there. um on on the point of R seven um you know I' I've heard some really I've read the many of you know all your letters and and it's a very complex

issue. It's an education for me on zoning uh and uh and you know but several of you have taken the time to spend you taken time to spend with me to explain it. I I like the R seven argument um with a c with a caveat question. the argument of it being sort of neater. It's, you know, I believe in really good design, whether the design is for instructional design um or for zoning, right? And if if it's and the arguments I heard about R seven is that it's a cleaner design. Yeah. It it kind of the pieces start to make sense and and and something that feels is makeshift to kind of make it fit. You know, I'm I'm an improviser also. Sometimes you got to do makeshift to kind of make something work to break through the paradox. But if we have an R seven zoning thing that would allow the developer to still do the footprint that they want to do.

Yeah. Then because that's that's the thing. I mean so much has been spent on this is you know I'm good. I'm good with this. And if if the if the argument that has been made that R7 zoning would not change that and it's really a matter more of just um a process issue that may require different kinds of you know exceptions you know or overrides. I'm okay with that. But my caveat is this. I worry about the length of the process to get there

given how far we have come along the way. So, so if we can, so we can have the more elegant, you know, zoning without derailing this project and not delaying it in a way that really hurts the start of this project. And here's where I would just make a suggestion, and I don't know if we could do it. If we're willing to do something more makeshift and exception to make the the current uh RM1 uh R seven combination work in a contractual way, why couldn't we accelerate and streamline getting to R seven with a whole bunch of exceptions, whatever they are, because we want to get to this in the first place. Why do we have to go all the way back through a whole, you know, exception process when we know that we want to get here anyway?

I I I think if I may, mayor, I there may be just a little bit of a disconnect and I want to make sure that it that that everybody understands this. Um what what I was talking about in response to council member uh litter's question is uh can we do our seven as a home rule municipality um and accomplish this site plan? I think the answer is probably yes because we would just grant we have the ability essentially to ignore our code. I I that sounds rough but a home rule unisellar and there's case law on it we have that ability. I'm not sure that that's what I heard the residents saying or the letters that I've read from the residents. I I think what I saw and heard and I could be wrong. Um but the letters were very very well written and I heard and and saw that they would like it to be zoned R seven and then whatever development could fit in there. if that meant lesser units, if that meant greater um setbacks, if that meant lesser height, then that's what should be. And and that's so I I just think that there's a little disconnect here um from what some of the residents at least have argued in some of the correspondents that I've seen when they've asked for R seven versus what I was talking about earlier with council member Letterworth. So I think that that may need to be just flushed out. I just want to clarify that if we went to resoning and then had a process, it would be back to months of meetings. There's no like starting over.

Well, my understand my question is then we're saying to Habitat, here's what you have. Yes or no? Right. I mean is that it there would be the fact is this has been a bifurcated process. So we have a preliminary plan right now. Final plan necessarily has to go through the plan commission um and back up to the city council. Um, if you were to change to R seven, we would need a new public hearing, but it could occur

perhaps at the time that the final plan. If you were to approve the preliminary plan tonight with the caveat that the underlying zoning could be either R seven or RM1, um, R seven combined. Um, it would we would then need to have another public hearing before the plan commission. um to consider the R seven zoning as well as what I believe will likely be a lot of variations to to get this plan. Um well, I I I think it will. We would and and I guess my question is to what end

because we would this is a planned unit development. So this is a development agreement. this is a contract that this is what is allowed to be here and these are the buffers that are created and all of these other contingencies that we've been discussing for several months. I'm not quite sure what we get to and I know there's concern about we don't want added density here but to what we've been discussing this evening zoning can change and I think it's almost more likely to stay this way with this contractual agreement versus we're now going to amend this development agreement and to the public point. So I guess to me we're so close what is the point of starting over again? I know you wanted to add something else and then I'll call on you council member Ross. I I want to appeal to my colleagues on the dis and point out it if you send this back to the plan commission if you reject this fundamental element of this proposed plan and and this application and it's okay that it's gone through a lot of meetings that that should be part of the process. But to start all over again um

is going to make is going to send a signal out into the world to other developers who may be considering developing in Highland Park as to how difficult it is going to be to develop in Highland Park where the plan commission has made a recommendation to this council and we have abregated the process and started it all over again and I'm not willing to do that. Yeah. And by the way, I just wanted to test the assumption. I wasn't advocating for it. No, no, I just how it is. Well, now I'm getting an answer, right? That's what I wanted to test. Um, Council Member Ross.

Okay. Uh, and I I want to start by saying I I support this project. Um, I you know, as as much as I worry about the density of it, I agree that 227 more units, I would love if it were a few less, but that will will also be a benefit to the city. And I'm delighted that there are I think it's 30 more 34 more inclusionary units. Um, I am, you know, absolutely delighted about the the number of inclusionary units. That's going to be a, you know, boon to the city. Um, I'm not worried about other developers being turned off of developing here, honestly. Um, I, you know, I'm PDC liaison and now and and I I it it feels like um developers, you know, a little bit beating a door down to build in in in Highland Park. They're they're seeing successful projects happen here. Um uh and I I it it doesn't sound to me, unless I'm misunderstanding this, it it it sounded like corporation council. Well, first of all, I do want to say that I I I think you've mis read uh what you were talking about in in the letters because um I don't think uh I I don't think you're you're correct in in your assumption about the letters that you were reading. But uh in in well in any event um I uh it it it doesn't sound like we have to uh start from square one on this. It it it it you're talking about

an additional meeting that could even be added to it it it it has to occur anyhow. Yeah, it has to occur anyhow. But but it it sounds like one additional meeting if if I'm hearing you correct. That's exactly what I said.

Yeah. So so so I I I don't see why we can't um explore this. Um we've we've it it again it is it is literally supposed to be one site. It's owned by one person. It's one it's one or one company. I don't know if it's one person but uh you know it is one site. So, I I I I don't see that we're starting from square one. I think it it uh we can uh Yeah, it I'm not I'm not hearing that. Am I? No, you're not. I'm sorry.

I I Well, I'm I'm asking I I don't think we're we're starting from square one to do these basically parallel tracks. That's correct. That's my understanding. There's also no guarantee that the developer is going to stick around and say, "Sure, reszone and we'll then pursue this with all the variances that they'll be required to pursue." I mean, we never did the research. We never did the work and that's what we asked for. I I I guess I mean, first of all, the developers in the room, so

Well, I I I guess I don't understand what is it. Maybe I'm not understanding what the public was asking in their in their emails, but if you have an agreement that you are now down to 227 units and this is what your PUB says and and the language clearly stated in Joel's presentation that this is the cap, what do we why why are we asking the question again? Because we like a better map that has only one zoning.

No. Yes. and because we'd like to have single family and we wanted to know that that is a clear bridge from our four and five and six and seven and that's the movement. It's not from industrial down, it's from the neighborhood up and that's why the R seven makes more sense and to pull that out of uh the Briergate area and to put it into a residential area and that's the only reason and it's just to look at it. If there are really 20 variances, then maybe it doesn't make sense and this has already been it's gone too far and then maybe it does need to be that combination. But frankly, if it fits into it with two or three different variances and and it works as R seven, then philosophically it's more residential. That's the only reason. Do

don't we have a a a way forward with with the developer? I mean I think there isn't a person on the deis that doesn't want to see you know this development done you know done well I mean it starts with approving the but I mean I it seems like we have a way forward that that if one doesn't work we do the other well I'm going to I'm going to thank you both for your input and we're going to continue with comments from your colleagues and then we'll figure out where we're going to go from here. Council member Brooklyn,

thank you. Um, perfect is the enemy of good. Is this a perfect project? No. Is it a good project? Yes. It's a far better use of the land that has sat vacant for over at least over a decade. From my perspective, this is a positive step forward for our community, for new residents, for new families, for new patronage to our local businesses. I very much appreciate all the hard work of PDC, all the emails I've received, all the conversations I've had from residents. Um, there's been so much discuss and that's because a lot of people in our community care and that's what's vital to having a successful community and this project in my opinion only moves our community forward, which is why I am supportive of this project and moving forward. So, thank you again.

Great. Thank you, Council Member Center.

Thank you, mayor. Um, thanks to the city staff for countless hours of work on this project. Um, incredible. Appreciate the hard work and diligence throughout the last several months. U members of PDC as well, fellow council members, I know we've spent a lot of time dialoguing, reading, debating, etc. Thank you to Habitat for coming to Highland Park to choose, you know, this site as a potential project. And most importantly, thanks to the public for their advocacy, passion, and feedback, and helping to make this project as good as it possibly can be, understanding that it never checks the boxes for everybody. Um, I grew up in the southwest Highland Park neighborhood. My parents are still there. I go all the time. I I I appreciate it greatly and I understand that it's unique and different than other parts of the community and but it's all one Highland Park. And and I and I echo a lot of what council member Tapia has said with respect to, you know, adding to our housing stock, providing attainable housing, you know, the the potential downstream impacts of future development to the Toys R Us project, continuing to get more bodies in the streets to eat at our restaurants, to shop at our streets, to support continued development. A lot of good things can come out of this. Um, I recognize change is hard. I I do. Um, but also change can be really positive. Um, looking forward, I know a lot of feedback we've talked about traffic. Uh, looking forward to sort of that restudy, you know, once we get a little bit more further down the road to ensure that the community continues to be operating safely, uh, and as optimally as possible. Uh, and, you know, on the zoning piece, I I understand the um, uh, different feelings that are up here right now. Um, I think at the end of the day, what we're all trying to accomplish is to ensure that the the project that's being

developed will remain the project that's being proposed will remain the project that's being proposed. And what I heard from corporation council today and what I've learned as it relates to the zoning that we are actually in a place that might be better than if we were to just change it to R seven. I appreciate that we didn't necessarily get to the all the answers and I'm supportive of of exploring that as we go into the future as part of a larger plan, but I am satisfied that the way that this resolution is drafted is protective of the density in the area and is and allows for appropriate inclusion in the in the uh abuing neighborhood uh in a way that does not uh further delay the project. So I am supportive as supportive of it as it is written today.

Thank you council center. Um I just want to add my appreciation to the public to Habitat to our staff to the PDC to my colleagues. Um this is a complex conversation and as I stated at the prior meeting um this started as a solo cup factory and then since 2009 we've looked at a community college, a Costco, a museum, a blackbox theater, a hydroponic farm, a factory that would convert diesel engines to something else. Um a truck depot. And so I feel after all of these conversations and senior housing with like

more more density and a lot more ambulance calls um I think this is a great project moving forward. And to those who came here earlier and talked um Miss Bassie, Mr. Kaufman, Miss Schwarz about middle market housing. I love those comments because I my family moved here as well in 1965 and paid very little for the house that I grew up in. It was a small house, but it was a house that got me a great education and a great future. And so I think um this is a wonderful opportunity for us to continue to stand strong with those values that we all share. Uh what do we owe the neighbors? We will continue to deal with the traffic issue. I hear your concerns. I recognize them. We are uh a group that prioritizes public safety and we will make sure that if there's an issue with traffic, it will be addressed. Uh earlier meetings talked about storm water management. That too is something that we will continue to work on and if there's an issue, we'll work with the necessary authorities to address it. Um I want to see this be the development of a place and not just a project on that map. I want it to be an integrated part of your neighborhood so that people are walking their dogs and getting to know each other and playing at the playgrounds together. Um, so I am also supportive of this project. But again, uh, want to thank you all for your time and for making this a better project than when it started. Deeply appreciate it. With that, I'm seeking a motion.

Um, Mayor, I I would like to make a comment before I simply vote on this. Sure. Um, and may I Yeah. Well, do you want a second? I mean, we can get a motion in a second and then you can comment. So, I'm seeking a motion. So, I I would move to approve a resolution approving a preliminary development plan on a preliminary plan of subdivision uh for 1660 and 1700 Old Deerfield Road. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. May I offer a friendly amendment? Let's first hear Council Member Ross's comment and then I'll hear your friendly amendment. Thank you. Uh very funny.

I I I did want to say that the the bottom line for me was that my plan was always to try to get the best project out of the process.

I think that's but I'm speaking for myself here. I'm not denying that everybody else wanted that as well. Um and I I do also want to say I appreciate the changes that developer made. some of them specifically in response to to my suggestions that I really did appreciate that and um uh you know since we clearly don't have a majority for parallel tracks here um I I'm not interested in being an an obstacle to the project. I was I just was hoping that you know my colleagues would see what what what I saw and um and I respect that you don't but uh I I'm not voting against this simply you know because you know I'm demanding a a a different process that isn't isn't clearly possible. So I that was the comment I made wanted to make.

Thank you. Council member liter. Um I'd like to offer a friendly amendment. Um which number one um this is the preliminary and so I would like to say number one subject to uh the traffic studies in one year. I want to make sure that that's in the motion.

Okay. And then I'd also like to ask um for additional public benefits to be considered in the form of either monetary of a monetary um increase relative to landscaping. I don't know if that's too amorphous, but that that be considered at I want to have it noted so that we consider it during a final when we vote on the final process. Everywhere or just in general? Yes,

in general. And finally, I'd like to also offer up one other thing, which is that we also consider this as an R7 in tandem with moving forward in the project to determine fully what is the best designation for this project because it is so impactful. So, with respect to the traffic study, as corporations and council mentioned, that's already part of the resolution.

Can I explain though? I I'm sorry. All right, I just want to make sure you all understand the way it's drafted. It it is a condition in the resolution and it says that they have to conduct a traffic study of the same scope as before, not a limited traffic study, but a full traffic study. Um, and they have to do any of the improvements that are required by the traffic study. The timing is the way it's written is that they have to do it when the development achieves 90% occupancy or we added this at such earlier time um as the city manager in her sole discretion may determine is necessary and warranted.

So that part that part wouldn't require an amendment that's already that it's in there. So if as long as that's in there that takes out one of the three friendly amendments. So now there's two. So the other two are landscaping uh consideration of an additional public benefit in the form of a monetary um increase toward landscaping and the other is to u consider consider an R seven and I I will not agree to those amendments. Okay. Thank you, mayor. Uh with that we have a motion. We have a second. Mayor.

Yes, ma'am. Just one additional council member Ross had suggested that the agreement also reflect that if the emergency access was supported and advanced then the developer would pay the cost and I believe that they agreed to that. Sorry. I thought that was already in the resolution also. It is not. It's listed as it's the city's cost. Oh, okay. I would I would accept that as a friendly amendment. Could I Does that need to come from the deis versus the city manager? Okay. it. I guess Council Member Ross already made that statement earlier. So, Council Member Ross, do you add that to the motion? Um, I would like to add hear it again.

I'd like to hear it again. Well, it the the request and it was accepted was that if if um the city determined that uh that access road was was was necessary um that that it wouldn't come at the city's cost that the developer would the traffic study indicated a need. Yeah. The way it's written, um, he has a traffic study determining if it's necessary and the way it's written right now is that it would be at the city's expense and and it would be at the developers. I guess the developers agreeing to have that change we would cover the cost of the same language, Steve, just switching developers,

right? I'll accept that. I would accept that. Yeah. And so, so, so just to just to get this um in order, let's see if the motion maker and the seconder will accept that particular amendment. And the answer is yes. And yes, so now if the motion maker rejected um R7 as a friendly amendment, but um a an an amendment to amend the motion could be made as well. Can an amendment be made? It just has to be voted on. Yeah. If you give the

So then if you won't accept it as a friendly amendment, I would like to move for an amended motion. And my amended motion would be the same motion as council member Blumberg's with his second except it would add two additions. Number one, that at the time of a final application, we also review and request a public benefit to be determined for monetary amount for landscaping, additional landscaping. number one. And number two, that at the same time as this process moves forward, we look toward uh an R7 designation for the entire and to determine if in fact variances are necessary to keep the project as is.

So, mayor, now you have to see if there's a second to that motion. Is there a second to my motion? Right. Mayor, may I ask a question? zone that was recommended by the IC. Should that be perhaps part of the motion? So, thanks Mr. T for for making that note. Um, we will follow up on the quiet zone. I don't think that needs to be included in any of this discussion. That's something that we as a city would uh pursue. Thank you. Hi. I just I just don't understand the second problem. Me neither.

The second prompt is for the PDC or whomever to determine whether it's staff or whatever how this project fits as an R seven and in order to make it work, what variances would be. My prong was the prong I was wondering about was the prong about additional public benefit. Oh, an additional public benefit increased landscaping. I mean, we have you need a dollar. We have a substantial we're substantially in excess now of the required landscaping and that was intended as a concession to provide additional traffic and we've also just agreed to pay

for additional improvements should they be required by the traffic study. Correct. So, we are trying to extend ourselves to increase public and there's no no problem at all with us granting a variance for God knows how many hundreds of thousand dollars not to have to make you bury the the the um outside wires nor to put in a sidewalk. So, I would put a cap on it of another $50,000 of landscaping in this a cap that would be the high point of landscaping for this project.

I I'm just not sure. It's there's a real lack of specificity here uh in terms of uh again I guess respectfully we would really we've tried to extend ourselves pretty substantially already this is an indeterminant amount that we would have to spend on this potential I just capped it and I mean if if my council members feel that it would be more acceptable if it was at a lower level then I I think but for a unit of 227 uh town homes I don't think that That's a lot of landscaping.

Could we Could we stick with our current zoning framework though so we don't lose more time? Here here's our issue. I I I'm a zoning lawyer. It's what I do all day every day. And this conversation that you were having about this transitional districtricting and the R seven R1. From my perspective, as Mr. Lrod said, when you approved this PUD with 227 units, the law is that we can build only 227 units. And if we could get some assurances on that, it would be really helpful to us with respect to this other increase in public benefit. That's what the initial motion is attempting to do. That's what the initial motion is attempting to do.

That was how I should add to that initial motion. That's why there's an amendment out there. So here's the point. We have a motion. I I have not yet heard a second. There was a second over here. original motion. Bara second for No, no, no. The mayor was talking about my amendment for the amendment. I have not heard a second. You have a motion to amend by council member Little and she explained her motion and now you if there is a second, we'll vote on that first, but you'll have to see if there's a second. I don't hear a second. So, I believe that motion fails due to lack of a second. Okay. So, now the underlying motion is back on the table. I'd like an amendment. Now, you want to amend? Yes.

Okay. the the one that is on the table and the uh a public benefit for increased landscape for $50,000. Um what was the one that was on the table? Your motion. You want to amend my motion to include to add more landscaping? Yes.

Okay. Um I I've already rejected that as a friendly amendment and I'm going to reject that again. I and I'm going to say why. I think the amount of landscaping that's proposed meets uh as part of the public benefits uh that have been suggested. Um this development meets the impact of the variances that a public benefit is required to make up for. One of the things that was mentioned in terms of additional landscaping is contrary to the idea of attempting to incorporate this into the surrounding community and that is BMS. I don't want to see BMS here. You have a large wetland that's already creating a significant

barrier barrier and an amelioration of the impact that this development is going to have to adjacent communities. I don't want to put a burm in there on top of that which is a signal you're not welcome here. I want people to walk into this development and we we have a community center which this developer has kindly agreed to be used by the public which I think is a significant community benefit that helps to incorporate this as a development into the rest of Highland Park. So I don't want to see more landscaping spent. I'd like to make it a separate not not a friendly but just a separate motion

and the case here is in in in Tree City USA Highland Park you cannot have enough green and $50,000 is not very much at all and you don't have to put BMS there's other ways to spread out the landscaping and really make it a little bit more you were also offering that and we would stick to you know the current zoning situation that has is on the So, I'll second your amendment. Okay. So, is that feasible? I mean, I was just going to point out one fact just to consider if I could.

Um, this plan has 53% more trees and 288% more shrubs added to the site than are required. I I appreciate a desire to have them just spend more money, but that is part of the issue here is they're going to spend a lot of money. They again, they've agreed to spend more money and they're it's going to be a beautiful site. I think that's a beautiful uh landscape plan. I I know not everyone agrees, but we're trying to extend ourselves. We would just respectfully request that you not impose that additional cost, but I understand that you have to do what you have to do as a council. But for example, let's say they put up a very nice metal fence on the southern border all the way across. I'd really rather have a southern border with a lot of trees. Not a burm, not a burm, but a lot of trees. So that and that's just one example of one way in which I think

I I may I say something? Sure. I with the the respectfully um and I don't I forgot your name, but zoning attorney um you were proposing that depending on how you know council uh moved in in terms of the um the R seven, you would consider the the the trees. That's what it sounded like or or rather the additional landscaping. That's what it sounded like when you you spoke. So we we tabled the other one.

Sure. I what I was proposing what I was suggesting was that we've already substantially exceeded your landscaping requirements which is very costly and are happy to do it to achieve a plan that works better. We are going to agree to spend the money on the improvements if the traffic study requires it and the additional I'm sorry the additional item that was added. I think um we're installing the landscaping on the property to the north that was discussed in some detail. I I was saying when I was commenting on the zoning that I I think the real benefit there is it gets us to exactly the same place legally and gives the neighbors an iron as ironclad a guarantee and that I just am respectfully requesting that you not impose an additional cash requirement. That's all. And I but it's not my decision to make.

Understood. Thank you. Um I too am going to request that the amener remove the motion. Is there a second? There was a second. So, we can take the vote. Let's take the vote. Yeah. So, let's make sure we know what we're voting on. Sorry. So, essentially, it's approving this project in a preliminary sense. No, no, no, no. Right now, there's an there's a motion to amend on the table, which is to add,000 a landscape requirement of up to $50,000. that that motion has three times what it's already required

for the the applicant there's a question of what is your landscaping budget as proposed prior to this request sorry what what is the landscaping budget for the project prior to this additional 50 we haven't got into that detail yet there's um a site work number um and it's Not there isn't a line item. Yeah. So procedurally then mayor you have a motion which has been seconded to amend the underlying motion. Right.

That is what you would vote on first. It is a motion to add as a condition the u additional landscaping with a $50,000 cap. If that prevails, then you would go back to vote on the underlying motion as amended. If it fails, you go back to the underlying motion as it was originally stated. Heaven help us. Okay. What is the movement? So, what do you Oh, I was just going to say I my I'm going to vote against it. I think it's too vague. I think there's a substantial landscaping plan in place and the goal is the landscaping.

Simply trying to drive an additional $50,000 of expenditure on who knows what is not a meaningful public benefit. I absolutely agree with you, Council Member Bloomberg. I think we need to move forward on this project. I think we're nitpicking in ways that are not productive. But with that being said, we'll call the vote. May I ask a question? Sure.

Just to see if it helps. Um, you know, in the past when we've given people variances, we've quantified them. So, for example, when someone wanted an extra parking space, we had them give us a $10,000 um, you know, that was the public benefit that we then were going to use in that area in some other way. Would it be easier for you if in fact because I really believe that the public benefit is not commenurate with the amount of variances that they've requested? Would it be easier for you if we took out the part about landscaping and said that we want a $50,000 public benefit for the project in general to be determined because we may find that there's something whether that's landscaping, maybe we say it's a different area, they want another playground, whatever it is that that money would go towards something like that.

I'll be honest, we've not had much of a conversation up here about the insufficiency of the public benefit. that just hasn't risen to the top and now suddenly at the 11th hour literally it's coming to the top. I feel like we're just sort of grasping at straws and I would like us to call the vote on the landscaping. Okay. Council member center. No. Council member Buckman. No. Council member Ross. Yes. Council member Tapia. Yes. Council member Little. Yes. Council member Bloomberg. No. Mayor Roing? No, the motion fails uh with a vote of four nays and three yays.

So now, mayor, you're back to council member Bloomberg's motion. Remember, it is as amended to add the uh city paying for the possible emergency access to change it away from the city paying so that the developer is paying. That is that is amended. If it weren't amended, it would be the city. So, it's that's the original motion as amended. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Center. I, Council Member Buckman, I. Council member Ross, I. Council member Tapia, hi. Council member Little, I. Council member Bloomberg, I. Mayor Roing,

I. Seven eyes, no nays. And the resolution approving a preliminary development plan and a preliminary plat of subdivision at 1660 and 1700 Old Deerfield Road as amended is approved with a vote of seven eyes and zero nazs. I'm seeking a motion to adjurnn. So second all in favor say I. I. Thank you all. Thank you everyone for coming this evening.