The River Forest Development Review Board (DRB) voted 5-2 Thursday night to grant a highly conditional approval to the installation of athletic lights in Keystone Park West. That approval will be forwarded to the village board for a final decision following a formal “findings of fact,” to be written by Village Attorney Jon Gilbert. The DRB will vote on those findings of fact on July 20, and the village board will likely deliberate the issue at its regular meeting on Aug. 14.
The recommended approval for lights in Keystone West comes nearly two years after the park district first submitted an amended application to the review board, which unanimously recommended rejection of the application in July of 2004, and it was formally withdrawn that September during a village board meeting in the face of certain rejection.
Following a 3-3 split decision on its second submission before the DRB last November, the park district retained special counsel Robert K. Bush in December to take the lead on a third submission.
In January, the village board sent the lights application back to the review board with a list of issues it wanted addressed in that third hearing. A Jan. 13 memo from Village Administrator Charles Biondo outlined five main points the village board wanted the DRB to address.
Noting that the standards used to determine an acceptable level of light “spillage” from Keystone East lights “may not have been the most appropriate,” Biondo wrote that the village board was concerned that “surrounding neighbors are experiencing unexpected and unacceptable detrimental effects generated by the glare from the light fixtures.”
As part of that reassessment, the village board instructed the DRB to retain an independent lighting consultant.
The village board instructed the DRB to “reexamine its findings [of fact] in respect to Standards C, D and E.” Those standards concern potential diminishment of enjoyment of surrounding property by owners, the potential impeding “normal development and improvement of surrounding properties,” and the potential diminishment of property values.
Finally, the trustees requested that the park district “consider changes to its lighting policy,” including stricter limitations on the hours and days of use, initiation of on-site controls at the tennis courts that would allow the lights to be turned off when not in use, and enforcement procedures for those rules.
Even those DRB members expressing qualified support for west field lights made it clear Thursday night they were unhappy with what they perceived as the park district’s lack of response to previously stated concerns by the review board. They expressed skepticism that the park board would honor “recommendations” contained in any agreement. David Berni, who was not present when the DRB last voted on the west field lights application, expressed a generally held opinion among the DRB when he said that any caveats regarding DRB approval “be conditional, not ‘maybe.'”
Any approval of the application, all said, must be contingent on the park board accepting enforceable conditions mandating specific changes.
When Richard Smith suggested that the village’s and park district’s lighting consultants “work together to agree on a very specific ‘will do list,'” DRB Chairman Frank Martin pointedly replied that the park board had previously been presented with a number of suggestions to address neighbors’ concerns with existing lighting.
“For six or seven months, we haven’t had anything like [a will do list] from the park district. We’ve heard, ‘We’re willing to consider,’ but no commitment.”
Martin later recommended a motion for approval of the application, with specific, binding conditions. That motion made four “good faith” acts mentioned in the park district’s latest amended application conditions for approval, including a timer for the tennis court light at the east end of Keystone, a mandatory 10 p.m. lights-out policy in Keystone East, landscaping on the west end of Keystone West to mitigate light invasion on condos there, and adjustments to the lighting technology in Keystone East. Keystone West has a mandatory 9 p.m. cutoff.
Berni suggested the DRB accept lighting consultant Peter Hugh’s recommendations for remediating light problems on the east field, including the placement of visors on all north facing lights and limited retrofitting of visors on east and west facing lights. In addition, the system would be re-wired to allow different sections of lights to be turned on, rather than en masse as they are now.
After Berni stressed that any work on the mandatory east field improvements must be done prior to any use of west field lights being allowed, James Levy made a motion for the qualified approval, which passed 5-2. Board members Elaine Kirk and Dennis McMahon voted no, saying that, among other concerns, the park board had not demonstrated the need for additional lighted fields. McMahon in particular had pushed for an earlier uniform 9 p.m. cutoff time for the lights in both parks.
Noting that he is only one of five commissioners and that the park board must first see a specific list of conditions, park board member Dale Jones said after the meeting that he believes the park board will likely accept the DRB’s conditions. The only sticking point, he said, might be “technical feasibility?#34;in some cases.”
“Based on my sense of the board … I do not see anything in terms of the conditions that the DRB had placed here, that I don’t think the board can comply with,” said Jones.