First reported 3/10/2010 2:19 p.m.
A loud and cantankerous debate dominated the March 8 meeting of River Forest trustees as they sparred over how the village should manage a Lake Street parcel found to be contaminated with chemicals used by a dry cleaning business there. The board has already decided that trying to lure new development to the area of 7613 Lake may be the best way to get the pollutants cleaned up.
But the sentiment isn’t unanimous.
Trustee Steve Hoke vociferously argued that a lesser crop of developers will be all the village has to choose from because the undefined cost of remediation will serve as a deterrent. No developer “in their right mind,” said Hoke, would make an investment without a guarantee from the village that public money would be put toward any necessary cleanup. Hoke, however, said he does not want the village to put any public money toward that process.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on a pool of tax revenue set aside to spur development in the neighborhood, and the village needs to work quickly to secure a project before that money must be returned to the general budget.
Both the Illinois and U.S. offices of the Environmental Protection Agency are working with the village to assess the scope of the contamination. A recent report posted on the federal agency’s Web site indicates the breadth of the problem is worse than initially judged, and that toxins have migrated north across Lake Street onto St. Luke’s Parish School property.
John Rigas, president of the village board, told Hoke that any cleanup effort would be part of the negotiations with potential developers.
“It’s all done in the negotiations of the parcel,” Rigas said during the meeting a week ago Monday.
Most trustees were visibly frustrated by Hoke’s objections to soliciting bids from developers. The village has outlined in general terms that it would like to see multi-story, mixed-use properties on Lake Street, both at the corner of Lathrop Avenue and at the corner of Park Avenue.
The municipality owns the property at Lake and Park, and says it is “working closely” with the owners of the contaminated site at Lake and Lathrop to see it redeveloped.
“A number of us here, and I include myself among them, are very comfortable moving forward with this process,” trustee James Winikates said during the discussion.
The board’s discussion on potential redevelopment of the two sites got off to an acrimonious start when two trustees, Stephen Dudek and Hoke, questioned the value of a consultant’s report that was drafted in response to news coverage of the contamination. The U.S. EPA recently established a Web page, www.epaosc.org/RiverForestCleaners, devoted solely to the pollution on Lake Street, and is posting updates intended to keep the public abreast of the circumstances. A document posted on the page by the government was the basis of those news reports, and several trustees took umbrage with the tone struck in Wednesday Journal’s coverage of it.
“I’d like to really know the facts,” Winikates said of why he requested a village consultant to address the coverage. “It was not about the article. It was about what was portrayed in the article.”
Dudek, however, scolded his colleagues for what he perceived to be wasteful spending intended solely to spin the issue. Instead of paying a consultant to interpret the EPA’s assessments, he said, get it straight from the horse’s mouth.
“Why don’t we just ask the EPA,” Dudek said. “Why not go to the horse? Why are we paying someone to look at the horse?”