The Village of Oak Park may start making it a little tougher to open a beauty supply store on Madison Street, at the request of the owner of one of those establishments.
Currently, the village forbids any barber shops, braiding establishments or hair dressers from opening within 500 feet of each other on Madison Street because of the proliferation of such businesses along the east-west stretch. However, that doesn’t currently apply to beauty supply stores.
Joe Seok, one of the owners of K-Stone Beauty Supply, at 20 Madison, wants the village to apply the same restrictions to beauty supply shops. He deferred comment to his lawyer when reached on Friday, but said the store is owned by his father, Kyun Seok, and has been in business for more than 20 years.
His attorney declined to comment on Tuesday. But in a letter to the village’s planning department earlier this month, Joseph McCoy, of Perkins Coie, said they believe it is “inconsistent” to not extend the 500-feet guideline for beauty supply stores across all of Madison.
“Our goal is to propose a text amendment that is the least intrusive option to continue promoting a mix of desirable retail uses to other business owners and still encourage the desired areas of commercial business in the area,” he wrote.
The village board was scheduled to refer Seok’s request to the Oak Park Plan Commission on Tuesday night, after Wednesday Journal’s deadline. The commission is expected to take up the issue starting at its Sept. 15 meeting.
Village Planner Craig Failor said the village already forbids beauty supply stores from opening within 500 feet of each other on Madison, but only on the first block west of Austin, and the first block east of Harlem.
Loretta Daly, business services manager for the village, agrees with the idea of using zoning to encourage a diverse collection of businesses to open up on Madison.
“I think that, as a community, we need to be able to manage the market mix in our commercial corridors,” she said. “The general theory is that you don’t want to have an area that’s concentrated in any one thing.”