Concentrating responsibility for Oak Park’s economic development outside of village hall and inside a private entity with roots in the Oak Park Development Corporation was the path a majority of Oak Park village trustees chose Monday night after a lengthy discussion. While no action was taken, consensus was reached by a board majority on the broad concept and a short timeline for fleshing out the plan was set.
Perhaps the top priority for Village President Anan Abu-Taleb, remaking Oak Park’s economic development structure and streamlining business-related services within village hall, both moved forward Monday. While Abu-Taleb complained that he’d like to make the changes this week, the board set a late January deadline for implementing the external role of a restructured OPDC. The board also gave its OK Monday to a plan from Village Manager Cara Pavlicek to consolidate multiple business and housing related departments at village hall under one leadership position.
Back in October, the village board opened an intense discussion about overall concerns with Oak Park’s development efforts. Both OPDC and the village’s internal staffing took heavy criticism. At that time, the village board told OPDC to come back with a proposal that would restructure growth efforts.
While some board members expressed sticker shock at the proposed $725,000 annual price tag in the draft proposal, others urged colleagues to set cost aside for the moment and focus on the idea of consolidating development outside of village hall while fixing internal development operations inside village government.
Under the brief three-page draft provided to board members, the new economic development authority would be renamed the Development Corporation for Oak Park or DCOP and establish new by-laws. DCOP would also install a new board of directors that include DCOP’s president, the village president, the village manager, a village trustee and three to five business and development representatives.
The price tag of $725,000 in 2014 is more than double OPDC’s current village subsidy of $300,000. The proposal requests a five-year funding commitment. The group would establish a position for a new chief executive, who would act as a liaison between the village and business community, and also include a real estate developer, a retention/recruitment officer, an economic development officer and an office administrator. Personnel costs are estimated to run $525,000 and another $200,000 would go toward marketing and administrative costs, according to the report.
OPDC Chairman Marty Noll told village trustees that the new organization would be “fully accountable to the [village] board.” But a majority of village trustees weren’t ready to approve the increased funding without more information. Trustee Colette Lueck said the village should not invest “three quarters of a million dollars without understanding the return.”
“We need some sense of what is deliverable,” she said, adding that OPDC needs to explain how it will measure the success of the new organization. “I want more about what is your strategy going to be to bring developments to Oak Park.”
OPDC’s proposal painted an unflattering picture of current real estate and business development in Oak Park, noting three vacant development sites downtown, vacancies on Madison and Oak Park Avenue, and a “sizable number” of undeveloped or underdeveloped properties on North, Roosevelt, Harrison and Austin. The report also notes that Oak Park is often overlooked by retailers because of its proximity to shopping in Chicago and a concentration of stores in Oak Brook.
“Also, property taxes are high in the village relative to other locations within Cook County and particularly relative to locations in DuPage County,” according to the OPDC report.
OPDC also asserts that Oak Park has a “reputation for being difficult to work with; that reduces the pool of developers assessing opportunities in our village.” But rebuilding the village’s reputation among businesses and developers would be another charge of the new organization, according to Noll. He said a new marketing campaign would establish the “Oak Park Advantage” highlighting the village’s diverse housing, regional transportation and other cultural attractions.
The new organization also aims to help coordinate financial services such as direct loans from member banks, loan guarantees by the village, village grants, sales tax abatement and sharing, and potential write-downs of key village-owned parcels, among others, according to Noll.
Noll, also the chairman of Community Bank Oak Park River Forest, said the new organization would be “nimble and agile” in its mission of attracting business and new tax revenue to the village.
“This proposal keeps the company small with respect to the board and small with respect to staff,” he said. “The board consists of roughly half village trustees and manager, so there is not only input but governance from this table in the company.”
On the cost, Noll said the $725,000 is an estimate. “Maybe it’s more, maybe it’s less. I don’t know but we’ve given you something to chew on,” he said.
Abu-Taleb pushed for quick action on the proposal saying the village cannot afford to spend time “studying things to death.”
“We are at a tipping point where you need to reinvent yourselves,” Abu-Taleb told OPDC members at the meeting. “We feel that there is a need to put an investment in our community, so if we ask developers and business people to invest in our community, we have to do it ourselves too.”
Village trustees agreed something needs to be done to boost economic development in the village, but most weren’t ready to approve the proposal so quickly.
Trustee Adam Salzman believes that the change is worth the risk of the new expenditure because the village, he said, needs a new direction.
“[The new organization] provides clarity and assigns clear responsibility to one entity; I think that is the overarching policy concern that I think has been deviling this village for a while,” he said.
Salzman said he would like to see a new organization in place before the end of the year, but added that figuring out where to cut the budget to pay for it will be difficult.
“We’re going to have to discuss that and that’s not going to be an easy discussion but that’s not a justification for delaying it,” he said.
Trustee Glenn Brewer said he compared the updated list of services from the proposed organization to the list of services currently provided by OPDC and there wasn’t much difference.
“I’m torn because I had such high hopes for more,” he said. “When I first picked this up it struck me that DCOP seems very similar to OPDC, so my natural inclination was to say, ‘How is this different from OPDC?’
“Ninety percent of what I see in here is what we were already supposed to be getting for $300,000,” Brewer said.
Noll and Abu-Taleb both reminded the village board that outsourcing government responsibilities is a strategy that has worked successfully in next-door Berwyn. OPDC notes in its report that Berwyn’s success in attracting the national retail store chain Meijer will bring in at least $250,000 in annual tax revenue.
Paul Zimmerman, an Oak Parker and former board president of the Berwyn Development Corp., told trustees the keys to success are providing autonomy to the OPDC board to make decisions independent of the village and transparency between the two entities.
“You can’t be serving two masters,” Zimmerman said. “The development corporation can’t be serving their board and this board. They have to have autonomy to work with their board and bring the [developments] here as is.”
Developers have to know “that the village has their back and it’s going to make the project happen,” he said.
While the decision on whether to overhaul the development structures will not get resolved before the village finishes its 2014 budget, trustees agreed to come back early next year and approve a budget amendment to fund the project. Trustees will discuss the issue again at a meeting scheduled for Jan. 13 and are expected to make a final decision at a meeting on Jan. 27.