So how does Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb compare and contrast to his immediate predecessor David Pope?
Well, insiders, including our reporters, would point to the radically shorter public meetings. Scalawags would suggest the brief meetings are the result of subtracting Pope’s long-winded discourses on every agenda item. More attentive observers would point out that most of the agenda items under the Abu-Taleb/Village Manager Cara Pavlicek regime have been shifted to a “consent agenda.” That governing device allows sometimes notable, though mostly mundane issues, to be gathered under a one vote/no discussion heading that saves time but often seems to thwart useful dialogue.
Anan “Open for Business” Abu-Taleb has effectively worn the cloak of economic development. He has made smart choices in remaking the failing Oak Park Economic Development Corporation while simultaneously taking on the sorting out of the dysfunctional development functions within village hall. He has been a clear booster for development, has somehow quieted the stuck-in-the-’60s crowd who opposed all new development, and he has made clear the linkage between new development as the only way to slay monstrous tax hikes in the village.
But so far, Abu-Taleb has been at work constructing the major buildings that were in the pipeline under Pope’s administration. And while he has been blessed with a sharp upturn from the moribund national economy, which Pope carried on his back, Anan also gets credit for better business instincts that have allowed him to smooch up and smack down developers and their minions to get projects off the dime.
Case in point is the so-called Colt Development on Lake Street. Reports are that there will be shovels in the ground at that location within the week. We’ll see. But after years of blathering, it was only when Abu-Taleb told that development team he could take them or leave them and had another developer in his back pocket, that the project finally got a quick spin through the Plan Commission and a start date. When he writes his autobiography, perhaps he will tell us whether the alternate developers were real or just conversation over a golf game.
But here’s the contrast I keep coming back to: The Eisenhower Expressway. For David Pope, the long-planned remaking of the Ike was the coming together of every cause he championed. Sustainability. Mass transit. The power of regional planning and alliances. Working connections lovingly, painstakingly made in Washington and Springfield. Preserving Oak Park icons by containing the highway in its existing ditch. Connecting low-paid workers on the West Side and Maywood with DuPage jobs by extending the Blue Line to Oak Brook.
To his everlasting credit, Pope beat back the IDOT’s auto fetish and has seemingly got the extra lane focused on car-pooling or tolling or some progressive vision.
This all comes to mind as the village board last week unanimously dispatched another notion from the Pope years, which was to create a new historic district in Oak Park, one that coincidentally abutted the mighty Ike. The Henry Hulbert District — you remember Henry Hulbert don’t you? There was Wright, Sullivan, a hundred others. And then there was good old Hank Hulbert. He built nice frame houses along the Eisenhower 40 years before there was an Eisenhower. Pope saw it as another way to fight IDOT if he needed another arrow. Abu-Taleb said last week the village now works with IDOT, thank you very much.
Well, Mr. Mayor, it is easier to work with IDOT once they have been pounded into submission. And David Pope gets credit for that pounding.
