I write as a bemused neighbor of Oak Park, where I spend considerable time. As Oak Park adds apartment space in large buildings, I puzzle over several things about the village.
The number of newly-resident who will be living in the 1,000 or so new apartments in the village will be, most likely, in excess of 2,000. Where will those people buy groceries, for example? There appear to be no additional supermarkets going up. Nor, for that matter, does it appear that enlargements of the River Forest Jewel or Whole Foods or the Oak Park Trader Joe’s are in the offing.
I can’t imagine what the lines in those stores will be like. I can’t imagine that those new residents will shop at the tiny Jewel on Madison or much want to get on over to Pete’s down Lake Street.
I wonder, too, about quality of life as the density increases. Two of the new buildings have in common that they pretty aggressively clutter their environs. Vantage is built out to the sidewalks. Even worse, the now-under-construction Elevate walls off both Lake Street and South Boulevard. The idea of breathing space seems to have escaped planners, so the developers and architects went ahead and took full advantage and used the sidewalks as borders, no setbacks, no plazas, no sitting space, no nothing.
Planners. There’s the rub. I got to wondering a while back how Oak Park urban planning (urban, because Oak Park is becoming a city) gets done. I just checked the listing of village commissions and see that lots of bodies cross lines with each other in the “planning” process. But I don’t see any professional individual who bears responsibility for overall urban planning in the village.
I spoke recently with a couple of professional urban planners about the village’s planning. They laughed. Really. They laughed. One of them noted that the village has not had a professional urban planner on staff for years. She said that the village has “failed Urban Planning 101” with the proliferation of those new apartment buildings that overwhelm the landscape and are built to the lot lines. She wondered, as I did, why there has been no apparent thought given to the effects of 1,000 new people living in a concentrated area, needing services that won’t be there.
I realize that Oak Park homeowners need new taxable properties so that (one can hope) they get relief on the taxes on their homes. But there does appear to be a level of greed here that has dictated the decision-making, however it got done. One does wonder if an urban planning decision-maker on staff would help the village avoid such things. Probably, but only if all of the redundancies, all of the planning silos, all of the conflicting agendas that take years to resolve, were removed.
An overall vision is clearly lacking. And no wonder. It’s just impossible to get things done with 13-member committees (or, in this case, commissions), never mind that several of them do similar work and look over each other’s shoulders.
I agree: I’m a neighbor. I have no real say in the way Oak Park conducts its business. But it might be worthwhile listening to observers who, despite having no stake in the game, do care about the place.
Ed McDevitt is a resident of River Forest.