Editor’s note: When issues like the Albion 18-story development come to the forefront, historical perspective is often lacking. Christine Vernon is one longtime Oak Parker and activist who has a history with this. We asked her to share her slant as this issue continues to heat up.
Paul “Bear” Bryant (1913-1983) is considered one of the most successful football coaches all time. Famous for his ability to motivate players, Bryant’s success with his teams while head football coach of the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide had much to do with sage advice like this: “When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and never do it again.”Â
The citizens of Team Oak Park would be wise to take Bear Bryant’s words under advisement and give some thought to our legacy as current stewards of what we have inherited here.Â
Time for a review — looking back on what has been done, giving consideration to whether we have been good stewards of what we inherited, and planning for the kind of future legacy we want to leave in this incredible place where we’ve been privileged to live.Â
The village’s value derives from:Â
1) The quality of the environment — both the earth itself and all living things populating Oak Park (To see the effect of a toxic environment in Oak Park, read the account of the years-long toxic cleanup and what it cost Oak Park, “Barrie Park’s cleanup proceeds,” Chicago Tribune, H. Gregory Meyer, July 3, 2004).Â
2) The sense of community we create. When anyone participates in, contributes to, or volunteers for a good cause, we are all better for it. When any resident takes an interest in public safety, we all benefit. When anyone improves their property, the whole community benefits.Â
3) The priority of diversity and the commitment to equality for each individual was officially and formally established by the village board in 1973. The commitment to valuing and protecting each person is our strong suit, our best feature.Â
4) The architectural history, represented in the village’s housing stock, a treasure and a living museum. Our housing stock includes the work of over 100 architects, and the most Prairie School of Architecture homes found anywhere in the world. This rich repository draws people from all over the world, brings the world to our door, and into our house, so to speak, and has the potential to provide economic perks while attracting future residents, which happens often. Oak Park has been a way station, an oasis, for many well-known and accomplished people, and many unknown, hard-working and wonderful citizens.
We are responsible for safeguarding the precious and priceless features and commodities that make Oak Park a great place. The thoughtful work of past generations has given us a suburb to be proud of, which also makes it an attractive place for developers to come, invest and make money.Â
Many of the developers are from out-of-town, though, so it is up to us to make sure they understand those characteristics that are precious and most valued by us. We need to require that they participate in safeguarding our heritage, and that they need to work within specific parameters. Balancing all of this are the taxpayers who stay informed on the proposals and projects, developers becoming informed on what citizens hold sacred, sorting through the competing interests, and recognizing what is in the best interests of the community. This constitutes a formidable challenge.Â
Four years ago, with the election of Anan Abu-Taleb, Oak Park entered a new era. Village President/Mayor Anan brought new energy and a breath of fresh air into Oak Park. New development has come into Oak Park during his first term. Previous administrations complained about the fact that they couldn’t get anyone to come here because of an active electorate that demanded quality projects and high standards.Â
Maybe they were scared they would end up in the unenviable position of developer Jonas Stankus (See timeline sidebar).
As a 44-year veteran of the neighborhood adjacent to Downtown Oak Park, and a person who spent years in the mid-1970s advocating for a more appropriate project than a 35-story, lot-line to lot-line high-rise adjacent to the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District, one block from where I lived, I have a strong gut reaction to the news of an 18-story high-rise planned for the Lytton site, 1000 Lake St., on the northeast corner of Forest Avenue and Lake Street. That gut reaction is “Don’t build it! That would be an enormous mistake!”
No to 18 stories, No to 8 stories
In the past, there was always a good relationship between Downtown Oak Park (DTOP) and the Wright Historic District. If this 18-story, or 8-story, building were put there now, Austin Gardens will be walled off from our Downtown, and Downtown will be walled off from the quiet restorative space that is Austin Gardens. Albion’s proposal is the wrong project for a phenomenal site that can serve Oak Park in a better and unique way and would enhance the value of the neighborhood in every direction.Â
During the years we lived across from Austin Gardens, we and our neighbors made every effort to shop regularly, participating in the campaign to keep our money local in order to support our tax base while supporting DTOP merchants. We loved our proximity to downtown, and the neighborhood transitioned into a lovely shopping area in a way that was not offensive.
We shopped faithfully through the 1974 construction ($1.5 million creation) of the four-block pedestrian mall at Lake and Marion.
We continued shopping through the deconstruction ($2.7 million demolition) of the Lake Street portion in 1988. The Marion Street portion, south of Lake, wasn’t restreeted until 2006/2007 (at an estimated cost of $4M in TIF funds).
The destruction of the mall was controversial. An architect who was the head of the Landmarks Commission led the citizen protest. He presented petitions with thousands of signatures, and opponents of restreeting packed the council chambers, but the protest fell on deaf ears. The village president had to abstain from voting on the restreeting because he had accepted a plane ride and trip as the guest of Robert Irsay, owner of the Baltimore Colts, to a Colts’ game. Irsay, the owner of Colt Realty and Development Co. in Oak Park, was the main proponent of reopening the streets.
“Mall in good time,” an article in Wednesday Journal by Doug Deuchler from Dec. 20, 2005, gives an idea of how positive many residents felt about the mall. Makes you wonder if the mall demolition won because of the changing face of merchandising, as has been said, or if the clout of development money and its influence won out.
In 2017, Albion is asking for the destruction of the inoffensive former Lytton building and permission to construct an 18-story high-rise in its place, blocking the sunlight on the only park in the most congested and densely populated area in Oak Park. A wall would be created by the Vantage building, 100 Forest Place, the proposed Albion building, and the mini-Modernist high-rise just to the west of the Lytton building.
This little forest of concrete, steel and glass would constitute the “DTOP Wall,” cutting off any relationship with the Wright Historic District and creating a distinctly unwelcome barrier.
Pedestrians are already complaining about the wind tunnel as they walk down the skinny sidewalk on Lake Street alongside the 21-story Vantage building on the southeast corner of Forest and Lake and experience the horizontal wind shear that has been created by that building and 100 Forest Place across the street to the north. Lake Street traffic between Forest and Harlem is relatively slow all the time and gridlocked during rush hour and on weekends. This congestion is happening before all the buildings planned have been finished and occupied, and the cars coming with the new population have not yet arrived. Who will want to shop where traffic and parking is so bad? So bad, we now have a perceived need for valet parking in DTOP.Â
Albion’s proposal is the wrong project for a phenomenal site.
What about the impact of the new Vantage building, 21 stories with 270 apartments that allow up to two 65-pound dogs per unit? Will the traditionally quiet gardens across the street now become a dog park? I love dogs but it could become less of a park and more of a dog run.
In October of 1976, relatives of the late Frank Lloyd Wright held a family reunion in Oak Park to support renovation efforts at the Wright Home & Studio. They visited Unity Temple and several Wright homes, including the Thomas House, owned and renovated from a neglected boarding house and meticulously restored by Kathy Coleman and her husband. Kathy moved in there in 1974. My husband and I were the closest homeowners to the Stankus site (where 100 Forest Place is located today) and Kathy and her husband were the closest owners of a Wright-designed home to the proposed 35-story high-rise. We became close friends and Kathy and I worked for years to make our voices — and the voices of other people opposed to that project — heard.Â
On the day the Wright family visited the Thomas Home, I was there with Kathy and had the opportunity to meet Anne Baxter, a successful film and stage actress and Wright’s granddaughter, who was receiving much attention from the press because she had recently published a memoir about her abandonment of Hollywood to live in an Australian outback sheep station with her second husband. Baxter was a warm person and that visit was a happy diversion from the tension of the ongoing high-rise battle.Â
In the dining room, as Kathy spoke to Wright’s son, architect Lloyd Wright, and Wright’s grandson, architect Eric Wright, about the Stankus project, they all looked out the dining room window at 210 Forest down the block at the Stankus site and envisioned the slab of a building proposed to be built there.Â
Though we opponents were characterized as “fringe,” “obstructionists,” “naïve,” and other demeaning adjectives, none of us — not Kathy, not me, and not the Wright family — thought development of Oak Park could be prevented. It was just a question of when and what kind of development. Change is inevitable. The Stankus project was just the wrong project. We all agreed.Â
The Wright family supported us in our opposition. They were not people who put the work of their grandfather first before all else. They were just people who had a clear perspective on the significance of his work to our country and the world, the only architecture that is uniquely American.
Still living in the same neighborhood since 1973, I have enjoyed a home with a nice yard for many years. Why do I care what happens at the old Lytton site? When my husband and I lived in the corner row house at Forest Avenue and Ontario, across from the 19th Century Club, we had three toddlers. I care based on insight gained from those years. We had no backyard, like many families with young children along Ontario and at The Sanctuary, the condominiums across the park from us. We spent hours in Austin Gardens where kids could play in the sunlight and get some exercise. We appreciated the park so much, often with a grateful thought for the Henry W. Austin family who donated the space for people like us to enjoy when there were no other options in our neighborhood.
Rather than separate these two areas with a wall, why not make the Lytton site a plaza — a piazza — leading people from the park and the neighborhood into Downtown Oak Park and giving shoppers a place to rest and move north through the Wright Historic District? Oak Park has had millions of visitors over the years. Why not give them more reason to stay in Oak Park, a meeting place, a place to transition from touring to shopping? Why not make a plaza that is truly a gateway to the Wright Historic District from downtown and vice versa?Â
On Aug. 1, 2006, I wrote about this idea in Wednesday Journal (http://bit.ly/2gJkgT0). I named historic buildings in DTOP — from Thomas Lamb’s Lake Theatre (He also did Madison Square Garden) to Oak Park’s Modernist high-rise by Hausner and Macsai (1010 Lake), and historic Westgate, modeled after Lake Forest’s Market Square.Â
Much has been lost in our historic downtown already. Do we really want to make a wind tunnel of high-rises down Lake Street that clearly divide the Wright District from DTOP or do we want to create a gateway plaza on the Lytton site, leading into Austin Gardens where people can rest in the sunlight and enjoy themselves in a natural outdoor setting?
Is progress one high-rise after another where people — especially the elderly — are housed in human filing cabinets? My piece generated positive feedback from neighbors and others but no positive response by anyone of prominence in the community until Aug. 29, when the late Redd Griffin (WJ http://bit.ly/2lrwZOn), a former state rep, high school teacher, and local historian, wrote a response in Wednesday Journal. It is worth reading. Griffin related what I wrote to the 1830s when Chicago developers recognized that, in addition to commerce, “the environment must also be a kind of garden drawing people to visit. [We] have always had and need to continue to have a vision loftier than profit.” Griffin said the proposal was very much consistent with the early Chicago goal of “Urbs in Horto,” that is “a city in a garden,” which still appears on the seal of the city of Chicago. Redd Griffin concluded, “It makes good historical, aesthetic and economic sense to become better acquainted with our landscape’s face and soul.”
How do we pay for the purchase of the Lytton property to create this gateway between Downtown Oak Park and the Wright Historic District Project? How do we accomplish any costly public works project? Lacking a philanthropist donor like the Austin family, the Mills family or the Cheney family, we have to find a way.Â
After all, we give $20-26 million in “corporate welfare” to a developer who is building 204 units?
 What about the taxing bodies that are sitting on double-digit millions of taxpayer dollars? Pool taxpayer dollars for a project to benefit the entire community, including the people paying those taxes. There is no place in Oak Park where the addition of such a small parcel will make such a large impact to serve both residents and shoppers. This is both a park project and, now that Austin Gardens has an education center, it is an education project.Â
Considering all the money spent and misspent by the various taxing bodies and the village board over the years, why not return surplus funds to create projects that benefit the taxpayers using their own money? It would be fitting for both District 97 and District 200 to support an idea that involves education. And it would be appropriate for the park board to take the initiative to make this additional land open space in the most densely populated area of the village.Â
If local government fails to support this idea, there is always crowdfunding for a project in a neighborhood that is internationally renowned and recognized.Â
An 18-story building is simply wrong for this site adjacent to Austin Gardens. The first step for people who want to protect the environment and the park is first to acquire the property.
The rest will follow.Â