After eight years of ushering in Oak Park’s economic development, John Lynch is leaving the Oak Park Economic Development Corporation. The OPEDC executive director will be hanging up his hat May 15 and returning to the private sector, but he still has a soft spot for Oak Park and the time he spent here. He’s just ready a change.
“I’ve just felt for the last few months that it was the right time for me to do something different,” he told Wednesday Journal.
Whether you like tall buildings or not, Lynch played a key role in giving Oak Park a modest skyline during his tenure. Since 2015, when Lynch first joined OPEDC, the agency has generated two million square feet of new development, according to the Village of Oak Park.
Lynch, along with his team and partners at the village, changed the landscape of Oak Park – literally. He was instrumental in the development of the Albion, a luxury complex in downtown Oak Park, among several other high-rise and large-scale apartment buildings, totaling some 1,200 multifamily units.
The Albion, at the head of Forest Avenue at Lake Street, is Lynch’s favorite out of all the housing development deals he worked on.
“I will always be proud of the effort that it took to get the Albion project approved,” he said. “I always believed in that project and the building has proven itself to be everything we hoped it would be.”
While Lynch called the Albion a “homerun” and beautiful inside and out, not everyone has a fondness for the building. Before receiving village board approval in 2017, the 18-story building was criticized by several members of the community for its height and its potential impact on the adjacent Austin Gardens. The project had six meetings with the Oak Park Plan Commission, which ultimately rejected the proposal in a 5-4 vote.
The majority of Lynch’s time with OPEDC was spent working alongside former village president Anan Abu-Taleb, whose two-term tenure was marked by an influx of new developments and economic growth. Their collaboration strengthened the village’s partnership with the non-profit agency.
“Certainly, Anan and I saw the world in a very similar way,” said Lynch. “Both of us believed that if we could justify village participation in projects by long-term benefits that we ought to be making those investments.”
Lynch said he and Abu-Taleb worked “very, very well together,” while Abu-Taleb called Lynch a “gamechanger” for Oak Park development, praising his hard work and positivity.
Their combined efforts saw greater density brought to the downtown area and the economic revitalization of Madison Street, notably with the senior living building and the forthcoming Pete’s Fresh Market, the construction on which has been slow.
“Like everyone else, I am anxiously awaiting Pete’s to open,” Lynch said.
A lack of notable sites for future development, plus the expiration of the multiple Tax Increment Finance districts in Oak Park and the challenges in the current economic market challenges factored into Lynch’s decision to move on.
For the last two years, Lynch has been working alongside Abu-Taleb’s successor, Village President Vicki Scaman, with whom he has also enjoyed collaborating. His partnership with Scaman, however, differs from that of his with Abu-Taleb in that the village’s development growth has slowed due to changes in the market and fewer available sites. Despite the change of pace, Lynch said he has “nothing but good things to say” about working with Scaman.
And for Scaman, the feeling is mutual. She told Wednesday Journal that Lynch has operated with integrity and care for Oak Park, and the extent to which he did so may surprise those who don’t know Lynch personally.
“He took time and care to do his best to represent the values of our village and the goals of the administration,” Scaman said. “I will definitely miss him.”
Those values include equity and inclusivity. In 2020, Lynch, with the OPEDC board of directors, wrote the organization’s first ever racial equity statement. The statement recognizes the “relationship between economic inequality and racial injustice” and lays out the agency’s intent to positively redress that system through, among other actions, proactive outreach to Black- and minority-owned development companies.
Looking back on his time in Oak Park, Lynch is “extremely proud” of all that was accomplished, but not every item was crossed off his to-do list. He wishes he could have seen a long-term tenant occupy the ground level space at the historic Marshall Field store at Lake and Harlem. OPEDC got close a few times to seeing it leased, most recently with Dom’s Kitchen & Market, but the deals all fell through.
In the next chapter of his career, Lynch will be advising corporations in large capital projects regarding renewable and sustainable energy as a partner at international sustainability consulting firm ERM. The Evanston resident will split his time between working from home and commuting to the ERM office in Rolling Meadows.
The OPEDC won’t be left without someone in charge. Eric Mazelis, OPEDC Economic Development Manager, will take over the agency’s day-to-day operations in the interim. Mazelis praised Lynch for his “uncommon ability” to connect with people and to creatively solve problems.
“I have learned a lot from John about the economic development world and about life, and I know he’ll do great things in this new stage of his career.”
