Whatever replaces the grim vestiges of the Mohr Concrete plant at Harlem and Garfield has got to be an improvement. Right?
We know the residential neighbors of the long-closed plant were not enamored of a long-gone plan for a midrise, mixed-use project on the site. We’re about to find out how they feel about a block-long, interstate highway-sized gas station. That’s the front page news today in the Journal.
There are arguments to be made. Oak Park has an aversion to carbon emissions so why would we want a giant fossil fuel dispensary? Oak Park really needs money so, sure let’s take this cash bonanza of gas taxes, and sales taxes from the ultra-convenience store, and the property taxes, and bank it. A non-legitimate argument is the social media chatter saying it would be a great place for some taxing body to plant an indoor swimming pool. That’s just daft.
With QuikTrip already having filed permit applications with the village government for this project, it is past time for the neighbors to be clued in. They’ve endured better than a century of concrete mixing and rumbling dusty trucks in their otherwise lovely neighborhood. Conversations about QT arriving are due.
More significant is the role of village government in all this. Specifically the near total meltdown of its economic development department over roughly the same time period as this developer has been inquiring about the site.
Don’t lose sight that the Mohr property is Oak Park’s last major available development parcel. This should have been at the top of the list of development priorities. Instead we have the closure of the Oak Park Economic Development Corp. on what seems to have been a whim. We have seen new hires in an expanded development team at village hall at war with each other while the village manager offered failed interventions. We have mentions of a vague plan to create a new TIF district for the Mohr site – and beyond, it seems. Work on this plan was seemingly fully bollixed by a development staffer who was finally fired in April. And you have Village President Vicki Scaman making a late election season public announcement that the village should just buy the property so it could control its development.
This is bad governance. And there ought to be consequences.