Oak Park’s village board voted to block the proposed construction of a large gas station on the former H.J. Mohr & Sons concrete plant.
The board voted unanimously on Sept. 30 to deny the permit applications sought by the QuikTrip corporation to redevelop most of the former Mohr site — which sits along Maple Avenue, Harlem Avenue, Garfield Street and Lexington Street just south of the Eisenhower Expressway in Oak Park — into a large gas station and convenience store complex.
Oak Park’s village staff had encouraged the board to reject the permit applications. The gas station wouldn’t be a good fit for the neighborhood, and denying the permit applications would “retain the site for a more a more compatible development,” staff wrote in supporting documents for the agenda item.
“Approving the special use (is) inconsistent with the adjacent residential area and a day care facility,” staff wrote.
The proposed site would’ve included a 6,445 square foot convenience store building and 16 fueling positions. The site would’ve had three entrances — one on Harlem Avenue, one on Garfield Street and one on Lexington Street.
In the proposal, QuikTrip would have taken over most of the former industrial site, but would’ve also created a second lot that could’ve been developed by another entity on the south end of the site.
The proposal was the subject of an Oak Park Plan Commission’s meeting last month, where commissioners voted 7-2 to recommend that QuikTrip’s applications for alley vacation, plat of subdivision and special use permission be denied, even after QuikTrip agreed to.
Ahead of the commission meeting, the village received 16 letters arguing against the planned development and commissioners heard from a large group of residents who opposed the gas station concept for a variety of reasons, including traffic impacts, environmental reasons and potential clashes with the neighborhood’s character. A Change.org petition asking village leaders to block the proposed development has over 1,200 signatures.
At the meeting, several south Oak Park residents made public comments opposing the proposed gas station. Noah Sullivan, who said he’s lived adjacent to the former Mohr site for over three decades, said he’d never seen his neighbors united like this before.
“My wife and I joke that our part of Oak Park is Oak Park’s ‘undiscovered country,’ and I have yet to see any issue unite my neighbors like this,” Sullivan said. “So, I guess we have discovered ourselves.”
Trustee Cory Wesley spoke to the challenge of balancing the village’s need for sales tax revenue and redevelopment of the blighted industrial site with respecting neighborhood wishes.
“I struggle with this just a little bit because there is a revenue aspect and there is the aspect that the site has been vacant for a number of years and is a public nuisance to a certain degree,” he said “But it is important that we be intentional about what we greenlight. While I might be the most pro-development trustee at this board table, but that lends itself more to housing than gas stations.”
Trustee Jim Taglia said it wouldn’t make sense for the board to support a new gas station development after the village previously passed an ordinance requiring gas stations to close overnight amid safety concerns. He said that since the village passed that ordinance, overnight crime has gone down in Oak Park.
“Rising above all these issues mentioned and an overarching theme that connects many of them is that of public safety,” Taglia said. “Gas stations had been an issue, and they can continue to be a magnet for violent crime.”
“People do not want to live in a community that is unsafe.”
The old concrete plant has sat rusting since the Mohr company closed its doors in 2018 amid financial woes. Once home to one of the longest running businesses in Chicagoland, the vacant site is among the only large plots of land available for development in Oak Park.
Prior to QuikTrip’s publicized interest, Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman told Wednesday Journal that she’d like to see the village consider purchasing the property.
“I as one elected official would be supportive of purchasing the land,” Scaman told Wednesday Journal in March. “When it’s a situation that the land would otherwise go on undeveloped without the assistance of government, then it absolutely is appropriate.”
She repeated that sentiment again Tuesday night.
“Adding petroleum to our use for that land is not something I’m interested in,” she said. “I don’t mind saying out loud that if I was on a previous board I would’ve purchased this land right from the get-go so that we could’ve worked with the community for its best use. Unfortunately this board has not had that opportunity”
“I’m starting to obsess over some of the opportunity that’s here.”
Any future redevelopment of the site will happen in the context of the foreclosure case involving KrohVan — the site’s last set of would-be developers — and the Mohr family.
Karen Richards, daughter of Dot and Bud Mohr, told Wednesday Journal that the case was still ongoing last month.
Last October, H.J. Mohr & Sons Co. filed a foreclosure suit against the developers, saying that KrohVan still owes on the mortgage loan agreement that matured last summer.
“The defendants have not paid the balance of the loan which matured on June 2, 2024,” the October filing said. “Current principal balance due on the note and mortgage is $4,026,830 plus interest, costs, advances for taxes, insurance and fees; and less any credits for payments received.”
