The Oak Park apartment building where a major fire burned in February is still standing despite the village’s months long effort to have it knocked down, according to county court records.
The fire, one of the biggest seen in Oak Park in recent years, burned out a building that had been the subject of a series of Oak Park fire inspections that found serious code violations resulting in at least $40,000 in still-outstanding fines, according to recent legal filings. Records related to the village’s inspections of the property paint a picture of blatant safety violations and squalid conditions for residents that festered for years while the village sought court permission to intervene.
The county court system has still not provided quick relief to the village even after the fire left the three-story building in ruins, as Oak Park attorneys have spent months seeking county court approval to knock down what remains of the structure.
First responders from the Oak Park Fire Department and other neighboring departments responded to the structure fire at 1239 N. Taylor Ave. at approximately 8:57 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 17, battling the flames through the night for 10 hours straight, with firefighters remaining on scene the following day to manage “spot fires” that continued to burn on the property. No one was injured during the response, which required 4 million gallons of water, according to a Feb. 20 court filing from village attorneys.
The central stairway, the third floor and the roof of the building were completely destroyed in the fire, leaving the building vulnerable to collapse, according to court filings.
The building was unoccupied at the time of the fire after the village had obtained a court order to clear the building of its occupants earlier that month. The official cause of the fire is still undetermined, according to the Oak Park Fire Department.
The multi-story mixed-use apartment building had 26 residential units and seven spaces designed for commercial tenants, according to court records. It’s owned by Sameer Chhabria, an attorney with offices in Downtown Chicago and in north suburban Riverwoods.
Chhabria has not yet responded to Wednesday Journal’s request for comment this week.
The village had been in court with the building’s owner for much of the prior two years after village inspections uncovered a variety of health and safety issues at the complex including rampant squatting, long periods without hot water access, raw sewage leakage and a long out-of-date water heater, according to county court records.
“Village staff documented deteriorating building conditions through its Code Compliance, Fire, Health, and other inspection functions from 2023 onward,” Oak Park officials said in a statement following the fire. “The village followed a process of progressive enforcement through ticketing and local adjudication. As it became clear that the property owner was not improving the building in response to ticketing, the village began working through the Circuit Court systems to compel the owner to improve the property. Additionally, in the Circuit Court, the village asked for and received an administrative search warrant, limited nuisance abatement authority and appointment of a receiver.”
The village filed an “emergency motion” on Feb. 20 seeking a Cook County judge’s permission to knock the building down, citing danger to the health and safety of residents if the building was allowed to stand in its post-fire condition. But no judge has given that order, as the case was moved from Cook County’s chancery court to the county’s housing division.
“The judge presiding over the case felt that the motion should be heard in housing court and not in the Chancery Department in which her courtroom was located,” the village said in a statement. “The village then filed a motion to transfer the case to housing court in the Fourth Municipal District, which was granted on March 11, and the transfer was only completed by the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the last week or so.”
The village filed a new emergency motion on April 16 again seeking permission to knock the building down.
“The village and the public will suffer irreparable harm should the conditions at the subject property continue to exist, and the village has no other adequate remedy at law,” village attorneys wrote in the latest filing. “It is in the best interest of the public health, safety and welfare for this court to issue injunctive relief in favor of the village and against defendants, including but not limited to requiring Sameer Chhabria and U.S. Bank, joint and several, to demolish the building or in alternative authorize the village to demolish the structure and assess and lien costs to the subject property.”
A case management hearing in the case is set for June 1, according to court records. The village erected a large perimeter fence around the building and the adjacent sidewalks and street parking lanes as it waits for permission to demolish the structure.
Neighbors in the vicinity of the building are concerned about the impact that the continued presence of the burned building may have on safety and economic activity in the area, according to Judith Alexander, co-founder of the North Avenue District.
“Having those kinds of structures for long periods of time, they drag the district down, they make it much harder to recruit other businesses to vacancies, or developers to build on what little vacant land we have,” Alexander said. “It just looks terrible. It looks like a neglected district, and to some degree, it is.”
“Once you’ve got a problem, it remains a problem for a long time in Cook County, unfortunately.”
Alexander also said that the safety fence has limited the view of oncoming traffic for drivers turning east on North Avenue from Taylor Avenue.
Chhabria told Wednesday Journal in a brief interview in February that the persistent issues with squatters were responsible for the property’s downward spiral. He couldn’t say when those issues had started but said that the squatters’ presence had kept tradespeople from completing needed work on the property, as some contractors refused to work on the building because of it, he said.
Some of the violations found in those inspections remained in place through several months of village litigation, according to legal records. The village of Oak Park obtained a court order in September granting permission for village contractors to make repairs to the property, including installing new fire extinguishers and smoke alarms.
A November fire inspection showed even more worrying issues at the property, including a broken pipe where “wastewater was flowing freely” from the ceiling in the basement just outside the boiler room. The inspection also found open electric boxes throughout the building, stairwells and exit ways blocked with piles of abandoned furniture and “daisy chained” extension cords running from unit to unit powering rooms.
He blamed the issues at the property on poor management by the people he’d hired but he couldn’t specify a time when it all took a turn for the worse.
“It got out of hand,” he said.