Oak Park village staff studied the impact that Oak Park’s historic district ordinances have had on diversity and development after a request by village board members last month.
Village staff agreed to perform a study comparing the amount of building permits that the village has issued for projects inside and outside of the village’s historic districts as well as a comparison of demographic data inside and outside the districts. Staff found that there was not a significant difference in permitting outcomes or diversity progress between the three historic districts and the rest of town.
“The data collected and analyzed show that there is no significant variance between behaviors occurring within the village’s historic districts and outside of the village’s historic districts,” staff wrote in the report.
Much of the village’s land falls in one of the three historic districts — The Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District, the Gunderson Historic District and the Ridgeland Historic District.
The study was meant to show whether red tape associated with the neighborhoods’ historic district status has had a chilling effect on development. The study found that it takes about one day longer on average for the village to issue building permits to projects in a historic district, based on permitting records dating back to 2021.
There is an extra bureaucratic administrative process associated with obtaining building permits in the historic district. Projects in historic districts that need village approval include changes of the exterior appearance of any building, construction of any new building and relocation or demolition of any building, structure, site, object, or improvement.
Oak Park’s 11-member Historic Preservation Commission sometimes reviews building permit applications for exterior alterations, additions, new construction and full or partial demolition of properties located within the historic districts or at designated historic landmarks, according to the village. But 95% of projects are approved by village staff without commission involvement, according to village documents.
Trustees Derek Eder and Cory Wesley sponsored the motion to request the study in April. The move rose from board discussion of the village’s “Shape Oak Park” plan, a cross-department strategic effort aimed at increasing “missing middle” multi-family housing access in the village through zoning reforms.
“That led to many more questions, so I’m coming at this from the perspective of wanting to learn more,” Eder said. “I’m not against historic districts or historic preservation. They serve an important function of maintaining our landmarks and history. But just like any policy tool, they can be dialed too much in one direction or another. I want to use as much data as we can to understand how these districts have been impacting our village.”
“We’re looking to follow the data, if we find that the districts have no impact that’s great too.”
Village staff found that historic districts had more missing middle housing, which is defined as a range of house-scale buildings with multiple units, as they were historically not impacted by 20th century zoning code changes that discouraged that type of housing from being built in other parts of the village.
The staff report also tabbed the Ridgeland Historic District as the most “affordable” and “diverse” part of Oak Park while the center of the Frank Lloyd Wright district has remained the “wealthiest part of Oak Park, since its founding.”
“As research has shown overwhelmingly at the national level, the research at the Oak Park level has shown that the historic districts are diverse, more so in the Ridgeland historic district, which is the most diverse part of Oak Park,” staff wrote. “This research shows that historic districts have had the highest levels of diversification or increases in diversity, depending on the district, and that indeed the village’s overall increased diversity levels were led by historic districts.”