It’s been a long time coming, but things are looking up at 430 S. Taylor Ave. in Oak Park. We covered the house on the lot in 2024: https://www.oakpark.com/2024/03/01/home-damaged-by-fire-gets-approved-for-demolition/
Oak Parker Anthony Garland purchased the vacant house in 2023, hoping to rehab it and make it a home for his family. But those dreams went up in smoke when the historic bungalow caught fire in June 2023. The house was significantly damaged in the fire and most of its roof was destroyed.
In 2024, Garland sought and received a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) from the Historic Preservation Commission, allowing him to demolish and rebuild the home. His plans changed, and he listed the house for sale in mid-2025.
Bob Planek, who along with his brother Bill owns Oak Park Apartments, has owned an Art Deco apartment building on the block since 2002 and had been waiting for some sign of life in the burnt-out house. He wasn’t aware that Garland was selling it until he checked local real estate listings.
He recalls, “It just came up on Zillow. I didn’t even know it was for sale until then.” Planek paid $210,000 for the property and closed in December 2025.
He said, “Historic Preservation said they had so many calls on it. I had no idea. We just offered the asking price on Zillow and got the house.”
Like Garland, Planek had to appear before the Historic Preservation Commission to seek a COA to demolish what was left of the house. Although Garland’s COA was granted, more than a year had passed and the HPC is required to reevaluate such cases in historic districts.
The commission granted the application for the COA, which allowed the Planeks to demolish what was left of the house. The home lost much of its roof in the 2023 fire and had been open to the elements since then.
In that state, it wasn’t salvageable, said Planek. “People living in the building on the side were looking down into essentially what had been the living room. There was no roof on the home. At some point, you have to realize you can’t save it.”
The brothers considered building a new, single-family home on the lot, but Planek notes that on three sides, the home was surrounded with multi-family buildings. “So, we thought it might be an opportunity to build from the ground up — something we’ve never done.”
Through Oak Park Apartments, the Planeks have rehabilitated and rent out many vintage apartment buildings in Oak Park and surrounding areas, and the opportunity to build new excited them.
The lot was already zoned R-7, which Planek says is the highest zoning you can get for multi-family housing. By right, he can build 7+ units on the lot. While the drawings are still in the planning stages, he says they hope to build a 7-to-8-unit, brick, “two-flat-like” building, like the classic walkups throughout town.
When they appear before the Zoning Commission in June, the Planeks will be requesting leave to add an eighth unit to the building. That eighth unit, along with one other, will be ADA-accessible.
Again, this is something new for the brothers. All of their other buildings are vintage, which makes it challenging to be fully ADA accessible. These two units will be ground-floor units, built at grade and will also have access to accessible parking spaces.
Bob Planek says they briefly considered applying to be a planned development, which would have potentially given them a building of up to 16 units, but it would have required multiple zoning and parking variances.
He says, “We scaled it back to the ‘middle.’ It’s not a single-family home. It’s not a planned development. It’s the missing middle everyone is looking for.”
One of the goals is to provide new construction that is more in touch with today’s lifestyles than vintage buildings, while also not being super expensive like some newly built high rise developments. They plan for all of the units to be rentals.
Planek says they are taking a gamble on this. “We are seeing if we can build at this scale and still make it make sense return-wise. We’ll find out firsthand if it works.”
He says that under Illinois’ People Over Parking Act, which is due to take effect June 1 of this year, they are no longer required to provide one parking spot per unit given the building’s proximity to bus and train lines, but they still intend to provide a space per unit. “We have found that people looking for apartments in this market will probably want that,” he said.
In addition, as new construction, the building will need to be all-electric according to village code. Planek notes that Oak Park Apartments has been working with Energy Matters for years to convert their vintage buildings from gas to electric and to make them more sustainable, so he doesn’t see this requirement as an issue.
While acknowledging a lot of pieces have to fall into place, Planek says that in a perfect world, they plan to be out of the ground and building before the end of the year, finish interiors over the winter and be open to rent in May or June 2027.
He’s hopeful that the building is well-received. “It hits a lot of the boxes: it’s in keeping with the neighborhood, it’s the right size. It really is the missing middle,” he said.