With a quick and unanimous vote by Oak Park’s Zoning Board of Appeals, plans for the village to move ahead with a new police station at the site of the U.S. Bank building at Madison Street and Austin Boulevard came closer to reality.
The zoning board on Sept. 2 granted the bank two variations allowing it to install drive-thru banking lanes behind a different building that the bank has now leased at Madison Street and Humphrey, kitty-corner from its current location.
That 1960s-era two-story office building is currently vacant, having last been operated as a childcare facility. An attorney for the bank told the zoning board that U.S. Bank would “relocate” from its current site and become a tenant and operator at 44 Madison St.
The Oak Park village government has been working to acquire the existing bank since U.S. Bank first put it on the market for sale. Initially, the bank said it would oppose the sale as its goal was to sell the building but remain as a tenant there. Oak Park has threatened to use eminent domain as a means to obtain the site for a new police station. It has also worked with state Sen. Don Harmon and the Pritzker administration to gain quick take authority to force a sale.
Vicki Scaman, Oak Park village president, told Wednesday Journal Sept. 4 that while there is no final purchase agreement that “conversations are progressing normally” with the bank and that the “conversations have moved forward.”
The village board recently approved funding to move the police station project into a more active design phase. Renderings of the proposed station have now been released along with new and somewhat lower cost estimates. An earlier estimate put the price of the new station at $63.7 million. The revised estimate is $57.6 million.
The bank went to the zoning board because any new drive-thru facility on Madison Street requires a special use allowance. Additionally, because the bank seeks two drive-thru lanes on the north side of the 44 Madison St. site, it needed an additional variation as the limited space does not allow for bailout lanes which are now commonly required.
With a minimum of discussion, the zoning board unanimously approved the zoning changes. The bank’s representatives did not offer a time frame for the new location to be made operational.
The bank’s attorney said U.S. Bank will “modernize and reactivate a vacant building.” It will also add landscaping to the 32-space parking lot.
