Zoning is the first layer of protection any historic building has. Under today’s code, the most anyone can put on a residential lot is one house. So the land is worth roughly what the house is worth, and tearing down a good house to build one replacement almost never pencils. That is not luck. That is the zoning code doing preservation work every day, without a hearing. Raise the ceiling to six units and the land becomes worth more than the house on it.
That is not my number. The village’s own tool says the Nathan Moore House becomes N1. Six units. Thirty-five feet. Three stories. The same for the Hills House, the Heurtley House, the Adams House, and the Furbeck House. Anyone can run those addresses. Oak Park holds 25 Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, the largest concentration of his work on Earth. More than a hundred of his roughly 500 buildings are already gone. Nobody can tell this village it couldn’t happen here.
And the Wright houses at least sit inside a district. Two thirds of Oak Park doesn’t. Thousands of bungalows and four squares, built for working people, on some of the most diverse blocks in the village. For those houses there is no preservation commission and no hearing. Zoning is not their first layer of protection. It’s their only one.
Every mailer I have received says “affordable housing.” Oak Park’s inclusionary housing ordinance applies at 25 units. This proposal legalizes six. If the trustees had taken questions at the presentation, my first question: If you’re using affordability as clickbait, why does every building this proposal creates fall below the threshold of the village’s own affordability rule?
My second question: The village’s own staff study found that the historic districts have had little effect on permit activity, and that Ridgeland is the most diverse part of Oak Park. Given that finding, what is the case for including the historic districts in this rezoning at all?
What is the actual need for Shape Oak Park?
Ken Weiss
Oak Park