The irony of what is happening with the O’Hare Flyer is not lost on me.
For nearly 10 years, residents on the south end of River Forest, particularly those of us near Madison Street and inside the Madison Street TIF, have been fighting to protect our homes and our quality of life. We have raised concerns about property acquisition, blight, demolition and asbestos, traffic, density, drainage, parking and what kind of development is actually appropriate next to single-family homes.
For asking those questions, people have been called NIMBYs, obstructionists and opponents of progress. But many of us were never against development. We asked for development that added to River Forest without unnecessarily taking away from the people already living here.
In August, the Village approved a five-story, 69-unit development at Madison and Ashland by a 4-3 vote, with President Cathy Adduci casting the deciding vote. The village points to projected future tax revenue as one of the project’s benefits. Those are projections, not guaranteed results.
Now only weeks later, River Forest is confronting another project that could dramatically affect residents: the O’Hare Flyer. I agree with President Adduci that residents along the tracks deserve to be protected. I agree that noise, traffic, safety and quality of life matter. I agree that residents should not simply be expected to accept major impacts to their homes because someone else believes a project represents progress.
That is exactly why the difference in the village’s response is so difficult for me to ignore. Conversations about this project involving our Village President began more than a year before most River Forest residents — and apparently several village trustees — knew anything about it.
At a recent village board meeting, Village Administrator Matt Walsh acknowledged the board’s frustration over the lack of information. That should concern everyone, whether you live next to the railroad tracks, Madison Street, North Avenue or nowhere near any of them.
The board ultimately voted unanimously to oppose the O’Hare Flyer. I support questioning this proposal and protecting the residents who would be affected by it. But I also believe residents are entitled to ask why information about a project this significant was not shared earlier with the entire board and the community.
Imagine how different these conversations might be if residents on Madison Street and residents along the railroad tracks had known at the same time that two major projects could potentially affect traffic, noise and daily life in River Forest.
Maybe instead of arguing over whose neighborhood should absorb the consequences of “progress,” we would have recognized that we have more in common than we thought.
That is what bothers me most.
Residents along the tracks deserve the same consideration I have been asking for on the south end of town for years. Their homes matter. Their peace and quiet matter. Their property matters. Their safety matters.
But ours mattered too.
Government should not decide that protecting quality of life is NIMBYism in one neighborhood and a community-wide cause in another.
Annette Madden is a resident of River Forest.