I moved here in 1972, renting an apartment in an E.E. Roberts building, the first apartment building allowed to be built in Oak Park at 113 S. Scoville (1902-3). I am now in a house on Grove.
Oak Park, Evanston and Hyde Park are unique. Built up after the Chicago Fire because you could not build wooden homes in Chicago (for some reason), all three are similar in the way they look, the housing types, the street layouts, the trees and parks.
Oak Park is rich in single-family house neighborhoods with multiple block parties each year. Friends and families get together, children play in the front yards. There are walking groups, art groups, movies on the lawn.
But there are also different parts of town with different lifestyles. The condo and apartment buildings create that other style of living with their “homes” opening onto corridors with elevators. It is an urban lifestyle that does not lend itself to the idea of living in a village or a neighborhood of single-family homes. It is a very different style of life. Is that how we want Oak Park to change as a village? Who decides?
Some of the proposals that I have seen propose larger, newly built and newer looking, possibly multifamily homes or rentals or condos. I believe the proposed zoning changes would change the blocks and change the Oak Park experience fundamentally. I think this breaking open of a building bonanza is possibly ill-conceived and short-sighted. I think it would do more harm to Oak Park as a historic village and is really geared toward a construction company and builder’s profit.
My feeling is that there should not be a lifting of the single-family zones, or if it is decided by the village board to do something, it should be put up to a referendum to the Oak Park voters before any of those changes are made.
John Putnam
Oak Park
