The Oak Park Zoning Board of Appeals approved a special use permit for an Oak Parker to build an electric vehicle charging parking lot on a property targeted for a village-subsidized affordable housing development.
The board unanimously approved the special use permit for Yves Hughes, a lifelong Oak Parker and a tech professional, to begin construction on a privately-owned electric vehicle charging station at 6104 Roosevelt Rd, a former automobile service station property which has sat vacant on the high-traffic corridor for many years.
The lot will feature five charging spots, that will run on software that Hughes designed himself, he said.
“Right now it’s just dirt and a broken down fence,” Hughes told the zoning board.
But the plot will not remain just an EV parking lot for long.
The development of the charging station was delayed for years, and in the meantime village leadership pursued a vision to support a new affordable housing development to go up on the property. In January, Oak Park’s board of trustees approved $700,000 from the village’s housing trust fund to support The Community Builders, a national nonprofit property developer, developing the property into a 28-unit affordable housing complex.
The Community Builders have already developed and operate another affordable housing complex in Oak Park — The 801 property located at 801 Van Buren St.
Two of the units at the proposed affordable housing complex would be “live/work units,” meaning that residents would run small businesses out of their homes.
Hughes purchased the Roosevelt Road property from the Cook County Land Bank in 2022 for $115,000 with the intention of building the charging station, according to documents reviewed by Wednesday Journal. Hughes told the zoning board that before he can legally sell the property to anyone else, he must satisfy his agreement with the land bank by putting up the EV chargers.
“The terms of the purchase agreement was ‘you’ve got to do something, at least meet the requirement of what you agreed to,’ and that’s my intention,” Hughes said. “The county has said ‘we don’t really care what you do, but do what you said you were going to do.’”
He said that he’s already poured over $200,000 into the project, and that the project was derailed by the untimely death of his contractor. He said he heard from The Community Builders about their interest in the property not long after and saw it as an opportunity to recoup his investment.
The development of the property will happen amid a renewed push by leaders in Oak Park and Berwyn to boost economic activity along Roosevelt Road, as representatives from both towns hosted an open house earlier this summer to get resident feedback to help shape the Roosevelt Road Corridor Plan that they’re developing together. A predecessor to that project — “The Plan for the Redevelopment of Roosevelt Road” — was adopted by the Oak Park board in 2005.
The lagging development of the 6104 Roosevelt Rd property has drawn some public criticism. Neighbor Chris Donovan spoke at an Oak Park board of trustee meeting in July, encouraging the village to ensure that the affordable housing project goes through.
“Is there a need for privately funded out of the way EV charging stations on Roosevelt Road,” he said. “I would say no. Is there a need, a true need for affordable housing in Oak Park? I would say yes.”