The Northbrook Village Board Tuesday cleared Edward R. James Companies to build its controversial 32-house development at Voltz and Waukegan roads in a 5-1 vote.
Trustee Kathryn Ciesla was the only board member to vote no, calling the project “horrible,” and saying that it didn’t “add any value to the village of Northbrook.”
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She said she knew that at this final approval stage of the process, the plans had to be passed if they were in substantial conformance with those tentatively approved April 12, then checked off by the village Plan Commission Sept. 6, but she was going to vote against them anyway.
In earlier meetings, Ciesla said that the number of houses should be reduced “into the 20s,” and that the Anets Woods houses, proposed to cost a little less than $1 million each, should be more expensive, and rise on bigger lots to better fit in with some of the others in the area.
Trustee Bob Israel said he had problems with the project, including the transponder-activated gate on the Lee Road side designed to let only residents into that entrance, which he disliked because it cuts off a public street. But he was voting for the project because it conformed to the April 12 plans.
He had voted for the project on April 12, as did all board members except Ciesla and Village President Sandy Frum, absent for the final vote.
The project, which preserves some of the familiar urban forest on the old Anetsberger estate, has gone through a lot of changes since it was first presented to Northbrook trustees in July 2014, with 38 houses on 16 acres. Many of those changes came at the behest of complaining neighbors from Country Lane, Voltz and Lee Roads, and Walters Avenue.
The village plans to start to address concerns of the traffic in the neighborhood in general with an open house 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, in the Northbrook Elementary School District 28 Administration Building, 1475 Maple Ave.
Trustee A.C. Buehler invited questions from the Village Board audience on the project, then the vote was called by President Pro Tem James Karagianis with several of them unanswered.
“You asked us to ask questions,” Lee Road’s Sherwin Zaban said. “Where are the answers? Was that gratuitous?”
Later, Karagianis said the questions were left hanging “because the questions had been answered earlier.”
One question, asked by Zaban’s wife Thelma “B” Zaban and fellow Lee Road resident Jill Nicholson, had not been answered: how could James have run half-page ads in the Northbrook Star seeking to sell the homes when it wasn’t approved?
Village attorney Steve Elrod said after the meeting there was nothing wrong with them advertising their product without final approvals: “They’re welcome to do that, at their own risk.”
The trustees were also asked why those ads did not mention that the homes, which the builder had sold to the board as targeting “empty nesters,” weren’t described using that term in the ads. Earlier, officials had mentioned that such claims should be held to a minimum, because they could be viewed as discriminatory.
Trustees, led by Ciesla, agreed that construction traffic should proceed through the Voltz Road side of the project, mostly sparing Lee Road, with no sidewalks. But some trucks would have to enter through the Lee side, they said, and a couple of residents said they were worried about that, and about trucks waking them early in the morning.
Ciesla said the project would be well-enforced, but if work violations were seen, residents should document them with their smart phones.
“Sometimes, in a village, you’ve got to put up with some inconvenience,” Trustee Todd Heller said. “But we’ll do what we can.”
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