After about 100 people swelled a Northbrook Plan Commission public hearing Tuesday to complain about a proposal for an assisted living building, five commission members said they wanted it smaller, and three said they wanted it gone.
The Heritage Woods proposal for the southwest corner of Shermer and Techny roads was offered as a 105-unit, three-story, 92,000-square-foot home for elderly residents, with a projected 25 percent affordable housing component.
The commission’s role is to hold public hearings and recommend to the Village Board how to handle requests for zoning changes and special permits, and this time, the commission majority is looking for radical change before they’ll vote positively. One member, Jeremy Melnick, was absent.
“The thing that doesn’t work is the height of the building,” said member Steve Elisco.
He said that the 36-foot height of the building is referred to in the developer’s documents and testimony as the mean height between the eaves and the roof ridge, but the peak of the gables would actually be 42 feet high. That, Elisco said, was too much for the neighborhoods of homes to the north and west.
“It’s going to have to be a two-story building at the most,” he said.
Member Muriel Collison said she didn’t feel comfortable putting the project at this location.
“I don’t see anything that would change that,” she said.
The developers, the Laubacher Company of Western Springs, agreed to work on their plans prior to a continuation of the public hearing at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 7, at Village Hall, 1225 Cedar Lane.
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Chris Reckamp, who lives on Second Street just west of the 3.1-acre site, noted that the same company, four years ago, had opened another 105-unit facility in Gurnee, at the southwest corner of Grand and Waveland avenues, on a 3.8-acre parcel in a commercial area hundreds of feet from residences. He said that was better than the current plan to build about a dozen feet from his lot line.
He also differed with the developers’ assertion that the Northbrook building would serve as a buffer between homes on Second Street and industrial property on the east side of Shermer Road.
“This neighborhood is hopping,'” Reckamp said, mentioning a couple of new expensive homes on his street. “There’s no need for a buffer.”
The plans for the building had been sent to the village Architectural Control Commission months ago, to get an early start on a project that would be cosmetically acceptable, according to developers. The design was changed into something that even many of the detractors said was attractive, and landscaping was added to a point that was far above what had been done in Gurnee, the landscape architect, Katrina Laughlin, maintained.
But even the comparative lushness of the greenery was a negative during the public hearing. One speaker said that the landscaping would make it easier for cars coming and going in the Shermer Road entrance to hit children walking to Glenbrook North High School and Maple School, a short distance south of the site.
“That landscaping is going to get someone killed,” said Bill Buttimer, who lives a mile away.
The developers’ traffic consultant, Steve Corcoran, said that average daily traffic at the corner of Shermer and Techny roads had exceeded 2,200 cars per peak hour, and the development, with almost all traffic confined to deliveries and staff, would only add about a dozen cars.
But speakers said that more traffic would endanger children walking to the schools, two blocks to the south, and cross-country runners and gym class athletes on the sidewalks during the school days. Three said that Glenbrook North students were such bad drivers that they didn’t need any more competition on the roads.
The developer’s real estate consultant, Valerie Kretchmer, said Northbrook has an unusually large number of residents over 65 – 25 percent – and needs more assisted living, as most area facilities run at about 95 percent capacity.
Rod Burkett, CEO of Gardant Management Solutions, which would operate the facility, said that prospective residents now need to travel to Vernon Hills to find an assisted living center that would have such a large component of state-supported spots for elderly people who can’t afford the housing.
Resident Guy Zomack said that Northbrook has a significant need for subsidized assisted living.
“You’re going to need a hundred of these,” he said, saying this plan “is beautiful. It’s like a park.”
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