Pulte Homes’ proposal to tear down Northbrook’s Meadow Plaza and convert it into three six-story condominium buildings will not move forward in its current form, Plan Commissioners told the developer after three marathon public hearings this month.
After Commissioners gave the developer a choice between scrapping the proposal or reworking it, a representative said the company would revise it to take the community’s concerns into account.
The news offers a temporary reprieve for the thousands of residents who hope to thwart the project and keep the neighborhood shopping center alive.
Commissioners stated a number of objections to the plan, but also offered praise to Pulte at Wednesday’s final public hearing for the time the company spent on its plans to renovate the property, a shopping center almost all on the commission agreed is in much need of a facelift.
The Plan Commission did not take a formal vote, but after members offered their opinions, Plan Commission Chair Steven Elisco told Pulte representatives they would need to alter the plan if they wished to move forward.
Meadow Plaza, which is for sale, has been owned by a private trust for decades and has been on the market numerous times over the last five to 10 years, per the Village of Northbrook’s website.
“What Meadow Plaza offers us today is the concept of a third space,” Commissioner Jacqueline Earley voiced to representatives from Pulte sitting in the front row.
“This is a very familiar concept in European countries, where houses are smaller and communities come together after work and school in a local piazza or local pub to reconnect…I can see the economic long-term benefit of the Pulte proposal, but unfortunately, I don’t see that small town community benefit being replicated [here].”
Pulte Homes, which bills itself as the nation’s third-largest homebuilding group on its website, has been seeking to demolish the 67-year-old plaza, which currently houses 14 businesses, to transform it into the “Flats and Shops at North Branch,” three six-story condominium buildings, two single-story commercial structures and a manicured riverwalk.
Each condo building would consist of 50 residential units, a mix of one and two-bedrooms, developers said.
In line with the village’s Affordable Housing Plan, 23 of those units are designed to be affordable, with costs for a one-bedroom unit ranging from about $190,000 to $250,000 for a two-bedroom, according to Rob Getz, vice president of land acquisition at PulteGroup.
Getz reiterated numerous times at the Plan Commission’s Oct. 6 and Oct. 21 meeting that Pulte is anticipating a financial loss in constructing these units, which will be sold at “almost $200,000 below the cost to build [them],” Getz said Wednesday.
While the plan makes room for commercial space in a separate building structure adjacent to the condos, it’s a mere fraction of the plaza’s existing retail square footage.
“Reducing the retail component from approximately 90,000 square feet to just 11,000 square feet is, in my view, a fundamental flaw and a non-starter,” said Commissioner Jeremy Melnick at the Oct. 21 meeting.
“Retail is a critical part of the long-term vision for our downtown, and I respectfully disagree about the demand in retail. Without a plan that includes a comparable amount of retail space, I cannot support this proposal.”
In their feedback period following nearly two days of public comment and a cross examination of Pulte’s public testimony led by attorney Sanford Stein, retained by the nonprofit effort of residents who oppose the project, Save Downtown Northbrook, commissioners also addressed concerns regarding traffic, a lack of parking, stormwater retention and building height.
The six-story proposal would require Northbrook’s Village Board to approve an additional rezoning and subdivision relief application, since it resides in a C-2 Village Green Overlay District.
The base height for any building constructed within those limits has to be less than four stories or five with an endorsement from the commission and a special permit.
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Commissioner Jeffrey Braiman echoed other residents’ concerns about the mass and overall height of the projected buildings, referencing a desire to complement existing architectural sizes while also making use of a unique opportunity to enhance the village’s downtown.
“I think that is part of the problem, is that [this project] looks internally to this seven acres. It doesn’t expand. It doesn’t face any other part of the downtown, and I think that’s a critical problem for me,” Braiman said Wednesday.
Another point of contention is the impact the Meadow Plaza redevelopment would have on the adjacent Village Church of Northbrook, which currently uses nearby shopping center parking for Sunday service overflow and other events.
Along with its own services, the church is home to many local community groups like Total Link, Northbrook Women’s Club, Northbrook Nursery School and others, according to Spencer Lundgaard, senior pastor at the Village Church of Northbrook.
“In some respects the church brought this upon themselves,” said Commissioner Ken Walden, referring to the Village Church’s lack of on-site dedicated parking.
“On the other hand, I am very sympathetic and sensitive to the fact that if this proposal moves forward as planned, the church’s operations are going to change dramatically and I worry about that,” Walden said.
“There’s a lot of good programming in there and there’s clearly a lot of devoted Northbrook citizens who care about the church.”
Commission Chair Elisco was the last to speak Wednesday evening, moving through four pages of personal notes on his opinion of the proposal’s strengths, but more notably, its overarching issues.
In his closing remarks, he revisited a previous point of contention.
“What about the future for the commercial?” Elisco said, adding that he “didn’t get a satisfactory answer” when he posed the question to developers at the first public hearing Oct. 6.
“The people I worked with [on a previous petition], they couldn’t predict the future, but they had vision. They knew how to anticipate what was coming down the road, and they prepared.”
Without a plan for future commercial development changes, Elisco questioned how Northbrook’s downtown can adapt to what’s ahead.
“This petition provides no opportunity for human interaction at the pedestrian level. It’s a walled-off community on all sides, creating a dead zone in the heart of our downtown.”
Without coming to a formal recommendation vote, Elisco turned the conversation back to Pulte to make a decision on how they’d like to proceed.
After a brief recess, Katriina McGuire, a land use attorney representing Pulte Homes, told commissioners the group intends to move forward with an updated proposal to address current concerns.
“We will be unlikely to address all of them,” McGuire told commissioners, “those are just the realities of it, but we believe that we can address some of them and still have a plan that I think everyone can be proud of.”
The revised proposal is scheduled to come back before the Plan Commission Nov. 17 in a public hearing held at Village Hall.
In a statement issued to Pioneer Press Thursday, Vice President Getz said Pulte appreciates the responses received from residents and stakeholders, along with the Plan Commission’s “expertise, effort and thoughtful feedback.”
“We share the same goal: creating a project that will benefit the Village for decades to come. We look forward to continuing our dialogue with the Plan Commission on November 17th.”
“Our work is not over,” attorney Stein, on behalf of Save Downtown Northbrook, wrote in a statement. “The community’s voice rings out. This is the wrong plan in the wrong place.”
Village staff noted at Wednesday’s public hearing that substantial changes to the proposal may require public comment to be reopened to provide the opportunity for residents to respond.