They rolled up their sleeves over in Glenview a few days ago and reinvented the town.
Meeting in the police station basement, community leaders uncapped some colored markers and sketched out a vibrant new neighborhood right in the middle of the village that will include a sprawling housing district, a business district, a big lake, a train station and even a municipal fitness center.
Sounds impressive, but any mayor with two minutes and the back of an envelope could dream up a hometown version of Oz. The difference here is when Glenview officials finished conjuring last week, Navy representatives who had helped with the scribbling nodded approvingly.
And with that, more than 1,000 acres of prime North Shore real estate-otherwise known as the soon-to-be-closed Glenview Naval Air Station-moved its first step closer to becoming Glenview’s dream town.
The same head-spinning sense of potential and surprise has stirred the communities surrounding Ft. Sheridan and the Joliet Arsenal, two more Chicago area military installations set to close as part of a massive round of defense spending cuts.
Once fenced off from surrounding communities and considered a waste of valuable land to many, these sites now represent real estate manna from heaven.
“This is a once-in-ten-lifetimes chance to catch up on the parks and open spaces,” said Jim McCarthy, assistant Glenview village manager.
Unlike Chicago’s sprawling newer suburbs like Vernon Hills and Hoffman Estates, Glenview was long ago built out, and its boom days were considered history. Now it has the chance to redesign property that amounts to 15 percent of the village’s acreage.
But the opportunities represent more than real estate development; they’re a chance for villages that were conceived long ago to rethink themselves. When they were first built, houses went up in former cornfields and orchards and no one paid much attention to things like open space and sprawl. Now planners are acutely aware of such environmental issues.
In Glenview, for example, the redevelopment plan for the Navy property includes setting aside some 35 to 40 percent of it in open space. Of the village’s 8,390 acres, only 8.4 percent is open space, officials said.
In the intervening decades since Glenview and towns like it were built, American planners have begun to think differently about how towns should be developed.
Now many urban planners favor what’s called “mixed-use” designs that create a town within a town, integrating many different types of uses-residential, open space, light industry, office, retail, schools-to avoid sterile, suburban subdivisions that isolate residents.
“The military properties represent a clean slate kind of opportunity for a large expanse of land,” said Michael H. Ebner, professor of history at Lake Forest College.
And, in fact, none of the designs look like the typical suburban subdivision. They do, however, incorporate the best of what community leaders think their areas need, in a campus-like setting.
Even so, such model communities are no guarantee that utopia is around the corner. For all the advanced design and lofty philosophy, these communities are as vulnerable as any to the modern-day curses of traffic, pollution and crime.
The base-closing phenomenon is occurring across the country as the post-Cold War Pentagon slashes defense spending.
Elsewhere, though, the break from Pentagon apron strings has been quite traumatic because thousands of good civilian jobs have been disappearing with the bases.
But in the Chicago area, the economic impact of lost jobs is considered to be far outweighed by the redevelopment opportunities the land presents.
“The people in the Chicago area should count themselves very, very lucky; every once in a while the government offers a great opportunity for communities to get access (to land) at little or no dollar investment,” said Tim Rupli, president of Defense Realignment Advisers, a Washington consulting firm.
Glenview Naval Air Station, which closes next September, employs only about 350 civilians, and job losses were never even discussed as Ft. Sheridan prepared to close in spring 1993. Only a handful of workers were employed by the Joliet Arsenal last year.
Because of both their excellent locations and the ease with which job losses can be made up, experts put the three Chicago bases in an elite class of closing bases that probably will have the easiest time making the transition to civilian purposes.
“Location is certainly a big factor in not only what you can develop the property into but also the speed at which you can do it,” said Mark Wagner, a Pentagon special assistant working on base closings. “When you’re in a metro area, it’s a whole lot different than if you are out in a rural setting.”
Different interests see different opportunities in closing bases, of course. And that is part of both the promise and the challenge facing local communities and the federal government as they hash out how to relinquish land.
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To Gerald Adelmann, executive director of the Chicago-based Openlands Project, Joliet, Glenview and Ft. Sheridan represent some “of the most interesting and significant pieces of real estate” in the entire metropolitan area.
“To have these resources still available to develop as open space and for recreation is exceptional,” Adelmann said.
There’s very little tax revenue to be had in park land, however. Which is why local officials in Glenview and the north suburban communities like Highland Park that surround Ft. Sheridan are putting emphasis on residential development. That’s an obvious direction to take for the old, established towns where new housing would fit more comfortably than more ambitious commercial projects.
Ft. Sheridan’s plan includes an upscale luxury housing development in a restored historic district. The Ft. Sheridan Joint Planning Committee has been working on a plan for 400 acres at the base, which would set aside about 290 acres of open space, and the rest for residential. In addition, local leaders are hoping that the plan will bring increased tax dollars to help the financially beleaguered public schools in Highwood and Highland Park.
Glenview hasn’t figured out how much housing will fit on the base site, but there are projections the town of 38,000 could eventually grow by one-third. The new business district will feature offices, shops, restaurants and other amenities, including a town center with a fitness club, a library and two new schools.
Of the 1,180 acres, about 275 acres are earmarked for residential, 135 acres for light industrial, 140 acres for a golf course, and 100 for a lake.
But at the former Joliet Arsenal, local and state officials unanimously agreed that the best decision was to set aside 19,000 acres of the 23,500-acre property for a national grassland prairie. The Arsenal re-use plan, which like plans for Ft. Sheridan and Glenview, still has to be approved by the federal government, also includes a 425-acre landfill, a 1,000-acre national veterans cemetery and two 1,500-acre industrial parks.
“The Arsenal had great significance far beyond the local area, and we looked at it from a national perspective,” said George Ranney Jr., a Lake County businessman appointed by Gov. Edgar to head an Arsenal advisory committee.
Glenview and Ft. Sheridan aren’t overlooking open space. Ft. Sheridan’s plan includes 290 acres of natural land, including a golf course and lakefront bluffs. In Glenview, it includes park land, a proposed forest preserve, a lake that will serve recreational and flood control needs and a redesign of the Navy’s golf course.
“In each of those three situations, the communities recognize the value of open space; northeastern Illinois has so little public open space,” said Joyce O’Keefe, policy director for the Openlands Project, pointing out that 8 million people live in the region.
Open space is so important at Ft. Sheridan because there is so little public access to Lake Michigan in Lake County.
Despite the rare opportunities, there are no guarantees that enough developers will make the investment plunge in any of these projects.
For Glenview, several factors seem likely to make its transition quicker than at Ft. Sheridan, where the plan has been haggled over for almost six years. The new federal policy will help, and so will the fact that the Navy stands to lose $30 million every year until private developers buy it out.
If ever the government appeared to be offering a sweet deal, Glenview would qualify. Unlike the Army, which has asked for full-market value for some of its properties, the Navy wants no money upfront. In Glenview, it’s seeking only 40 percent of any proceeds from the sale of land.
“A new civic center, a first-rate sports complex, improved housing, shopping,” said Brian Barrett, vice president of a Glenview real estate group. “With this unprecedented opportunity to improve marginal aspects of an already splendid community, you’re looking at the potential of producing a state-of-the-art atmosphere.”