Loyola Academy will temporarily delay seeking Wilmette’s approval to expand its parking lot complex in order to answer complaints from nearby residents, a school official said Tuesday.
The announcement comes nearly a week after officials from the Jesuit high school met with several dozen neighbors about its plans to pave over two grassy lots that abut their homes – a meeting some in attendance said did little to ease their concerns about the possibilities of increased traffic and flooding.
One of the fields is used on rare occasions by the school’s underclass football squad, but Loyola wants to turn both into parking lots by mid-August in time for the start of the next school year. The school, whose properties are residentially zoned, must get a special use permit from the village to move forward with the paving, according to John Adler, Wilmette’s community development director.
Loyola public relations director Robin Hunt said Tuesday in an email that the school has decided to postpone asking Wilmette for zoning approval “to address the concerns of our neighbors.” Hunt said the school will also conduct a traffic study as a result of the Feb. 10 meeting with residents, when school administrators and members of the school’s engineering team presented plans for the lots. Loyola officials and residents who attended estimated between 40 and 50 neighbors were there.
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In her email, Hunt said that if the school completes its application by Feb. 29, the zoning board could hear the case on April 6.
“If we make this deadline, our proposed plans will be public record for anyone to review” before that meeting, the email stated.
Loyola, which is located at 1100 Laramie Avenue, north of Lake Avenue in west Wilmette, brings regular morning and afternoon traffic with students and staff traveling not only north or south on Laramie, but also on Manor Drive, the north-south street immediately to the west of Laramie, and on east west streets such as Thornwood Avenue that connect to Laramie.
Neighbors say congestion is already complicated by the fact that New Trier Township High School’s freshman campus lies just over half a mile north of Loyola, with many New Trier families taking their students to the campus via Illinois Road, into which Manor and Laramie dead-end, and which curves north toward the other school.
Loyola has said that it does not plan to increase enrollment or the number of student parking passes it issues, stating that the school needs 126 parking spaces for faculty and other drivers.
Thornwood Avenue resident Dory Hixon said one of the neighborhood’s biggest worries – that the parking lots will lead to more traffic along an already congested school route – still remained after the meeting with Loyola officials at the high school.
“I don’t think they really listened to us,” she said, adding that “we have a lot of people who are adamantly against the project. I think we’ll put up a fight.”
Manor Drive resident Anne Nagle said she is not optimistic that neighbors could convince the high school to abandon the project.
“The neighborhood is just so discouraged with this thing,” Nagle said. “It’s just so disturbing.”
Hunt said via email that the development complies with village regulations and with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s restrictions on storm water control. Flood control measures proposed for the project would include rain gardens, bio swales, berms and trees, she said.
“Our engineers have designed the fields to hold more water than the unimproved fields can hold,” Hunt stated.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy