Despite a June 5 decision by Winnetka’s landmark preservation commission to issue a 60-day delay on a demolition permit necessary for his project, One Winnetka developer David Trandel said this week he hopes to begin work – including knocking down the historic Fell Building in downtown Winnetka – in September or October.
The delay, which Winnetka planning assistant Ann Klaassen said Monday is meant to provide one last time for someone to provide an alternative to demolition, ends Aug. 5, and won’t change the building’s fate, she and Trandel said.
“Years have gone by since this project started, so I can’t imagine there will be anything new,” Klaassen said, adding that Trandel does not have to come back to the preservation commission.
As he has previously testified before Village Council and Winnetka’s plan commission and zoning board of review, Trandel said Monday there is no way to include the Fell Building complex in One Winnetka, which includes plans for three buildings, two of which will be five stories in height and one of which will be four stories tall. It will eventually have up to 62 residential units and roughly 34,000 square feet of retail space.
The project has been under discussion since 2015. Trandel will have to run final plans for One Winnetka past the village’s plan commission, zoning board of appeals, and design review board, probably in July, although no dates have been set, Klaassen said. After they review the project a final time, it will return to the village council, she said.
Michael D’Onofrio, Winnetka’s outgoing community development director, said earlier this year that those reviews would be “perfunctory.”
However Richard Sobel, whose father Walter Sobel designed the rambling structure that spans both 511-513 Lincoln Ave. and 718-732 Elm Street, said Tuesday that the 60 day period is one in which Trandel and the village are mandated to search for alternatives.
Sobel has regularly appeared before the commission and other Winnetka village entities in an effort to save the building. He said it was significant that the commission had authorized the 60 day period, and added, “I don’t think the plans for demolition are coming to fruition any time soon.”
Commission chairman Louise Holland disputed Sobel on June 13, saying that the village preservation ordinance provides no mandate: “It’s a period during which we would hope the developer would look for alternatives, but the ordinance is fairly weak.”
Holland said in May the delay could provide time to create a full historic record of the Fell Building, but could not block its demolition.
Trandel said he wasn’t surprised that the preservation commission had voted to institute the delay: “They balance a lot of heavy reading and education (about projects). It’s not an easy task.”
Trandel, a Winnetka resident, said he also hopes to meet with Sobel, to find a way to ensure the building’s place in Winnetka history becomes part of One Winnetka.
“I’m going to sit down with Richard. I told him, when you look at the word ‘perseverance’ in the dictionary, his picture is next to it,” Trandel said. “In the next 90 days or so, we’ll sit with him and try to figure out some interesting ways to memorialize Walter Sobel.”
Trandel said One Winnetka would also include some type of memorial of the Fell family; the late Abe Fell was a former village trustee and owned Fell Clothing, which closed in 2007. The building has been empty since then.
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The June 5 commission meeting was the third this year at which it has discussed the demolition permit request. On May 1, commission members directed Lara Ramsey, the historic preservation consultant hired by Trandel to create a so-called historic and architectural impact study, to revise the study to include more information on how demolishing the building might negatively affect the surrounding neighborhood. The revised study was to include four homes on Maple Street, Klaassen said.
Ramsey’s revised study also included letters and emails about the building, a low-slung modernist-style commercial building built in 1968, and about Walter Sobel.
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