La Grange’s West End will soon be getting some major redevelopment.
The Village Board approved a text amendment and special use permit for a four-story, mixed-use retail and residential building on the property at 811-901 W. Hillgrove Avenue.
“The C-4 business district is the area you need to have high-density housing along the railroad tracks,” Trustee Glenn Thompson said during Board comment.
The current Village code mandates that C-4 is designed for the “day-to-day shopping and consumer service needs of the local low-density residential neighborhoods of the Village.”
The site is currently occupied by the Boy Scouts of America and a law office.
The project will include 4,400 square feet of retail on the first floor, with 31 residential units on the other three floors, including three studios, 19 one-bedroom, and nine two-bedroom rental units.
The plan, which can be found on the Village website, villageoflagrange.com under the June 10 agenda, also calls for 30 surface-level residential parking spaces and a six-car interior parking garage.
The plan was before the La Grange Plan Commission twice and was unanimously recommended after residents expressed concerns about density, possible parking problems, and the effect on the surrounding community the development might have.
The developer made several changes to the plan, which prompted Commission approval. The text amendment sought to increase the floor area ratio (FAR), which controls the density of the project, from 1 to 2.0 in the C-4 district, and this concerned one of Thompson’s colleagues.
“It seems intentional like you can do it in other spots but you can’t do it here,” Lou Gale said of the code restricting the FAR settled on by past village boards. “They specifically did not want to allow increased density and bulk in that area.”
The restriction on density dates back several decades, but Thompson referred to the 2005 comprehensive plan for the Village that called for higher-density development.
“We have agreed to a Comprehensive Plan back in 2005,” he said, “that says in this C-4 district ‘we will bring in high-density housing,’ we are in the process of creating a new Comprehensive Plan, and the Regional Transportation Board has come to us asked us to bring in higher-density housing…we are actually committing to bringing in higher-density housing, to reduce transportation models, to reduce carbon, and if we don’t make these changes, we’re never going to achieve that.”
And most of the Trustees agreed.
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Beth Augustine referred to the Plan Commission’s unanimous recommendation to approve the project after the developer made changes in responding to public concerns.
“That carried a lot of weight for me,” she said.
Gale still had reservations about the density of the project and voted against both the FAR text amendment and the special use permit.
“This is as dense as we’ve ever approved,” he said. “The Comprehensive Plan is more of a goal.”
Tim Foley, attorney for the developer, also referred to the Village’s 2005 Comprehensive Plan, which “makes clear that the Village wanted to develop the West End.”
He added that the plan also specifically pointed out that the West End should have mixed-use development.
Trustee Shawana McGee, who was originally opposed to a four-story building on the site, now supports it but had questions about only 30 parking spaces for 31 residential units and businesses on the main floor. (One of the changes made by the developer was that parking spaces be assigned to residential tenants)
“What are you going to do for those tenants that actually need two parking spaces,” she asked.
The applicant, Adam Codilis, who also has an ownership interest in 817-821 West Hillgrove, compared the proposal to the Uptown Apartments in downtown La Grange as an example of transit-oriented development.
“It will be 36 parking spots and 31 units,” he said. “Our thought is that it will be right off the train line there, and some people might need no parking spots, or possibly one … I believe that it (the parking spaces) will be sufficient.”
Codilis noted that he had lived at Uptown Apartments for a time and that some people used the train and needed no parking spaces.
There is no word at this time as to when construction will begin on the project will begin.
The next La Grange Village Board meeting will be at 7:30 p.m., July 8 at the La Grange Village Hall, 53 S. La Grange Road.
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.