After nearly a decade of land being vacant and a series of failed development attempts, Evanston’s Land Use Commission dealt another blow to a prospective developer seeking to build an 11-unit townhome project on the empty lot at 3233-3249 Central Street.
The Bent Park Homes proposal, submitted by Krosha Properties LLC, was presented to commissioners on March 11, with the hope of getting the city’s approval on three “major variations” to Evanston’s zoning ordinance requirements.
A Major Variance request is necessary when property developers are looking to diverge significantly from approved city zoning restrictions, typically in categories like yard size, building height, lot size, width and depth, surface area, street parking and home occupations.
Anthony Kaplunov, a developer for Krosha Properties LLC, addressed commissioners during the Wednesday meeting with three variation requests:
• A building height extension of 3 stories at only 35 feet (city code limits building height to 2.5 stories with a 47-foot maximum height).
• Allow a maximum accessory structure/use of rear yard coverage of 66.7% (an additional 26.7% of coverage beyond the city’s 40% limit).
• Allow a building lot coverage of 59.4% (maximum building lot coverage is limited to 55%).
Krosha Properties LLC purchased the site in October 2024 for a $1.2 million.
Scott Siegal, the project’s broker, expressed to the Board that the building lot and yard coverage extensions proposed are to provide prospective buyers of Bent Park Homes with two-car heated garages.
Without the additional coverage, Siegal said almost half of the homes would be limited to a one-car garage with an outdoor parking pad.
The design proposal allocates a total of 22 garage parking stalls for residents. Each townhome would include four bedrooms with a “recessed” third story and partial basement. In the design proposal, developers listed one of the 11 units as being compliant with Evanston’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance and sold at an affordable price.
Despite an expressed interest by commissioners to fill the unoccupied lot after years of vacancy, commissioners voted 5-1 against approving the variation requests, with Commissioner Jameika Mangum supporting.
“I like this to some degree, but there’s some things about it that I think we need to explore a little bit and this may not be the forum to do that,” Commissioner Darush Mabadi said at the meeting.
“For me, what I’m looking at is just a real big monolithic structure that’s going to land on Central Street, which is different from what’s over there,” Mabadi said.
“We all got to give a little. The fact is progress comes with pain, change comes with necessity, and you have a land here that has to be developed, but it just feels like this is a little bit further than it needs to be.”
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Unlike most proposals, the development project, if approved, would not need to get a final sign-off from City Council, as the Land Use Commission is the determining body for projects of this nature, according to Commission Chair Max Puchtel.
Several neighboring residents of the prospective project attended the commission meeting to voice their trepidations over the major variances request.
James Gathii, a neighbor of the 3233-3249 Central Street land, was the first to address commissioners regarding his direct concerns with the overall height and oversized rear yard coverage, which he said would likely heighten “the risk of storm water runoff.”
“As a homeowner whose property directly borders the rear of this site, I strongly oppose the request for these variances,” Gathii said. “These requests are not minor deviations; they are sweeping violations of the zoning code. They would cause immediate harm to the adjacent properties and long-term damage to the neighborhood.”
Ethan Thuo, a resident of Evanston who said he lives at an address directly behind the proposed development site, seconded Gathii’s concerns.
“Zoning standards exist to create a balance between new development with the rights of the people who already live there,” Thuo said. “When those standards are not satisfied, the commission’s role is to uphold them. For these reasons we respectfully ask the commission to deny the request for major variations.”
Prior to the Board’s rejection of the proposal, Chair Max Puchtel said he was generally “in favor of the project,” but that it pushed “the [zoning] bounds based on the nature of the request.”
Since it was looking unlikely during the meeting that the commission would move to approve the proposal, Puchtel offered Kaplunov a chance to come back with a modified proposal for approval instead of the developers having to reapply with a new site plan.
Kaplunov said he preferred not to return with proposal changes and urged commissioners to vote separately on the three variances, given the cost of a further delay. It was a move the commission ultimately denied.
The 3233-3249 Central Street property has been vacant since 2018, when the previous multi-family residential development was demolished in anticipation of a redevelopment.
In April 2018, the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) approved a 12-unit multi-family residential development, but it was never constructed and the site has remained vacant since.