Two interesting pieces in today’s Review about the ongoing and long overdue efforts to untangle Forest Park’s conflicted, irrational, in some ways almost non-existent zoning policies.
Sure, we know zoning issues sound woefully dull until you need to pull a permit or a neighbor wants to update their house, or a developer has semi-big plans. Conflict ensues. And if zoning is confounding, then resolutions are hard to come by.
One piece by the Review’s Jessica Mordacq reports the history of how so much of Forest Park’s residential housing came to be “nonconforming.” Steve Glinke, who heads the village’s public health and safety efforts and has the most institutional memory of anyone at village hall, offered two moments in history when housing circumstances changed radically and the lack of local zoning to address those circumstances created a long-term muddle.
During World War II, Forest Park was home to a large factory that built torpedoes for the war effort. That factory building still exists on Roosevelt Road (but you know it today as the Forest Park Plaza mall). Glinke says workers flocked to the village to take these jobs, but there was a severe housing shortage and so many single-family homes were converted into on-the-fly two-flats. And many stayed that way.
A decade-plus later, the interstate highway system cut the Eisenhower Expressway through Forest Park. We think of the many graves that needed to be relocated. But Glinke says many homes were also impacted and were then picked up and moved to any available spot in town. That led to the many circumstances where two, and even three, homes were left sitting on one lot.
And, Glinke says, if Forest Park had a zoning code before that, and it may not have, it could have been suspended during the war. The first for-certain zoning code dates back only to the 1960s after all the kinks had already been built in.
The second story by Mordacq is an update on the current status of the efforts to fully update the zoning code. While discussed for many years, the effort really took hold early this year with the help of a consultant. The first focus was on the residential neighborhoods. The proposed changes went through a thorough vetting last spring by the Planning and Zoning Commission on their way to a village council vote.
Now, action on this part of the rewrite is stalled as at least two commissioners have raised questions. Village Administrator Rachell Entler told the Review she is still researching matters around storm water management and building density, which have been brought forward.
It seems clear that the full council wants to reform the zoning code. That there are questions raised about this complex overhaul is not a surprise, though it is a frustration to some who have already immersed themselves in this process.
So the first batch of revisions will now be pushed back into 2025. As we have an issue that is approximately 85 years in the making, a few more months is not that long.