After the Planning and Zoning Commission approved Concordia Cemetery’s request for a billboard overlooking the Eisenhower Expressway at its April meeting, next the village council will officially decide whether to OK a plat of subdivision, map amendment, and conditional use for the billboard.
The Planning and Zoning Commission’s April 20 vote for the billboard comes after the group approved the billboard at its March meeting but voted just once instead of three times.
“This is a procedural hearing in order to correct the voting from last month’s meeting. We should have taken three votes. We voted on all three in one vote,” said Steve Glinke, head of the village’s building department, at the April 20 commission meeting.
The conditional use permit allows the billboard in the residentially zoned cemetery, since billboards are only allowed in industrial districts. A plat of subdivision makes it so a small portion on the west side of the cemetery is rezoned and not all of it, and the map amendment reflects those changes. At the March meeting, the commission voted on all three changes at once.
“We don’t want a legal challenge based on the process, and the billboard industry tends to be rife with litigation,” Glinke previously told the Review.
While the commission unanimously approved the conditional use permit and plat of subdivision at the April 20 meeting, Scott Whitebone was the only board member to vote against a map amendment.
At the March commission meeting, Whitebone and Steve Rummel voted against the billboard. Then, Whitebone voiced concern that, if the subdivision of Concordia was rezoned from a residential district to an industrial one, it would set a precedent that could lead to manufacturing in a neighborhood.
At the April 20 commission meeting, Whitebone again said, “I do worry about the precedent this sets from switching a B1 neighborhood/shopping [district] to industrial.”
Glinke said he’d shared that concern with staff after the March meeting, but there are few areas in town where the same thing could happen.
“The bottom line is, where we are vulnerable is Forest Home Cemetery, which is R1. We can’t have a billboard in R1, and it’s not adjacent to an industrial zoned district,” Glinke said. Because Concordia Cemetery neighbors the industrially zoned, CTA-owned property where the Forest Park Blue Line station is, it can ask for a plat of subdivision that makes a small part of the cemetery industrially zoned.
Whitebone also requested at the March meeting that the commission add a condition that allows the village and other taxing bodies to post public notices and events on the billboard. That condition was included in the commission’s approved recommendations for the billboard at the April 20 meeting.