In May, a new developer threw its hat in the ring to build on the village-owned Altenheim land, pitching a spread of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, along with some green space.
The unsolicited draft proposal has caused commissioners to call for movement on the village-owned Altenheim property and transparency in the process as staff work with a newly contracted village planner to bring him up to speed.
At the July 13 village council meeting, Commissioner of Public Property Jessica Voogd said during her commissioner’s comment that she met earlier that day with Village Administrator Rachell Entler and the new village planner, Pete Losue of Teska Associates. The village brought on Teska Associates in May after Muse quit working with the village in March because of multiple stalled projects. Voogd said they primarily discussed the village-owned Altenheim property, next steps in developing the land, and that there’d be a new agenda item regarding the process at a council meeting in the coming weeks.
“I reiterated to our consultant how important it is for this process to be open to the public and transparent as we move forward,” Voogd said during her commissioner’s comment. “I’m not inclined to consider unsolicited draft proposals or bids for a few important reasons. That approach falls outside of the normal competitive bidding process, and I support following a normal bidding process to ensure that it’s fair, transparent, equitable, cost-effective and competitive. I strongly caution against working outside of a normal bidding process. Doing so may appear biased, sparking accusations of insider dealing or favoritism, or having conflicts of interest.”
After the village council meeting, Entler confirmed that, earlier that day, she and Voogd spoke with Losue about the Altenheim’s request to buy back small portions of the village-owned land two years ago and next steps to put out an eventual request for proposals or request for qualifications from developers.
“We’re still working on putting it all together, but my goal is to have our planner come talk with the council [at a public meeting] and discuss what the plan would look like going forward,” Entler told the Review. “I know that’s kind of vague, but that’s really what it was.”
At a July 8 budget meeting, Mayor Rory Hoskins said, “There’s not a consensus on the council to fully entertain an unsolicited proposal. …We’re also going to have a very transparent process, where no one’s going to have a chance to cut the line, so to speak. I still get calls about the Altenheim property from real estate interests.”
The Review spoke with Commissioner Maria Maxham ahead of the July 13 council meeting, when she said that she wants more transparency around the unsolicited bid received in May and to determine next steps and a timeline for the village-owned Altenheim property, immediately.
“Even if our answer is ‘No,’ this isn’t the process we want. I think we need to tell people that we got this. …Let’s just put it out there. We’ve been talking about this for 25 years. Here’s another option. Do we want to consider it?” Maxham told the Review.
“I think the mayor is afraid to take any action on the property at all,” Maxham added. “He’s afraid that any action taken is going to make some people angry, and that’s true. … I think not really doing anything, not committing to any path at all, is a very safe political path,” Maxham said. “But I don’t embrace that at all. We’ve made zero progress on this. Zero. I find that really frustrating, and I think that we have to take action. …Any decision is going to be a mixed bag of some people are satisfied and some aren’t, but I think those are the decisions that are probably the best decisions in the end.”
Hoskins later told the Review that the village has been making way to rebuild on Altenheim land for years. The first year he was mayor in 2019, the village tore down four decaying buildings on their portion of the property.
“Demolition prepared the land for development. It’s been a long road,” Hoskins said. “We’re working with Teska to develop a fair and transparent process for evaluating potential developments.”
Maxham told the Review that she’s repeatedly asked Hoskins and Entler to put discussions on the agenda for council meetings to review the village’s finances and examine new sources of revenue, including a potential sale of the village-owned Altenheim property.
“I have said this before, and I’m going to say it again: I believe that we need aggressive and immediate action on all available sources of revenue we have in order to get ourselves in a better financial situation,” Maxham said during her commissioner’s comment at the July 13 meeting. “The problem hasn’t been fixing itself and is not going to fix itself.”
Dispersing draft proposals
Commissioner Maria Maxham told the Review that, in May, a real estate agent asked her if she’d gotten the developer’s draft proposal that he dropped off with staff in her commissioner mailbox. Maxham said that, when she asked the staff member who received the draft proposal where her copy was, she responded that she was instructed to not put them in commissioners’ mailboxes until Mayor Rory Hoskins and Village Administrator Rachell Entler reviewed them.
“I operate under the expectation that, if someone leaves something for me or the other commissioners with my name on it, that it gets put in [my mailbox] directly without anyone else needing to review either the contents of mine or the contents of their similar packets,” Maxham told the Review of how upset and angry the situation made her.
RFPs, RFQs and available use
In developing the village-owned Altenheim property, Forest Park will eventually need to put out a call for either a request for proposals or request for qualifications, or RFPs and RFQs, respectively.
While an RFP asks developers to share a plan for a space during a more-straightforward bidding process that evaluates various developer approaches, RFQs examine builder qualifications and their past projects. Often, RFQ submissions don’t include a full project proposal and are a more collaborative approach for the village to draft a project with a developer.
“This is the kind of project you want to partner with somebody,” Steve Glinke, head of the village’s building department, told the Review ahead of the last council meeting. “Either way, the process is going to cost us money,” he said of the price of the planner writing an RFQ or RFP document and helping organize developers’ responses.
At the July 8 budget meeting, Entler said she asked the planner to host an educational forum about RFQs and RFPs involving the Altenheim for both the village council and public “so that we fully understand when we go into this next process, whether it’s an RFP or an RFQ, which is better for the village.”
At that meeting, Maxham said there was a public discussion about the difference last August, when the village hosted a special meeting to discuss the future of the village-owned portion of the property.
“I think that’s something that could be communicated in a quicker way, instead of waiting to hold a whole meeting dedicated to that,” Maxham said. She later told the Review that, nearly a year after that meeting, the village still doesn’t have any action items or a timeline for future plans for the property. “I’m not saying we need to rush it, but this is slower than a snail’s pace, and we’ve gone over the basics we need to go over.”
The Altenheim has restricted covenants that limit what the village can do with the property, mainly that the land is zoned as R1 or R2 residential districts, or that the village can build government buildings there.
Glinke told the Review that the village would get the best dollar-per-square-foot agreement with multi-family residences, which are only allowed in R3 districts. He added that the Altenheim has told the village it would evaluate a potential project zoned for an R3 district.
“Anything outside of restricted covenants, the Altenheim has absolute first rights of refusal,” Glinke said. “They’ve been very cooperative and patient with a process that has taken a quarter-century.”