The years-long discussion about what the village should put on the 11-acre portion of the Altenheim property it owns continued at the last Forest Park council meeting — and will be readdressed monthly at meetings.
At the Aug. 10 council meeting, in what Village Administrator Rachell Entler declared the first of similar monthly discussions, the village’s new planner, Pete Losue of Teska Associates, presented next steps for the redevelopment of the village-owned property next to the Altenheim senior housing.
Losue said that before the village markets the project to developers either through a Request for Proposals (RFP) or Request for Qualifications (RFQ), it must first have an idea of what it wants on its portion of the Altenheim, and if that’s something other than low-density residential housing.
Current covenants with the Altenheim say the village must restrict development on its part of the Altenheim property to R1 or R2 housing, or low- and medium-density residential structures including single-family and two-family dwellings, townhouses and publicly owned parks and playgrounds. But Losue said the Altenheim is open to discussing other options, and commissioners should decide if they want to explore that.
“There have been preliminary discussions with the Altenheim, and it sounds like they are at least open to having discussions about taking a look at those covenants and see if we can open that up to some other land uses or some higher density,” Losue said.
He said that discussion with the Altenheim might also include the company buying back portions of the village’s land around its building — which the Altenheim proposed two years ago.
“If you want to move ahead under the existing covenants, that’s always an option. If we want to look at higher density and other uses for the property, that’s the first and major hurdle we have to overcome. We have to come to some kind of an agreement with that property owner to overcome those covenants,” Losue said.
Entler said that, once village staff get in a room with multiple members of the Altenheim board, they’ll present various ideas.
“The village staff will come back to the village council with what’s being talked about. [The Altenheim] will go back to their entire board and talk about what’s being talked about, and so hopefully we’ll be able to get some better answers that paint a better picture through that route,” Entler said.
Commissioner Maria Maxham suggested that at the same time that village staff plan a meeting with representatives of the Altenheim, commissioners should work on what they want to see on the property.
Commissioner Jessica Voogd suggested the village do a market or land feasibility study to outline the Altenheim property’s best uses.
“I think, while we’re exploring the feasibility of that land, we’re also selling ourselves short if we’re not expanding what we’re looking at,” Voogd said. “The Altenheim, the community center, the CTA parking lot, some land we have on Des Plaines — all of that is very close to each other, and all of that could be sort of connected in some ways that we aren’t really thinking about yet.”
Maxham said she and Voogd helped create the 11-member Altenheim Advisory Committee in 2022, to discuss what to do with the Altenheim property. In March 2023, the committee gave its final recommendations for the site: Going out of an RFP for R2 housing south of the Altenheim senior living building and denser housing in the southeast corner near the CTA Blue Line terminal.
“I don’t want to see that work and those recommendations just discarded. I would really like that to be part of the conversation,” Maxham said.
In May 2023, the Review reported that Maxham and Voogd said that, despite the committee hosting 10 public meetings, there wasn’t enough public input in the process of their final recommendations. That June, residents living nearby the Altenheim at the Grove Midrise Condominiums agreed that the project needed more public engagement.
“Yes, we have spent time, but the marketplace is changing,” Hoskins responded about the Altenheim project. He said the Northern Illinois Transit Authority Act, which passed in June — and to which he was appointed to the board last month — has a component to it that will impact transit-related developments. “It could create additional opportunities and additional interest.”
“We certainly do need to talk to the Altenheim,” Hoskins said. “We need to do our work, and commissioners, hopefully you all will be talking to each other and exchanging ideas in general, so that we can move forward with a common vision.”
RFP vs. RFQ
After the village council decides whether it wants a use for the Altenheim beyond a R1 or R2 development, commissioners should set up parameters for what they want to see on that property. Then, they can decide whether they want an RFP or RFQ.
“We really don’t want to get too far into an RFP or an RFQ process without some type of consensus on what we’re looking for on that property,” Losue said at the Aug. 10 council meeting. “We probably can’t get everyone on exactly the same page, and we don’t need to know exactly what’s going to go there, but we’ll ultimately have to come up with some general parameters on what we’re looking for before we go out to developers.”
Losue said he would suggest an RFQ over an RFP, since an RFQ is easier for developers to respond to.
“If you go out for the RFP, you’re basically asking for the developer to provide you with their preferred plan for the site,” Losue said. While the village board would be able to see a bunch of different plans and ideas they hadn’t considered, it takes a lot of time and money for developers to create an RFP and might limit the number of those who respond.
In comparison, an RFQ outlines a developer’s experience, previous projects and financials.
“You just pick the developer that you’re comfortable with, and then you work out the details later,” Losue said. “That’s an easier process for the developer to respond to. But again, under that scenario, you probably want to have a pretty good idea of what you’re looking to do on that site. You wouldn’t necessarily want to go ahead and hire a developer and then have no idea of what you want.”
Steve Glinke, head of the village’s building department, agreed with Losue about preferring an RFQ.
“It’s always been my belief that an RFQ allows us to partner with somebody, so that we get the village’s vision, the developer’s vision, bring the two together to put together a package that makes it through the Planning and Zoning Commission, and passes hopefully unanimously with the elected officials,” Glinke said at the meeting. “As I look back over the last five years, we’ve had sort of a laser focus on multifamily, and I think that we’ve never given due consideration to developing within the confines of the restrictive covenants because it avoids a lot of headaches.”