Let’s start by saying that Downtown Oak Park exists most fundamentally as a place to shop. Then let’s stipulate that at this moment in time there are a range of impediments to that shopping experience. There are problems to be solved, decisions that need to be made and each of them needs to be seen first and foremost through the prism of building the shopping experience.
That’s why we are happy to see the sidetracking of the great, harsh and ill-timed debate over whether DTOP ought also to become a historic district of some sort. That village staff recommended a delay and a new and inclusive format for the discussion reflects that they understood the destructive path this issue was on. That the Historic Preservation Commission graciously accepted the maneuver reflects their determination not to become the fall guy in what had become a political debate.
Opening the discussion and stretching the time frame for recommendations until September, well past the spring election, will do much to lessen the sense that this deal was done.
Historic preservation ought to be a factor in the future of DTOP. We know it can be a tool to further build the shopping district. But given too much emphasis, it can also become an obstruction to long overdue change in our downtown.
Everyone agrees there are a handful of truly significant buildings in the downtown. Those buildings have largely been preserved and rehabilitated for this generation by private owners using their own money. That’s something to celebrate and build on, not to engender a fight about.
Let’s start this discussion fresh. And let’s make it an actual dialogue.
Signs of these times
Speaking of building a downtown focused on actually selling things, we come to the issue of signage. Thirty years back when cars, and inadvertently customers, were ousted from the pedestrian mall on Lake Street, something else was also legislated out of existence: signs for stores. We’re talking perpendicular signs that actually tried to get your attention and say, “Hey, buster, come in here and buy something.”
Now comes the Bar Louie sign which speaks to us as a pleasing invitation to stop in for some hospitality. Apparently the sign violates some aspects of the village’s too-restrictive view of commerce but was accidentally approved by a village staff member.
This then makes for a good opportunity to revisit the sign ordinance and make a clear statement that DTOP is no longer a park. It’s a shopping district. And while signs ought be tasteful, they need not be either bland or invisible.
Top-secret RF parks
We’ve made this point before. Chances are good we’ll make it again. The River Forest park board needs to get over itself. Its propensity for ostentatious secrecy is oddly disturbing and regularly on display. Last week they were holding back from public distribution the second draft of a field-use policy.
We’ll leave it to Chuck Race, a youth soccer advocate, to put it in perspective. “We’re not dealing with the Manhattan Project, people. We’re dealing with a field-use policy.”