It has been a long while since Oak Park turned a developer’s head-unless it was with a stinging blow.
Last week, though, Oak Park unfurled a welcome mat for potential commercial developers and nearly 40 people climbed aboard the village’s buses and toured several likely development sites.
The focus, rightly, was on parcels along Lake Street and Madison Street where the village owns property and can best influence future development. We have, in the past, been critical of a sometimes haphazard approach the village has taken in acquiring such land.
If you had a taste for political theater and didn’t mind frittering away the most favorable market for new development in decades, then the past eight years were a delight. Everyone other than the two dozen folks leading us into the mire has been waiting impatiently, though, for a new day to shine its light.
With a new village board and village staff, we now see the village shaking off its Jekyll-and-Hyde approach to luring and then spitting out developers. Last week, in a nicely choreographed effort by the village’s business services department, Oak Park not only put on an impressive show-and-tell, but we are confident it now has the rational talent on staff and a village board that can balance development opportunities with a clear sense of what is worth preserving in our town.
Not by coincidence, we assume, the village announced the day of the bus tour that a new development has been secured for the village-owned property at Harlem Avenue and South Boulevard. Only Oak Park would crow that the development was subsidy-free while simultaneously donating the $3 million parcel to the developer. But in light of past sins, that seems almost a quibble.
We are enthused about the effort to create competitive interest in Oak Park projects. It is time to move beyond the one-developer-does-every-project approach that Oak Park has had to settle for recently. We are a vibrant community now ready to act like one.
Is insanity catching?
We can sell newspapers on our own, thank you very much.
As Oak Park’s village board calms, River Forest’s village board has caught the sniping, over-personal, mean-spirited, and generally counter-productive illness that brought Oak Park to a testy impasse these past years.
Perhaps, if the adults can recapture the essential ability to self-censor, there might be some hope of finding a middle way between the autocratic past of Frank Paris ruling by decree and the current take-no-prisoners mode in evidence at all village meetings.
We take some hope in comments made this past week by several officials who seem to realize that the current path is unacceptable. “I suppose all of us need to just grin and bear it and work together for the betterment of River Forest,” said Paris. You suppose correctly, Mr. President. Trustee Steve Hoke told the Journal, “I think we all need to take a breather here.” Wise words from the rookie.
Paris needs to recognize that governance is going to change in his town. He can be part of that change or he can be overrun by it. The loyal opposition-Hoke, Nummer and Dudek-need to learn to be loyal. Not to Frank Paris, but to the town that elected them and which deserves better than theatrics. And the holdover trustees-Dillon and O’Brien-need to finally become trustees and give up their acolyte ways. Genuflecting has never been enough. Finally, we believe former Village Clerk and now Trustee Susan Conti, always a thoughtful board presence, has the opportunity to play a crucial swing vote role here.
Time to go to work.