Remarkably, it is nearing a half-century ago that major car dealers began decamping from Madison Street in Oak Park. From the early 1970s until just the past half-decade when Foley Rice Cadillac shuttered, the car dealer parade to wide open spaces in the far west suburbs continued unabated. Dick Fencl Chevrolet, Clarke Pontiac, Horn Olds/Honda, Gene Wulbert Ford, Crown Lincoln Mercury and Larry Faul Oldsmobile were among the top brands which left Madison Street behind.
Over those decades some of those huge vacancies were absorbed by new businesses or other uses. The Chevy dealership is now Oak Park’s village hall. The Ford dealership is finally The Grove Apartments/Sugar Beet. Clark Pontiac is a Chase Bank drive-through. Horn Olds is townhomes at Wisconsin Avenue.
None of those deals was simple and there are still gaping holes where the Cadillac and Lincoln Mercury dealerships once stood. Over those many years, as Madison was studied and studied again, more and more complex zoning permutations were installed with high hopes and tangled interpretations.
Finally in February, Oak Park’s village government shook off its Madison Street daydreams and fantasies and approved a unique zoning map for this two-mile length of four-lane traffic. The fundamental accomplishment — and it took Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb’s fresh eyes to see it — is to recognize that a street this long and broken up already by so many uses will never be a singular commercial corridor from Austin to Harlem.
Instead the new zoning carves out the space from Clinton to East and designates it as the targeted retail/commercial core. This is where village government will place its limited development resources, the efforts of OPEDC, and its hopes for new commercial growth. This is also where village government already owns multiple parcels poised for development.
Elsewhere on the street, new zoning allows for multifamily housing, townhomes and, of course, retail and other commercial uses. The east quarter of Madison has also become the default home of local government agencies, including village hall, the park district and, eventually, the public elementary schools.
Talks, we are told, are well underway for notable projects on village-owned land at Oak Park and Madison. We look forward to good news in the next months as the seemingly mundane process of zoning change truly represents new definition for this long-ignored street.