HANGAR ONE LIFT OFF

After years of talk and little to show, Hangar One members report a major breakthrough that could at last bring official Village blessing for an air and space center at the Glen.

Hangar One has hooked up with an Indiana-based group established by families of the astronauts who died aboard the Challenger space craft.  These folks now franchise the Challenger Learning Center, building customized space education facilities for children.

Kids in grades 4-8 spend six weeks in their classrooms preparing for a mission before going to the Challenger Center, where they use a mock control room and two flight simulators to experience lives as astronauts and NASA ground crew.

The adventure is part of the science curriculum in 38 cities where Challenger Learning Centers are in place. While the enterprise is not for profit, it is intended to break even with schools paying $500 per class.  At Challenger in northern Indiana, the center is sold-out for the rest of the school year.

A good deal of fund raising will be needed in Glenview to collect the cash needed to build and operate the center (more than $4 million), but Hangar One President John Witten is confident.

"The long shot is long gone," Witten told Glenview Watch.  "We're moving toward a sure thing.  This is our foot in the door."

Hangar One also hopes to have a small air museum at the site – a display that would preserve GNAS history and honor the men and women who trained at the base.

For more information on Challenger, visit their website – www.challenger.org – and explore the Indiana link or stop by Village Hall next Saturday between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.  You'll have the chance to see a video and share your views with Glenview Trustees.

Glenview Watch applauds the planners of this public hearing.  It's great to see public information and consultation playing a positive role in Glenview government.

ALSO COMING TO A HANGAR NEAR YOU

Developers were also at Village Hall this weekend to display general plans for stores and multi-family housing in the heart of the Glen.  The Challenger Center would only need a portion of Hangar One, leaving room for a restaurant, shops and a 16-18 screen movie theater with 4,000 seats.

Questions for Village planners: Can Willow and Lake take the traffic that a multiplex would generate?  Can a new movie complex compete with the expanding Old Orchard theater to our south, Northbrook Court and Deerbrook Mall to our north and Randhurst to the west?  Does Glenview want so much new retail?  Does the Glen need so much development, and will the market support it? 

Show us the numbers, Manager McCarthy.  We're not taking this one on faith!

IS THE INDEPENDENCE BELL CRACKED?

Trustee Larry Carlson, welcomed to the Board earlier this year because of his "independent thinking," has yet to show that independent streak.  On Tuesday night, he again voted with Firfer, Patton and Fuller – this time to pay more than $400,000 to the architectural firm of Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) for "oversight" at the Great Park, new METRA station and other parts of the Glen.

Trustee John Crawford, a champion of common sense, suggested  we might be spending too much money for supervision:  "We have the design guidelines.  We have architects who have been preparing these things.  We have a couple of competent planners on the Village staff.  I don't understand why we would be paying Skidmore Owings and Merrill $250 an hour." 

Crawford suggested consulting with Glenview's Park District before paying SOM $308,000 to oversee work at the Great Park, but Trustee Carlson disagreed, implying that in-house people did not or could not have the expertise that Skidmore brings to Glenview.

"If I was going to build a house," he said, " I might do the general supervision, but I'm not going to pour the foundation and lay the bricks myself.  I'm going to hire someone who knows how."

Glenview Watch wonders, Mr. Carlson, couldn't the Village hire one heck of an architect or engineer to do this job for a lot less than $400,000?   If it were your house, wouldn't you get some other bids before shelling out that kind of money?

PATTON GIVES DEVELOPERS A PASS

Last month, the Village Board asked the developer of an industrial park near the prairie to come-up with a plan for building decked parking at its first building.  A 154-space garage would enable us to save more open space for wildlife and people.

Catellus appeared before the Board last week, quoting a price of $9,000 per parking spot.  The California company that paid only $14 million for 92 acres at the Glen, did not comment on the figure, suggesting that it might have been an acceptable cost, but Trustee John Patton – often a friend to development – stepped-in to protect the developer's profit.   "I'm assuming it's your position that the cost is prohibitive," said Patton.

Catellus replied that the extra cost might have some impact on its ability to market the building.  Patton pressed on, noting that the Village had committed to a parking garage at the new METRA station, and "We've gotten a real lesson in the true costs of putting together a parking deck which is the trade-off for open space.  It's quite steep."

Glenview Watch was surprised to learn that the Board had okayed decked parking for the new train station?  Was that a vote taken in private, without public input? 
   
And if our trustees think it's okay for tax dollars to be used in building parking garages to preserve open space, why shouldn't we ask for the same from developers – especially those who are building on land now used by rare and endangered birds?

MAKING THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS

Trustee wannabe Jim Patterson was seen at the last Village Board  meeting huddled with developer Warren James.  Is he stepping-in to fill those big shoes of Jim Smiles, former chairman of the Village United Party or planning his own campaign for a seat on the Board?

CHARTING A COURSE WITHOUT HER COMPASS

Village President Nancy Firfer admits she sometimes loses her compass and pledges to keep a tighter rein on meetings of the Village Board. 
   
"It's gotten a little bit out of hand in the recent past," she said, "but we're going to go back to the way meetings have been run, and that is that we will have items introduced, there will be an appropriate time for public comment and then it will come back to the Board level and it will remain at the Board level, and hopefully we will have more efficient, better meetings."

Sadly, Firfer does not seem to recognize the cause of recent public outbursts at Village Hall.  It is her inability to listen and respond appropriately that sparks anger and frustration from Glenview residents and their neighbors. 

Art Wulf, for example, would speak, only to be contradicted with misinformation from the chair, a Trustee or member of the staff.   Firfer would not allow him to respond, and on one occasion, Trustee John Patton told Wulf to "shut up and sit down."  When Wulf persisted, the police were called. 

Firfer's new plan – to limit public participation in Board meetings – is a recipe for dissent and a ticket to her political demise.  If the Board's President were a true and thoughtful leader, she would expand the time for public comment.  Alas, she is a former school teacher who still hopes for order in the classroom and obedience from the kids.

Did anyone notice, by the way, that a short time after vowing to uphold the Board's rules on public comment, and after bringing a discussion back to the Board,  Firfer's friend Norma Morrison raised her hand and was allowed to ask a question without filling-out an official card.  Tsk, tsk.  Would the same courtesy have been extended to Art Wulf?

HYPOCRISY STRIKES AGAIN

Kent Fuller, who is active in the regional ecology coalition called Chicago Wilderness, proposed Tuesday the Village join that group to get more information about maintaining natural areas. 

Fuller oversaw the writing of a manifesto from Chicago Wilderness recommending "that a high priority be given to identifying and preserving important, but unprotected natural communities, especially those threatened by development, and protecting areas that can function as large blocks of natural habitat through restoration and management."

When local environmentalists called on the Village Board to preserve the Northern Triangle, contiguous to the wild, "garbage hill" golf course and river basin, Fuller voted to sell the property to Home Depot for a big box shopping center.

The Biodiversity Recovery Plan calls on public agencies to "give consideration to the presence of endangered and threatened species" in their land acquisition plans.

Fuller knows very well that rare and endangered birds depend on grasslands around the prairie for food and nesting sites, but he has not pressed for enforcement of a local ordinance (the ESA)  that would protect their habitat from development.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ONE OF OUR FAVORITE WILDLIFE WATCHERS

Evelyn Tyner, who has fought long and hard to preserve the natural places in Glenview, will at last get her public due.  After helping to save the Grove, the Woodworth and Air Station prairies, the smiling seventy-something Saint Ev will be honored when a visitors center at the Air Station Prairie is named for her.  At last, a Village Board vote we love!

GLENVIEW WATCH WISHES THEM WELL

A speedy recovery to cable TV maven Barbara Hines, Karen Rosenblue, the south Glenview dynamo, sidelined from her classroom by a broken foot, and star of the Glenview stage, Rachelle McClarren.  A warm welcome home to John and Mary Crawford who left Florida and brought the sunshine back to Glenview.

SAVE THE DATE

The Glenview League of Women Voters hosts a meeting with Bruce Burch, chairman of the Appearance Commission and a member of the Glen Redevelopment Commission, at 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 15, in the Glenview Public Library's conference room


YOUR TURN

What's on your mind? Drop us a line by e-mail at GlenviewWatch@aol.com or the old-fashioned way. We're at 3537 Maple Leaf Drive, Glenview, IL 60025. Thanks for reading. Dean Schott and Sandy Hausman, Co-Editors of The Watch.

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