THE DEAL IS SEALED FOR WAGNER FARM

Norma Morrison shed tears at last night's meeting of the Glenview Park District when officials announced the purchase of  Wagner Farm.  The Wagner estate has agreed to sell the farm for $7.2 million – $400,000 more than the original Park District bid.  The agreement will be finalized today (Friday) with closing set for July 31.

Morrison launched the original fight for Wagner in 1988 with the help of Glenview residents Henry Hill, Mike Luxem and 11-year-old Kiley Klint.  Morrison presented a petition to the Village Board bearing more than 4,000 signatures in support of acquiring the farm for Glenview, but the board had little interest – one trustee pointing out that the land was privately owned. A week later, Morrison took her petitions to the Park District and began building the organization that Luxem dubbed Citizens Organized for Wagner Farm or COWS.

Last night, Morrison praised the COWS board (Hill, Luxem, Biff Thiele, Alexis Reynolds, Sandy Hampton, Mark Steger, Joan Neymark, Dar Mandel and Joe Warga) and told the Park Board, "Thank you for acquiring this treasure for the people of Glenview."

HIGH WINDS HIT GLENVIEW
   
Phone lines were jammed at Village Hall this morning after winds gusting up to 60 miles an hour knocked-out power and downed trees across most of  Glenview west of Greenwood Thursday evening.  The fire department, which received hundreds of calls, said no one was injured, but some basements were flooded and some people were still without power at 9 a.m. Friday.  Commonwealth Edison predicted service would be restored to all residents by noon.

If you need help with trees on Village parkways, call 724-1700, hit zero and ask for the department of public works.  To tell us about your storm damage, click "reply," write and send.
NIGHTMARE ON WILLOW ROAD

...With apologies to Freddy Krueger

When Home Depot applied for permission to build a big box shopping center with about 2000 parking spaces, it was required to submit a traffic impact study to the Village, and the authors of that report predicted a disaster that Glenview's Village Board appears to be ignoring.

The Rosemont-based consultant, a company called KLOA, found that  the level of traffic on Willow already exceeds the volume predicted for the year 2007 by 14 percent.  The report notes that an industrial park is planned east of the Home Depot site and that new stores are being built near Target and Kohl's down the road. 

It also refers to on-going development at the base where four-story office buildings are expected to bring 2000 workers a day to Glenview and concludes:  "If additional/improved capacity is not provided ... the Willow Road corridor at every major intersection from the Edens Expressway west to the Tri-State Tollway will break down creating major vehicular queues which will force through traffic to use alternate routes such as Lake Avenue and Dundee Road."

The consultants say "widening Willow Road in the near future is not going to be easily accomplished."  They point-out that a railroad overpass east of the Home Depot site and an underpass west of the site will be very expensive, and getting the right-of-way west of Shermer Road  (already developed with high-density housing) will take a very long time.

Some traffic experts also say that widening a road may not make things better.  Studies have shown that soon after the opening of additional lanes, busy highways are backed-up again because folks who had sought alternatives – like mass transit or surface streets – are drawn back by the prospect of a faster trip on a wider road.

Editor's note:For those who are salivating over the prospect of sales and property taxes on the northern end of the base, one obvious answer may be difficult to swallow.  Should plans for another shopping center and industrial park be scaled back?  Click "reply," write and send.

FYI - Construction on Willow will reduce the road to 2-lanes near the Base from late May through October.

OTHER MEDIA WATCH

This week's Glenview Announcements contains a number of errors and accusations that are simply not true.  The editorial, titled "Bad politics" begins with a mention of Catellus and Home Depot, firms that the paper says are building a shopping center on the north side of Willow Road.  Actually, Home Depot is building a big box shopping center in collaboration with Willow Associates – the company responsible for Target and Kohl's down the street.  Catellus is the company that holds an option to buy land for an industrial park south of Willow.  It's first 4-story building is going up at the northwest corner of the Base.

The editorial accuses me (Sandy Hausman) of trying to "politically bully" those I "helped elect."  While it is true that I supported John Crawford, Rachel Cook and Donna Pappo last spring, the three have clearly shown themselves to be independent Trustees who make up their own minds.  I have disagreed with many of their votes and have publicly criticized them. 

The Announcements also asserts that if the Trustees listen to the wishes of constituents like me and request changes to the original plan for redevelopment at the Base, they are "disregarding the wishes of the 1995 majority."

Which "majority" does the editor refer to?  No vote was ever taken on the Consensus Reuse Plan.  Glenview didn't even take a poll.  Instead, a small group of political insiders held public hearings and then crafted a plan to their liking.  At the time, Glenview residents knew nothing about the prairie.  Heatherfield, Royal Ridge and Stonegate had not been developed.  Target and Kohl's had not been built.  In short, we were a very different community.

It would be foolish and irresponsible of the Trustees not to modify plans at the Base given what has happened since 1995.  In fact, the previous board – all members of the Village United Party – voted unanimously to make a major change to the Consensus Reuse Plan when they okayed a new 18-hole golf course.  At the time, they cited the need to minimize traffic impact and increase open space, clearly responding to a public perception that Glenview might be developing too much.  Did anyone hear the Glenview Announcements grousing about the "will of the majority" then?

In a news story, the Announcements describes plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the village as members of the Glenview Prairie Preservation Project.  In fact, I am the only plaitiff who belongs to that group of more than a hundred active members and contributors.  The other five plaintiffs are not members. 

The paper quotes Trustee John Patton who was outraged when I contacted Catellus to discuss environmental issues and Trustee John Crawford wanted to ask the company a question.   "I find it destructive of the best interests of this Village when Village Trustees and their political supporters make statements threatening the business relationships we have with land owners who are actually seeking to preserve open space in this town."

To me, that statement begs an obvious question that the Announcements didn't ask: How could building a shopping center and an industrial park be interpreted as preserving open space?  And do Patton's  "business relationships" come before his obligation to the people of Glenview?

Patton is also quoted as saying: "I think it's out of line when individuals, for political purposes, try to bully land owners who are trying to further the best interests of this town."

Much as I would like to think it, Mr. Patton, I seriously doubt that a corporate entity like Home Depot can be bullied by me or any other citizen.  It takes strong leadership, in government, to ensure that developers act in the best interests of communities.  Sadly, our own government is compromised by its current status as a developer.
 
The paper's editorial accuses me of "subverting the political process."  In fact, I have worked within the political process for the past three years, organizing residents of the community and informing them about the issues that Village officials have tried to obscure.  My files are filled with Freedom of Information Act requests refused by the Village Manager on the grounds that Glenview is engaged in secret real estate transactions that need not be disclosed to the public.

I have joined with other citizens in speaking to the Board, writing letters to the editor, circulating petitions and supporting candidates who shared some of my views on development.  That is how a democracy works when people get involved, and the Announcements' characterization of my work as "bad politics," is really a reflection of the paper's profound pro-development bias. 

Finally, the Announcements suggests that I misrepresented a conversation between myself and Dan Marcus, the Chicago-based representative for Catellus.  Mr. Marcus and I met at a Village Board meeting.  He gave me his card and invited me to contact him for discussions of environmental issues.  Higher-ups at Catellus may have disagreed with Marcus, but that does not mean that the conversation was misrepresented.  I have been a reporter for more than 25 years.  I was a news director for WKQX, NBC's radio station in Chicago, the afternoon anchor for CBS-owned WBBM radio and the Chicago correspondent for public radio's business program, Marketplace .  In those roles, I became very good at listening to what people had to say,  and I stand by my account of the conversation with Dan Marcus.

A GREEN LIGHT FOR ABT
   
As expected, the Glenview Village Board approved re-zoning of property along Milwaukee Avenue for Abt, the appliance store planning to build a warehouse and showroom nearly three times the size of its current facility.  Usually, trustees are given the minutes from the Plan Commission meeting at which re-zoning is recommended, but this time those minutes were missing. 

"Unfortunately, the Plan Commission secretary's computer crashed," said Planning Director Mary Bak.

The minutes would have reminded Trustees of some highly suspect statistics that Abt presented in making its bid for re-zoning.  Plan Commissioner Howard Silver – an expert in real estate accounting –  found half a dozen serious flaws in the analysis and exposed the real possibility that Glenview will match Morton Grove by rebating half of Abt's sales tax dollars.

Ignoring the questionable analysis,  Bak repeated Abt's claim that the development on Milwaukee will net $700,000 for School District 34 and $400,000 for School District 225.  She stressed that the daily addition of 115 delivery trucks and vans, the cars of about 600 employees and traffic generated by customers would come outside of peak travel times, having little impact  during rush hour.

Bak also trotted-out the familiar "it could be worse," argument, pointing out that a 1985 annexation agreement allows development of even more space at that site.  Trustee Larry Carlson agreed.   "We have a choice here.  We can have another huge office/industrial complex – which we have far too many of now – putting on a thousand cars at eight o'clock and a thousand cars at five o'clock, and then Milwaukee Avenue's really going to be bad, or we can have a store like Abt and have that traffic spread out throughout the day." 

"If this was a K-mart of a Best Buy – drive by one of them and take a look at the store that Abt has built over on Waukegan Road.  They didn't have to build it that way.  They built it that way because they wanted to.  I think we've got a chance here to get one of the best stores on the whole north shore here in Glenview – maybe one of the best stores in the whole country."

(Don't tell Mr. Carlson, but his allies on the board were the very same people who happily approved contracts for the industrial park and Home Depot at the Base.)
   
Trustee John Patton, Jr. noted that "people have legitimate concerns about traffic and cutting down trees, and I share those, but we also – as trustees – wear the fiduciary hats in terms of making a decision on how we regulate land."

   He ruled out public purchase of the property for preservation. "We kind of went through that discussion in October, November and December on the open space referendum, and I didn't see a lot of support for the village getting into the condemnation business."

Patton then talked about a proposal put forth by Sharon Riley, a resident of Swainwood who was active in efforts to preserve the Airmen's Prairie.  She asked the Board to set aside some dollars from sales tax revenue to purchase open space.  "I think that's a great idea," said Patton. 

Editor's note: The forces of development are powerful and well funded.  Only with strong local leadership can communities preserve open space.  We hope Trustee Patton will spend his last 11 months on the board working to make this "great idea" happen.  With regard to the proposal for an open space referendum, we note that no surveys were taken on public support for an open space referendum and the board opted not to put it on the ballot.  Northbrook, on the other hand, put a modest open space referendum on its ballot this spring.  It was approved by a substantial margin.

We also hope that Glenview will craft a fair deal with Abt.  The annexation agreement for the land in question does not oblige the buyer to pay for road improvements and installation of traffic lights.  Abt has promised these things.  Let's get it in writing.


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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