We recently got a belated comment to our April 30, 2008 article, “The Twilight Zone of Park Ridge Zoning” (criticizing the proposed expansion of R-5 multi-family zoning to the entire Uptown “Central Business District”) from Joe Baldi, former School Dist. 64 Board member, former 5th Ward alderman, and currently one of the members of the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission who voted for that expansion at the April 28th P&Z meeting. 

Baldi took issue with our crediting of Cathy Piche instead of his reputed political ally, Aurora Abella-Austriaco, as the P&Z member who joined with Milda Roszkiewicz in a losing effort to keep R-5 limited to the B-4 zoned “core” of Uptown instead of letting it expand to an area which looks on the map[pdf] to be about 75% again the size of the B-4 zoning district to which R-5 is currently confined.

We confess to having taken that vote result from the Journal and Topics article on that meeting (“Decision Made: R-5 Zoning Limited To Uptown,” April 30), so if they were wrong we were wrong.  Unfortunately, we presently have no way to determine whether Baldi’s or the Journal’s account of this vote is correct because not even draft minutes from that P&Z meeting are posted on the City’s website as we post this article.

Besides lobbying for Ms. Austriaco, however, Mr. Baldi took issue with our characterizing the six P&Z members who voted for the R-5 expansion as “rolling over for the developers.”  Baldi noted that they did eliminate the zoning ordinance language by which property “adjacent” to the Central Business District also could have qualified for R-5 zoning.  In other words, he was inviting a pat on the back for himself and his fellow P&Zers for getting half a loaf when the whole loaf was available.    

So instead of giving Mr. Baldi and his fellow P&Zers who voted for R-5 expansion (Mayor Frimark appointees/re-appointees Anita Rifkind, Tom Provencher, Chairman Alfredo Marr, Louis Arrigoni, and either Aurora Abella-Austriaco or Cathy Piche) a pat on the back, we want to know why they voted to expand R-5 even one inch beyond the B-4 borders?  Why make those good-sized chunks of Uptown[pdf] available for developers to jam even more condos into an already too-dense area?  How does that enhance the unique character and feel of our community?

And we’d also like to know why the citizens who appeared at that meeting and objected to the expansion beyond the B-4 area were generally ignored by the P&Z majority, just as they were ignored when they opposed giving the Frimark-connected developer (Bruce Adreani and Norwood Builders) of Executive Office Plaza a variance for eight extra condo units in another R-5 development planned for 168 units? 

For decades Park Ridge developed a well-deserved reputation as a “wonderful place to live and work” because of its neighborhoods of single-family homes providing small-town character and charm.  But since 2003, new condo developments have been turning our unique community into just another stop on the Union Pacific’s Northwest Line, making it look more and more like a Des Plaines or a Mt. Prospect.

That’s what you and your fellow P&Zers are doing to our town with your zoning variances and your R-5 zoning expansions, Mr. Baldi.  And you will get no pat on the back from us for that.