The Park Ridge City Council will be holding a special meeting tonight at 7:00 p.m. to vote on a first reading for both text and map amendments to the City’s Zoning Code. 

The one that caught our attention was the zoning map amendment for the property located at 255-257 N. Northwest Hwy, formerly “Audrey’s Calico ‘N Lace.”  If approved, the City’s zoning map will be amended to change that parcel from its current B-1 Retail and Office District designation to the R-3 Two-Family Residential District.  

Our questions: Why is this being done?  And why is it being done now?  

According to the draft minutes [pdf] of the June 9, 2009, Planning and Zoning Commission (“P&Z”)  public hearing on this map amendment and other zoning changes, P&Z Commissioner Joe Baldi asked why the subject parcel was not rezoned when the zoning ordinance was re-written a couple of years ago.  Good question, Joe.

The same minutes reflect that the City’s Director of Community Preservation and Development, Carrie Davis, blithely replied to Baldi that it probably wasn’t “considered an urgent matter at the time and that any rezoning would be subject to a redevelopment proposal.” Which inspires the re-asking of the question: Why now?

If the zoning map is amended, the property could hold two single-family houses (with an R-3 designation), or approximately four townhouses or seven multi-family (condo) residential units with an R-4 designation. 

Interestingly enough, rather than this map amendment request coming from the property owner or a developer, it seems to have been the brain-child of 5th Ward Ald. Robert Ryan, who hi credits/blames the “level of interest by residents in his ward” – although the minutes show only four of those residents (Pat Livensparger, Eddie Laken, Steve Buerk and Steve Schildwachter) actually speaking to the issue.

According to the P&Z minutes, Ryan invoked his membership on the Uptown Advisory Task Force and what the “Uptown Plan…recommends for the area where the properties are located” in advocating for a change from a commercial to a residential designation of the subject parcel.  He contended that such a change “would serve as a transition between the surrounding commercial areas and the residential neighborhoods.”

We hate to keep beating up on Ryan, but it’s hard to resist when he seems to be making stuff up out of whole cloth – in this case, about the Uptown Plan.  As best as we can tell (from the Uptown Plan’s map posted on the City’s website), the Uptown Plan’s area ends at Northwest Highway and Morris Avenue, almost a block south of the subject parcel!  That might explain why we couldn’t find anything in that Plan which “recommends” residential instead of commercial on that parcel.

Additionally, this particular one-block stretch of Northwest Hwy. – bordered by Elm on the north and Meacham on the east – is currently a zoning checkerboard, with most of the former Napleton Cadillac parking lot zoned B-1, despite the northern portion of that Napleton lot inexplicably zoned R-2; the property immediately northwest of that lot zoned B-1; the next parcel immediately northwest zoned R-4; and the subject property zoned B-1.

If that’s not commercial enough, immediately north of Elm, on the same east side of the street as the subject parcel, is 303 N. Northwest Hwy, the “Medical Arts Building,” housing doctors’ offices.  And further northwest of there, on the opposite side of the street, are two multi-unit office buildings.  So there’s nothing overwhelmingly “residential” about this stretch of Northwest Hwy. that would appear to justify this kind of attention and action at this time.

Finally, the passage of this map amendment could virtually ensure the demolition of one of the buildings currently on the site that served as the residence and art studio of Alphonso Ianelli, one of the patron saints of all those folks who fancy themselves the guardians of Park Ridge’s art and architectural history – like the members of the Park Ridge Historical Society and the Kalo Foundation.  So why aren’t those folks doing anything to preserve the status quo on – and the current structures – on that parcel? 

When it comes to land and land use in this town, it seems like things just keep on getting curiouser and curiouser.