Tonight’s Park Ridge City Council Committee of the Whole (“COW”) meeting (City Hall, 7:00 p.m.) has two agenda [pdf] items dealing with land that got our attention for different reasons.

The first of those comes under the Procedures & Regulations section of the COW and is titled “Land use alternatives / 1200 Elm Street.”  The Agenda Cover Memo [pdf] contains the recommendation of the City’s Director of Community Preservation & Development, Carrie Davis, that the Council ask the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission (“P&Z”) to consider a zoning map amendment changing the old City Garage property at Greenwood and Elm from its current R-2 zoning to either R-3 or R-4.  Not uncharacteristically for work product from Ms. Davis, her recommendation provides no explanation of why this should be done, or done now.

As we wrote in our post ”Not The Time To Re-Zone Greenwood & Elm” (05.26.10), there is no good reason to fiddle with the zoning of that property at this time.  The proper time to consider a zoning change is when a real live developer comes to the City with a real live plan for that property which the City is interested in exploring.  Re-zoning in a vacuum, especially for such a unique parcel, is both premature and foolish.

But it’s the second land-related agenda coming under the Public Works section of the COW that is the more intriguing one, identified benignly as “Parking – Target Area 4.”  As stated in the applicable Agenda Cover Memo [pdf], this particular study was instigated by 5th Ward Ald. Robert Ryan, who requested Staff to look into “long term parking” related to future redevelopment of what is known as Target Area 4 of the City’s Uptown Plan. 

Instead of just coming right out and saying so, the wording of the memo by Deputy City Mgr. Juliana Maller suggests that the purpose of this exercise is to consider the City’s acquisition of the parking lot it has been renting for several years from the Scharringhausen Family.  And although Maller writes that “it is difficult to recommend land banking during these difficult economic times,” she doesn’t recommend against it but simply passes the buck by asking the Council to “Discuss and Provide direction to staff.”

We think “land banking” by the City is a bad idea, especially when the City already has shown itself to be completely incompetent at it – as it displayed with its money-losing purchase of the white elephant 229 S. Courtland property just south of City Hall a few years back.  Why should a purchase of 20 S. Fairview from the Scharringhausens turn out any better?

We questioned the sweetheart nature of the City’s parking deal with the Scharringhausens two years ago in our post ”The Politics Of Park Ridge Parking” (06.04.08), noting that it looked like the City was helping the Scharringhausens carry this asset until the right developer came along to cash them out for big bucks.  But with no developers on the horizon, is Ald. Ryan trying to get City taxpayers to cash out Scharringhausen?  After all, Ryan voted to give $400,000 to Bill Napleton to clean up his contaminated property, so using tax dollars for private purposes is not unprecedented for Ryan.

Our suspicions are raised even more by the fact that the property’s listing agent [pdf] is none other than one of Park Ridge’s consummate insiders, Owen Hayes II.  As we reported in “515 Busse Highway – The Park Ridge Police Station That Almost Was” (11.15.07), Hayes was on the verge of helping one of his clients turn a nifty $200,000 profit on what is now the Avenues to Independence building by selling it to the City…until  it was discovered that the lucky undisclosed “client” was Hayes himself.  How convenient!

As for a Ryan/Hayes connection, let’s start with the fact that Hayes was Ald. Ryan’s campaign treasurer [pdf].  Might that explain Ryan’s sudden interest in the City exploring the acquisition of property on which Hayes might earn a $35,000+ commission?  That’s not quite a Patti Blagojevich commission, but it’s not bad for sleepy little Park Ridge.

Whether these dots can be connected into a Chicago-style kinky land deal or whether they are just random circumstances coming together by mere happenstance is not yet clear – just like it’s not yet clear why Ald. Jim Allegretti has such an inordinate interest in putting up four billboard’s in the Second Ward. 

Maybe Ryan will explain it tonight.  Or not.