When is “senior housing” not really “senior housing”?  That’s what the Park Ridge City Council hopes to find out in the next two weeks as it refines the language of a proposed ordinance that could permit added residential density for the project known as Executive Office Plaza (“EOP”).

Developer Park Ridge 2004 LLC and its contractor, Norwood Builders (collectively, “Norwood”) is trying to squeeze 168 condominium units onto the EOP site that legally accommodates 160 units under the City’s R-5 zoning classification.  At an estimated average price of $500,000 per unit and a fifteen percent (15%) profit margin, an 8-unit variance could mean $600,000 or more in additional profit to Norwood. 

In order to get those 8 extra units, Norwood has promised to include fifty units of “senior housing.”  This “senior housing,” however, is not the kind offered at places like Summit Square: These “senior housing” units will be pretty much the same as the development’s regular units, except that they will be limited to owners/occupants at least fifty-five years old.  What is supposed to make them “senior housing” is the “senior services” that are being promised by Norwood and elder-care provider Presbyterian Homes.

After questions were raised earlier this month about ensuring that these 50 units would become and remain “senior”-owned/occupied, our City Attorney and Norwood’s attorney came up with an ordinance to address that matter.  But at the Council meeting on October 15, 1^st Ward Ald. Dave Schmidt, an attorney, noted that the ordinance as drafted had loopholes “big enough to drive a condo through” – which would excuse at least 10 of these units (and perhaps all 50) from ever becoming “senior housing,” and which could also enable the owners of “senior housing” units to opt out of that designation in as little as 18 months, as 7th Ward Ald. Frank Wsol also noted.

Schmidt and Wsol asked plenty of good questions – about exactly what “senior services” will be provided, which of them will be offered on-site rather than elsewhere, and for what guarantied time period they will be provided.  When no adequate answers were forthcoming from either City Attorney Hill or City Manager Tim Schuenke – and with all of Norwood’s representatives remaining strangely stone-faced and silent in their seats – the Council wisely voted 5-2 (4^th Ward Ald. James Allegretti and 5^th Ward Ald. Robert Ryan voting against) to defer the variance vote for two more weeks to give the attorneys a chance to clarify and improve the ordinance. 

Having followed the EOP development since its inception, we can’t shake the suspicion that the “senior housing” is little more than an end-game ruse by Norwood to get the variance needed to wring a bit more profit from the EOP site.  Many of the EOP neighbors feel the same way, which is why they are more than a little unhappy with their alderman, Robert Ryan, an unabashed Norwood supporter and apologist. 

But there’s an easy way to prove all the Doubting Thomases wrong: Norwood and Presbyterian Homes can agree to an enforceable, ironclad legal commitment – through a combination of unambiguous ordinance language, restrictive covenants running with the land, and well-drafted contracts – that such housing will from its inception be and remain, without reservation or qualification, strictly limited to “seniors,” and with a guaranty from both Norwood and Presbyterian Homes that an agreed-upon menu of specific on-site “senior services” will be provided by Presbyterian Homes for a minimum of 20 years at “market” prices. 

That would go a long way toward closing those condo-sized loopholes Ald. Schmidt uncovered.