This past Tuesday night developer Trammell Crow made its initial presentation to the City’s Planning & Zoning Commission for a 126-unit apartment building proposed for the site of the current Advocate Health office building at 205 West Touhy.

Regular readers of this blog know that we have no love for new multi-family residential structures in Park Ridge.  Not only do we believe the density that comes with such buildings is problematic for a mature community such as ours, with it’s dated infrastructure, but the cost of educating every child that might live in multi-family units tends to be even more disproportionate to the property taxes generated by those units than it is for single-family residential property.

The 126 units Trammell Crow wants are a full 40 units more than the current zoning permits.  That normally would be a non-starter for the Commission, if past decisions (albeit by a different cast of characters than presently comprise the Commission) are any guide.  That’s not to say, however, that at least some members of the Commission wouldn’t accept a number of units between 86/87 and 126.

And THAT’s what Trammell Crow might be betting on.

The economics of almost any multi-family structure are a “loser” for Park Ridge taxpayers, unless those units are occupied by childless couples who will be contributing 33% of their units’ real estate taxes to Park Ridge-Niles Elementary School District 64 and another 30%-plus to Maine Township High School District 207, while at the same time using no D-64 or D-207 services.   That’s because just one child in D-64 costs approximately $13,000 a year to educate, while a large single-family home paying $20,000 in annual RE taxes doesn’t cover even one-half the annual educational cost of that student.

But according to the developer, this project will contain smaller units (1 and 2 bedroom) instead of the 3 and 4-bedroom units such projects typically include.  And if the developer is to be believed, those smaller units will still rent for between $1,800 and $3,000 per month, primarily to people without children – whom we are being told are now called “power couples.”

In a previous incarnation they were known as “DINKS”: double incomes, no kids.

Why such couples would choose to spend $1,800 to $3,000 a month on rent for a 1 or 2-bedroom apartment in Park Ridge is, frankly, beyond our comprehension.  And from their reactions Tuesday night, several commissioners seemed equally uncomprehending, if not outright skeptical.  As they should be.

Instead of “power couples,” we’re betting the 2-bedroom units are far more likely to draw single parents who want their kids in Park Ridge schools but can’t afford (or don’t want to pay) the down payment and/or monthly mortgage debt service for a condo or single family home.  So either Trammell Crow has a way better sense of what it can sell in the Park Ridge market than we do, or it’s trying to blow a lot of smoke up a number of people’s kilts.

We’ve seen this movie before, so we know how it ends.  And we’re taking the latter.

Judging from comments by several P&Z commissioners and the heads of other commissioners nodding in agreement, 40 units over the Zoning Code’s 86-unit maximum isn’t going to happen – notwithstanding a nifty argument from the developer’s representatives that the exact same size structure on the exact same footprint could conform to the Code’s density requirements by substituting 3 and 4-bedroom units for the 1 and 2-bedroom ones.  In other words, the 40 extra units would be of no practical consequence to the number of people actually living on the site.

Park Ridge’s Zoning Code was re-written approximately 7 years ago.  The current Code, therefore, represents a relatively contemporary community view – a/k/a, its “public policy” – of how property in Park Ridge should be developed, including the density of dwelling units.

We assume the folks who served on the City’s Ad Hoc Zoning Ordinance Re-Write Committee (Kirke Machon, Rich DiPietro, Ann Tennes, attorney Gary Zimmerman, Atul Karkhanis, attorney Ellen Upton, Brian Kidd,  Philip Mitchell, attorney Cynthia Funkhouser, Timothy Metropolus, Rob Lohens, Judy Barclay, attorney Joseph Cwik, attorney Terry McConville, Tom Provencher, Anita Rifkind and attorney Aurora Abella-Austriaco, with the assistance of professional zoning consultants) properly considered how the number and size of dwelling units – be they apartments, condominiums, townhouses, or single family homes – would impact the areas in which they are located.

So when any developer comes along and asks for close to a 50% variance in the amount of dwelling units, we have to wonder whether the City has acquired a reputation for being such a pushover that developers actually believe they can get such variances; or, alternatively, that it has acquired a reputation of split-the-baby compromise, thereby emboldening developers to ask for 40 extra units with the expectation that they’ll get 20.

Either way, if true, tends to make a mockery out of the City’s Zoning Code.  And it turns the Code into mere suggestions that Groucho Marx could have been describing when he announced:

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.”

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