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Westchester Residents Blast St. Joe’s Redevelopment Concept 


Village board members during a meeting on Feb. 9, where residents attended to express their opposition to a proposal to build two light industrial facilities on the former St. Joe’s campus. | File 

Wednesday, February 9, 2022 || By Michael Romain || @maywoodnews 

If the over 40 Westchester community members who attended a tense village board meeting on Tuesday evening had their way, a recent proposal to turn the old St. Joseph High School at 10900 West Cermak Rd. into a community center and light manufacturing complex would not have even been considered by village officials.  

That proposal sparked a deep, at times rather raucous, debate on Feb. 8 between residents and some village officials about how economic development should happen in Westchester. Many residents wanted board members and officials to reject out of hand the proposal to bring industrial activity into town — something those officials told residents is easier said than done. 

“I believe in a process,” said Westchester Acting Village President Nick Steker. “I believe if anyone in this room has any issue with the village, that you’re entitled to a process. We have hearings all of the time for all sorts of things. I believe in the process and no application has even been made.”

During the Feb. 8 meeting, Westchester village board members nonetheless cleared space for more than two hours of public comment, virtually all of it passionately against the proposal, even though the concept was not on the night’s agenda. 

Before the meeting, village officials created a 23-page FAQ about the proposal. During the meeting, they frequently echoed Steker, explaining that the vetting process was still in its infancy and that the developer, Westchester native and St. Joe’s alum Peter Burdi, has not filed a zoning application yet. 

Burdi wants to bring a Community Center to five acres spanning Cermak Road, which would be gifted to the village, and two 180,000-square-foot industrial buildings to roughly 24 acres of the site of the 29-acre high school campus. The area is currently zoned residential. 

Burdi said at a village board meeting on Jan. 25 that he’s tapped Ted Stec, the superintendent of Lombard School District 44, to flesh out the community center proposal, which would be lightly modeled on the Connect 44 Center, a 7-000-square-foot learning facility in Lombard for D44 students and area residents. 

Stec told board members last month that the center will be tailored to the needs of Westchester residents and stakeholders, adding that he plans on conducting a feasibility study to find out what those needs are. 

On Jan. 25, the Westchester village board held a voice vote to move the process along to the point of gathering community input before the proposal is vetted some more by the Planning and Zoning Commission. 

During that meeting, Trustee Tracy Jennings, a certified real estate appraiser, voiced his opposition to the proposal, arguing that it could harm property values of nearby homes and the community center could possibly duplicate services already provided in the village. He also pointed to a feasibility study by the consulting firm Gruen and Gruen, which found that a community center would not be a profitable enterprise in the village. 

“If I appraise a property,” he said, “I’ll have to look at everything around there and if I know there’s industrial 300 feet behind this property, I have to actually note that in the report, so that could have a negative impact along Mayfair and Boeger Avenue.”

After that meeting, Jennings published a Facebook post explaining his opposition to the proposal that has garnered hundreds of engagements (likes, shares, comments, etc.). He also created an online petition form signed by many residents who oppose the proposal.

Many of the dozens of people who packed the village board room on Feb. 8 said that they learned about the St. Joe’s proposal and the night’s meeting through Jennings’ Facebook post. They said they hoped more board members had acted like Jennings and more aggressively opposed the idea of bringing industrial activity to a residential area in Westchester. 

“Who came up with the brilliant idea to drop an industrial center right in the middle of the village?” said Michael Constantine Singleton, a Westchester resident who was so incensed at the idea that he announced that night he’d be running for trustee himself. “Why not a gentleman’s club?”

Vanessa Sanchez, a social services professional who said she recently moved into the village, volunteered herself for any committee that might help create a vision for Westchester not premised on the need to attract industrial development. She called the 24 acres that the redevelopment proposal allocates for two light industrial facilities a “large pile of poison.” 

Mariana Nicolae, who said she’s lived in Westchester since 1989 and worked with federal regulatory bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency for “half of my life” said she was alarmed by the type of businesses that might be attracted to the site. 

According to the village’s FAQ, the proposal “would be speculative in nature,” meaning the building would be constructed without a firm commitment from a user, but it would be built in order to make it conducive to “light assembly, food production, high-tech manufacturing, or last-mile distribution.” Officials said that possible tenants might include Pure Foods, Lowes, Siemens, Kroger and Baxter. 

“When you said industrial, I know exactly what that encompasses and what are the consequences of having an industrial site here,” Nicolae said. “Baxter International? You know what that encompasses? Chemicals? Chemicals in proximity to an elementary public school. Pollution in the soil. Pollution in the air. Pollution in the water.” 

Village officials have explained that since 2007, the St. Joe’s property has been marketed to “thousands of interested property buyers,” including homebuilders, grocery stores, data centers, medical schools and retail developers. But nothing has panned out for a variety of reasons that officials explained in the FAQ. 

In a Jan. 25 memo, village staffers said they’re “concerned that if the village keeps saying no, the property will sit vacant for decades.” 

More than 40 people attended the village board meeting on Feb. 8. | File 

But most people in attendance on Feb. 8 weren’t buying the explanation, with many complaining that the village seemed behind the curve both in attracting prospective developers and in communicating about Burdi’s proposal. 

Residents indicated that they want to see the village get more aggressive about outlining a vision that will guide development decisions in the future, so prospective developers know beforehand what projects are even worth presenting for consideration. 

Part of that vision was presented in rough draft on Tuesday night, with many attendees wondering why attracting more residential housing to the St. Joe’s site can’t work. 

Some attendees, such as Traci Jennings, an attorney, Westchester native and Trustee Jennings’ daughter, said younger professionals her age would be lured to the village if there were more housing and retail options. 

Matt Welch, the village’s attorney, said that the village has struggled attracting residential housing, in part because more households would mean more children enrolling in public schools, which would mean additional burdens on school budgets. That, in turn, would mean higher taxes, he said. Welch added that Westchester District 92.5 has filed a lawsuit related to the Tax Increment Financing district in which St. Joe’s is located and any prospective housing development built on the site.

Like a lot of what village officials said during the meeting, Welch’s explanation was met with robust skepticism from the audience, some of whom asked why the village had not already told them about the lawsuit and others questioned where they could find proof of it.

District 92.5 Superintendent Philip Salemi confirmed Wednesday that the lawsuit was filed last year in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Court records show that the lawsuit was filed by the D92.5 school board in June 2021 in the circuit court’s Chancery Division.  Salemi said the lawsuit was filed in order to protect taxpayers and community members. TIF districts effectively divert taxes from taxing bodies like school districts for 23 years.

If a residential development were built on the St. Joe’s site that attracted families with school-age children, that would likely result in the district getting an influx of students with no accompanying tax revenue to meet the additional burden. The lawsuit is designed to keep this from happening, Salemi said.

“It’s not that we don’t want housing, we just want to protect the taxpayer and the community,” Salemi said. “We’d be fine with whatever is built there, we just want to make sure there’s an agreement for us to get compensated.”

The skepticism and outrage extended to other explanations village staffers and officials provided in order to persuade audience members to trust the process and reassure them that their input would be considered. 

Village Administrator Paul Nosek, responding to residents who felt that they had not been properly informed about the proposal, directed audience members to the village’s website, where Burdi’s proposal was included on a meeting agenda last month. 

He said going forward, the village will conduct robocalls and circulate the FAQ to all affected households. A telephone town hall on the proposal is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 16, 7 p.m. Residents should call (708) 938-3120 to dial in or listen to the discussion. 

Keith Donovan, a Westchester resident who said he both attended and taught at St. Joe’s, wanted a more aggressive heads up from the village and a more robust denunciation of the idea of light industry being built in the area. 

“One trustee has said, ‘This is a bad idea,’” he said. “I’m waiting to hear from the other trustees before I dismiss them as not actually caring about the residents. To the other trustees, are you waiting for a formal proposal to say, ‘I think this is a bad idea’ … or do you let it sit and simmer?” 

Donovan and others said the village should have notified affected households about the proposal before Burdi’s presentation on Jan. 25. 

“Do I want what’s best for my community? Yes. I’m third generation here,” said Trustee Tracy Markey, in response to some of the audience feedback. 

“I want what’s best for our community. We’re not hiding anything,” she added. “We’re very transparent. We haven’t gotten an application yet. Are we going to go out and scare everybody about what we might have? No. Why would we go out and scare the public when there’s not even an applicant yet … We’re having a town hall meeting to introduce it to everybody. We’re following the steps.” 

“Informing is not scaring!” Traci Jennings interjected. 

Tuesday’s meeting was not all angry tirade. Before it ended, Steker said he’d commit to improving how the village communicates with residents about various committees and commissions, vowing to spotlight them regularly in the village newsletter.

There also seemed to be some consensus forming among officials and residents about when the village’s soft exploration of the controversial proposal turns into something more serious.  

Welch said that, because Burdi is a private developer and the St. Joe’s property is privately owned, “they have legal rights” that the village should not deny out of hand.

“We are exercising our police power and we have to exercise it within constitutional norms,” he said. 

Welch explained that Burdi’s proposal will be subject to a rigorous fact-finding process and will go through “layers of hearings,” as part of the planning and zoning vetting process. The Planning and Zoning Commission has the authority to submit a recommendation to the village board, which has the final say over whether or not the proposal becomes a reality. 

Welch said that, so far, the process is still in the conceptual stage. Things start getting much more serious, when developers start spending serious money as they get deeper into the planning and zoning process, he said. 

“It can cost hundreds and thousands of dollars,” he said. “That’s when things can become an issue and that is not until further down in the procedure. There are going to be checkpoints along the way and the first one coming up is [the Feb. 16] town hall.”

Angela Smith, a Westchester resident and municipal planning professional who sits on the village’s Planning and Zoning Commission, also explained the process and offered some cautionary advice to staffers and village officials. 

“The findings of facts will be brought forth to the village board and the village board can overturn those findings,” she said. “At the end of the day, those findings of fact can be overturned, as they were overturned when this room was filled for [a proposed cellular tower]. We did not recommend that, because public safety was one of the standards.” 

Smith said she wants to ensure “we don’t get too far into the process and money starts getting spent, because [the proposal] is being entertained.” 

To watch the Feb. 8 meeting once it becomes available, click here. To read the village’s full FAQ on the St. Joe’s proposal and to get more information about the Feb. 16 town hall, click here.

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