Curb Overdevelopment

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Promoting sensible development by proactive legislation to curb overdevelopment and to cultivate preservation of historic landscapes and neighborhoods.

I started working on neighborhood preservation back in 1986 when I organized the Sherwood Forest neighborhood to object to a developer trying to brake the one acre zoning West of Ridge Road. I was one of the founding members of the Highland Park Conservation Society that has since that time been focused on preserving our natural landscapes in our community. Attending Plan Commission meetings for two years before I was appointed to the Commission in 1991, I took an active role in public hearings testifying for a need to keep a lid on densities and come up with controls to stop over building of properties that were way out of scale with our existing homes.

Being appointed to the Plan Commission in 1991 I immediately made an impact in how we dealt with Planned Unit Developments changing the laws to reduce density in our zoning ordinance. I took a strong stand against variances and worked on tightening dimensional controls to reduce the size of homes without taking value away from the properties. Shadowing the master plan process I personally took part in most of the neighborhood meetings where we lowered the density in several areas.

I supported the folks in the Kimballwood neighborhood to reduce the zoning from 4 units and acre to 2 units an acre. When the residents in the Vine triangle spoke up about their neighborhood homes getting torn down for condos, I helped them change the zoning from multifamily RM1 to a R7 single family zoning. Next, I worked with the neighbors up in the Moraine neighborhood and worked with the neighbors to reduced the amount of multifamily zoning. We created a less dense R7 single family district. We also went full steam into the master planning process where we took a portion of Sherwood Forest and created a R5a zoning district to stop one home being torn down on double lots and two homes going up in their place. I also led the charge on the lakefront with enacting a overlay district that requires a full acre of land to create any new building lot. I worked with the residents adjacent to the hospital and removed the high density multifamily and rezoned most of the neighborhood R7 single family.

During my last 12 years of being involved with the Plan Commission I have worked to stop tear-downs and retain our community character in our downtown as well as in our residential neighborhoods. I have sat in on many subcommittee discussions on bulk and character, also known as dimensional controls, and contributed to solutions. The ways we have dealt with this issue is by controlling building size, height, and yard setbacks. Having flexibility in those controls and allowing them to adjust to individual neighborhoods has been a challenge yet we have developed standards such as average front yard and side yard setbacks which have been a success.

I also initiated the sign notification initiative that gives neighbors and residents a chance to know that there is a land-use change. These increased notice provisions have allowed more public input and better projects for our community.

I also initiated the height moratorium in our downtown district to stop those monster developments from being built until we had a chance to study our development facts and focus on how we wanted our downtown to look like in the future. We have now adopted that land use policy and have changed our laws to follow our future vision of retaining our character and lower density objectives.

I have always supported strict guidelines in reducing newly created building lots within our community. We can't allow development to squeeze homes into every nook and cranny. While we have done much to reduce flag lot opportunities and other encroachments into bad building site decisions, there is still much more work to do.

In 2009 I hope to focus on the large open spaces left in Highland Park including our Skokie Valley. I believe by working with our Private Country Clubs, the Park District, and the schools, we can achieve a goal of a open space / conservation zoning district spelled out in our master plan. Public open spaces should not be sold or ever used for development unreasonably. To this end I am looking to conserve and create conservation easements where no development will ever occur on the majority of our public open lands.