Despite Debate Over Affordable Housing Mandates, Village Board Approves Old Orchard Revamp
SKOKIE, IL — Village trustees approved the first phase of Westfield Old Orchard’s $100 million redevelopment, authorizing a plan to reshape the shopping center with new residential and retail developments.
Much of the discussion before Tuesday’s vote focused on affordable housing, which the project’s developers have included voluntarily.
The Skokie Village Board approved an inclusionary housing ordinance in May that requires a project the size of the Old Orchard redevelopment to include 7 percent affordable units. But village officials said the developers submitted their initial proposal to staff before the ordinance was passed, so it does not apply.
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Paris-based mall owner Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, or URW, and Chicago-based partner Focus Development pledged to set aside 3.5 percent of homes in the project as affordable for the first 25 years. That comes out to 15 apartments among the 425 to be built in the first phase.
“I know, Focus, you didn’t have to do it, but you did provide some inclusionary housing options for our residents,” Trustee Keith Robinson said ahead of the board’s 6-1 votes in favor of the plan. “You heard and saw the spirit of our desire.”
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“Even if it’s 3.5 percent, I appreciate it,” Robinson said. “And I hope more people appreciate it.”
Focus Executive Vice President for Development Justin Pelej said the project was initially planned with zero affordable units.
“So the 3.5 [percent], to be honest, it’s a complete economic issue,” Pelej said. “We run the numbers, we have to make sure this deal is financeable, it gets built, and we’re at that threshold at 3.5 percent.”
The lone vote against the project, Trustee James Johnson, failed to garner any support on the board for a requirement to increase the number of units or require a cash payment into a fund to support affordable units.
“Our inclusionary policy already has some of the most minimal requirements of any inclusionary housing policy in the country. It is already a pretty weak ordinance, and so meeting its requirements is not too much to ask, especially from a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation like Westfield, in my opinion,” Johnson said.
Johnson suggested village staff had done too much to help with the plans to redevelop its largest sales tax producer, including facilitating meeting between board members and executives from URW and Focus.
“The board, I would argue, publicly lied by labeling the shopping center as a blighted area in order to add an additional 1 percent sales tax at the mall and allow Westfield to take an additional $80 million or more from consumers to help fund this luxury redevelopment,” he said.
“I strongly believe that if we are going to go to such great lengths to support Westfield and, in many ways, act more like a business partner than a regulatory body,” he said, “I think that Westfield should absolutely have to comply with the really minimal affordable housing requirements in our policy.”
Trustee Alison Pure-Slovin, herself a registered lobbyist with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said there was nothing untoward about meeting with representatives of the developers at Village Hall while considering the project.
“That’s how politics work,” Pure-Slovin said.
“I lobby in Springfield on behalf of an organization that I work for. I go into the offices of the legislators. It’s not illegal to lobby or to give information through lobbyists in any way, shape, or form, which is what you were suggesting,” she told Johnson.
Mayor George Van Dusen said village trustees would be legally liable if they rejected the proposal because it did not meet the new affordable housing requirements.
“If we turn down this project because we don’t agree with the affordable housing component, it’s not that Westfield can walk away, Westfield can sue us, and we would lose,” Van Dusen said.
“Take note of that: we will lose, because you cannot compel a petitioner to comply with something that is not in law,” the mayor added.
“They politely skirted it and didn’t say it, but they are not legally bound to have a single unit of affordable housing,” he said. “And that’s all we’ve talked about tonight is affordable housing.”
Van Dusen pointed out that Skokie currently has the highest proportion of affordable units in the region at nearly 22 percent.
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Among the eight other towns in the area that have inclusionary housing laws on the books, the number of affordable homes has dropped in half of them. Meanwhile, all but one of the 14 suburbs without inclusionary zoning have shown an increase in the number of affordable units.
“Maybe they’re telling us something,” he said. “Inclusionary zoning is not a magic wand.”
Read more: Skokie Trustees To Review Plans For Hundreds of Apartments, Hotel at Westfield Old Orchard
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