Village Debates Housing Plan for Retirees, Young Professionals

A development looking to amend its annexation agreement with New Lenox hopes to introduce new housing styles to cater to the current market in a time that many people are looking to downsize. 

The Heather Glen Townhomes development, located off Laraway Road just east of Schoolhouse Road, has a few residences occupied but has otherwise remained a ghost town since the housing market crash. The development has been owned by First United Bank for about a year. 

At Monday's meeting, trustees debated whether a plan to bring the project back to life that would meet the standards laid out by the village.

The original developer made a "logical" decision at the time, based on the marketplace, but a 90 percent drop in Chicago-area housing starts since 2006 made it necessary to re-think the project, said counsel Art Zwemke.

"We’re still not out of the woods here by any stretch of the imagination," he said. "What we need to do is deal with the reality of the marketplace but also keep in mind the standsards this village has set for housing."

Instead of a development full of townhomes, the new plan calls for "a product that would be appealing to a broad range of buyers depending on where they are in the life cycle," including young professionals, empty-nesters and retirees. This includes: 

• Ranch villa, a single-story home targeted at the empty-nester
• Townhomes that would be two stories
• Flat-over-flats

The newly proposed site plan calls for 195 homes within 56 buildings. The ranch villas would occupy the interior of the development with townhomes on the perimeter. 

Overall, the development's layout was very similar, though there were some deviations from village code. 

One major point of contention was whether basements were required. In the proposed amendment, they would be optional. That brought up concerns with storage and quality of the buildings. 

Rick Rot, a resident who lives in one of the completed Heather Glen building, worried about the lack of storage, especially if basements were optional.

"We’re afraid they’re going to use the garage for storage," he said. "That could be three cars that never see the garage. Cars could end up in the street or the driveaway. We feel the basements are imperative for storage."

Trustees grilled the petitioners on the plans for nearly two hours, asking questions about the quality of the buildings and what material they would use. 

One proposal to use slab on grade got the attention of trustee Dave Smith, who opposed that idea. 

"It's an inferior product, can’t control heat," Smith said. "I’ve lived in one and spent two years chasing mice."

The slab on grade construction concerned some trustees, but the size of the homes was a point of contention. 

"Gone are the days of the dining room," Mayor Tim Baldermann said. "I’ve got two boys living in a townhome and they’ve never even walked into their basement. I think it will be years and years and years before that comes back.

"Our position up here in general was we don’t ever want to give up on the quality, but we do have to be realistic as to what the marketplace will be. To suggest that any time soon it’s going to go back to the 300,000-square-foot homes, I don’t think that’s realistic."

Smith argued about the quality, or potential lack of quality, with such buildings, but Baldermann said there is a way to maintain quality and offer different styles of housing. 

"The bigger slap in the face is they’re out there with tumbleweeds going by for 20 years because no one can afford them," he said. 

Trustee Annette Bowden said she didn't oppose the changes except for sab on grade and perhaps optional basements.

"I believe in as much storage as possible in any unit," she said. "At one point in time they’re going to need storage somewhere."

Baldermann said that if there have been improvements to slab on grade construction that could minimize issues, the board shouldn't legislate a residents' preference of whether to have a basement.

"My isse with the slab on grade is if it’s no longer a construction issue for people and it’s more just a personal preference that we think more people would want basements, do we kill this project just because of personal preference?"

The board will bring back the issue for a second read at a later meeting.