Despite vocal objections from audience members, a City Council committee Tuesday endorsed zoning changes designed to promote development and greater density along Broadway on the North Side.
The panel backed a package of 22 ordinances affecting what could be built along Broadway from Montrose to Devon avenues, a span that includes Uptown and Edgewater. But most of the controversy covered the stretch from Foster to Devon, where many residents are angered by a rezoning that they say will invite congestion and higher prices for housing and businesses.
The raw feelings were on vivid display at the meeting of the Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Buildings Standards. Several times, the temporary chairman, 44th Ward Ald. Bennett Lawson, ordered people removed from the Council chamber for heckling speakers favoring the rezoning.
The 15-2 vote supporting the ordinances sends them to the full Council, which could hold a final vote Thursday. Approval was expected, as three alderpersons whose wards touch Broadway sponsored the measures. The Council has a long-standing pattern of deferring to alderpersons on matters in their wards.
Despite Council deference to local alderpersons on zoning, the Broadway deal drew skepticism at the committee. The two nay votes came from 9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale and 3rd Ward Ald. Pat Dowell.
A third committee member, 42nd Ward Ald. Brendan Reilly, said he disliked the “very very broad brush” used on Broadway, although he didn’t vote on the matter.
Taking the most heat was Edgewater’s 48th Ward Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth. Critics have accused her of ramming the changes through without working with constituents, considering alternatives or calling for city studies on issues such as traffic and parking.
She has insisted she met with people throughout her ward and that she is taking action on problems the neighborhood identified more than 20 years ago.
Manaa-Hoppenworth, who is not a committee member, closed the 90-minute debate by saying more density on Broadway would revitalize a community that has gotten too expensive for many. Getting an apartment in Edgewater, she said, “is a golden ticket. But it shouldn’t be that way.”
She told alderpersons, “Housing affordability is No. 1, and we love our small businesses. We don’t want them to close, and we want to support them.”
The rezoning was worked out with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration via the city’s planning department. It drafted a Broadway land use framework adopted as a general policy in February.
The agency said the new zoning would implement the framework by filtering a confusing hash of more than 20 zoning categories along Broadway.
Most of the street would get a B3-5 zoning designation, a relatively dense proposal for a commercial street outside of Downtown. It would generally allow for buildings seven or eight stories tall, both for residential or commercial use.
Opponents have organized under a group called Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development, which has assailed the plan as “blank-check upzoning” that will do little for housing affordability.
“This is a Downtown vision for Edgewater that the Edgewater residents do not support,” Patricia Sharkey, a group organizer, told the committee during the 30 minutes it set aside for public testimony.
She said the group gave the committee a petition opposing the rezoning that had signatures of 600 residents.
Others in the limited time for public comment assailed the plan. But some residents supported it, including Monique Stinson of Edgewater Glen, who said, “The current zoning is suffocating our housing supply” and hurting use of the nearby Red Line, running east of Broadway.
Each public speaker was limited to two minutes. Individuals were chosen by lottery, as many wanted to address alderpersons. The testimony was closely divided for or against the ordinances.
Several people who said they own property affected by the rezoning said they never received notice of a change as required by ordinance.
Lawson, however, said the city met its obligations to notify property owners. Many notices posted along the street were torn down or defaced, he said, and were later replaced.
The issue could form the basis of a lawsuit that the rezoning’s critics are contemplating.
