'Disingenous' Effort For Elmhurst Apartment Building: Resident

ELMHURST, IL – An Elmhurst resident on Monday contended the city is taking part in a "disingenuous" plan to give tax subsidies to a developer that wants to build a theater and apartment complex.

Resident Laurie Nourse Buzzell was referring to Minneapolis-based Ryan Companies' plan to build a 185-unit apartment building along with a long-awaited performing arts center. It would be at the northeast corner of First Street and Addison Avenue.

The company is working with the Elmhurst Centre for the Performing Arts, a nonprofit group.

"It appears as if the city is allowing Ryan Companies to hide behind (the nonprofit) in order to build its apartment building," Buzzell said. "The inclusion of the (group) offers Ryan the guise that their apartments are a benefit to the community."

She also objected to any proposal for the project to get money from the downtown tax increment financing district, or TIF. She noted the state TIF law's language that requires an area to be "blighted."

"First Street is no more blighted than Michigan Avenue in Chicago," she said. "Under no circumstances does a First Street location meet the blight requirement."

The mayor and aldermen did not react to Buzzell's statements. They typically refrain from responding to public comments.

At a meeting last month, two residents spoke against the proposed project.

Asked about the criticism afterward, Laura Michaud, the nonprofit board's secretary and founding member, told Patch that the apartment development makes the project financially viable.

"But the bigger picture is that with this development, Elmhurst will see a more dynamic development that adds to the downtown area," she said in an email at the time. "There’s still capacity for more apartments based on studies that have been done. And these studies have been supported by the fact that the buildings constructed to date have been rented at a rapid pace."

Ryan is responsible for other projects in Elmhurst, including the 200-unit Vyne on Haven complex downtown. Opening in spring 2024, Vyne is now almost entirely occupied.

The opposition to the apartment project is not unusual. In Elmhurst and elsewhere, proposals for big apartment buildings follow a similar pattern: A developer pushes a complex denser than zoning allows, residents protest, the developer scales it back but still needs exceptions, and officials note the developer's compromise before approving the project.

Every once in a while, the pattern is broken. In 2023, the City Council voted 11-1 against a proposed nine-story building on York Street.