Westfield Old Orchard Mall Redevelopment Plan Gets Final Approval From Skokie Trustees

SKOKIE, IL — Village trustees granted final approval Monday to plans for the two-phase redevelopment of Old Orchard Mall in Skokie.

The village board voted 6-1 to approve the site plan and subdivision for the $100 million project to add up to 800 apartments the shopping center, which is owned by Paris-based Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, also known as URW or Westfield.

The redevelopment’s first phase will replace the former Bloomingdale’s with five- and seven-story buildings containing more than 400 apartments, 16,000 square feet of retail and a public event space. The second phase includes additional apartments, with either a hotel or residential tower and a parking garage at the mall's north end.

URW, which has partnered with Focus Development on the project, committed to making 3.5 percent of the residential units affordable, even though it was proposed before the village approved an inclusionary housing ordinance. That comes out to 15 apartments in the first phase. The number in the second phase will depend on whether the hotel is included.

Representatives of the developers indicated in earlier meetings that the project had initially been planned with no affordable units but they agreed to the inclusion of some less expensive apartments following meetings with community groups and local officials. They suggested 3.5 percent affordable units was the most that they could include and keep the project financially viable.

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James Johnson, who was once again the lone dissenting vote on the project, claimed the board had gone to great lengths to exempt URW from the requirements of the village's housing ordinance.

“This development should have featured 10 percent of units at affordable rates, which is still a very small, minimal number. The policy that we finally adopted says 7 percent which is even lower, but because we’ve told Westfield they’re exempt, they have proposed only 3.5 percent,” Johnson said.

The trustee also criticized the board's 2022 decision to declare Old Orchard a “blighted area,” which led to it receiving about $80 million in additional sales tax revenue for the redevelopment.

“I can’t, in good faith, support this development if we’re going to go to such lengths to exempt a multinational corporation from our affordable housing requirements,” Johnson said.

"Except the village board did not exempt Westfield," countered Mayor George Van Dusen.

"I proposed an inclusionary zoning ordinance on Nov. 20 — a year ago — and the advocates of affordable housing opposed the ordinance. They came in and they said, 'Turn this ordinance down because it does not fit every square in every peg that we want,'" the mayor said.

"And so instead of compromising, and accepting what would have been considerably higher than the 3.5 percent, the village board did vote 4-3 to reject what you and I voted for — we both voted for it," Van Dusen told Johnson.

In last year's vote, Trustee Edie Sutker joined Van Dusen and Johnson in supporting the measure, while Trustees Khem Khoeun, Ralph Klein, Keith Robinson, Alison Pure-Slovin voted against it.

The mayor said Westfield "had to have" come to the conclusion that the village board would not require a minimum percentage of affordable units and filed paperwork for the plan before there was any such requirement in place.

"And it's a lesson for all of us: accept compromise when it's presented to you," Van Dusen said

"I made a good faith effort, and as I say, you and I both voted for it," he told the trustee. "And you can't blame Westfield and you can't blame the village board. I mean, the advocates simply were not willing to accept compromise."

"I do want to say I find it really misleading to argue that affordable housing advocates are somehow to blame for not getting a solid inclusionary housing ordinance on the books." Johnson said.

"Trustee Johnson, it's also misleading to say that the village board is exempting to Westfield from following the inclusionary housing ordinance," said Khoeun, one of the "no" votes last November.

"I do blame the village board. I think we really intentionally dragged our feet so that we could claim that this development is exempt, and I think that's unfortunate," Johnson said.

"I don't question your support for affordable housing, and I think it's admirable. By the same token, I do not think it is at all fair to say the Skokie Village Board dragged its feet for a year purposefully because we had Westfield in mind," the mayor said. "That is just simply incredibly unfair and very unfair allegation to make."

"Given the long history of this board treating Westfield in a really inequitable way, in terms of how we treat other businesses in Skokie, I don't feel like it's an unfair allegation at all." Johnson said.

"Westfield is not treated and any differently than any other business," the mayor asserted.

The mall is the village's largest sales tax generator. When the village board designated it “blighted," it created a special business district and imposed a 1 percent sales tax surcharge there. The revenue from the price hike was then earmarked to help URW fund the redevelopment while offsetting its financial risks.

"I find it insulting that you're saying that we dragged our feet," Sutker told Johnson. "We could not agree. Some of us voted the same way each time it came up for affordable housing, but we could not agree, and we ended up compromising, and that's what delayed it, not because of Westfield.

"And by the way, I want to point out there is no other mall that I know of that has any affordable housing in any of their units. Is that correct?," she asked the village manager.

"Yes, that's true." Lockerby said.

"So it was a compromise," she said. "But I'm going to reframe it that it was a good compromise, and it made a lot of sense."

Read more:

• Despite Debate Over Affordable Housing Mandates, Village Board Approves Old Orchard Revamp
• Skokie Trustees To Review Plans For Hundreds of Apartments, Hotel at Westfield Old Orchard
• $100 Million Transformation Of Old Orchard Mall Heads To Skokie Plan Commission