Skokie Approves 494-Apartment Development, Largest In Over A Decade

SKOKIE, IL — The village board on Monday approved plans to construct a three-story mixed-use development across the street from the Village Crossing shopping center.

It's largest residential development in the village since the completion of the Optima Old Orchard Woods project in 2010.

The 6.2 acre site at the northeast corner of Touhy and Linder avenues has been owned by the Gidwitz family for decades, according to representatives of the developer.

Scott Gidwitz, grandson of the founder of cosmetics and beauty products company Helene Curtis Industries, is now the principal of the real estate investment and development firm Bissel Street.

His father, Ron, is a former candidate for the Republican nomination for Illinois governor and the state's finance chairman for 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who in 2018 appointed the Highland Park native as ambassador to Belgium and in 2020 named him acting representative of the U.S. to the European Union.

At Monday's Skokie Village Board meeting, the younger Gidwitz told trustees the current commercial buildings at the site are "functionally obsolete," and so he has spent the past three and a half years working with village staff to come up with the two-phase development plan.

In addition to 494 new apartment units — 251 in one and 243 in the other — the building will feature 30,000 square feet of retail space, mostly on Touhy Avenue, and another 5,000 square feet earmarked for a potential cannabis dispensary along Linder Avenue, Gidwitz said.

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"We are striving to be ... the most environmentally sustainable project in Skokie, and hopefully the North Shore," Gidwitz said. "We propose to finance the construction from private sources only and we are seeking zero public dollars and no TIF [tax increment financing] dollars."

Attorney Steve Elrod appeared at Monday's meeting on behalf of the developer.

"We really do believe that this is a terrific and much-needed project for Skokie. It's a significant improvement over what is there now. It's a state-of-the art development and it brings fresh housing stock into an area of Skokie that will thrive from it," he said.

Elrod said he appreciated the good intentions of residents who have called for some units in the project to be set aside for affordable housing, but he noted that the village has never required developers include affordable housing in projects.

Despite that, Skokie ranks among the top towns in the region when it comes to the portion of housing units deemed affordable — higher than nearby towns like Arlington Heights, Evanston and Highland Park that have ordinances mandating affordable housing units in new developments, said Elrod, whose firm represents both developers and North Shore municipalities.

Elrod said the development would not have been proposed if the village had an ordinance on the books requiring the inclusion of affordable units.

"It's just that the economics for this development would not work with that requirement," he said.

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Village attorney Mike Lorge said he and Village Manager John Lockerby had previously spoken to city officials in Highland Park about their affordable housing policies.

"That investigation and that research did not ultimately lead to an ordinance in front of this board," Lorge said. "So we did have that discussion and it was looking to see at what Highland Park had done and how they had done it."

Mayor George Van Dusen said the economic diversity of the village's housing market has long been one of the things attractive to homebuyers, and expressed doubt that an inclusionary housing ordinance would help.

"The market, in our case, has worked. We have 19.7 percent affordable housing in the village of Skokie. And you don't disincentivize. Inclusionary zoning has been shown to disincentivize," Van Dusen said.

"Our staff knows that where we possibly can we try to create low- and moderate-income housing, and it has worked. We are almost twice what the state of Illinois has established as the standard 10 percent. It's Niles, Skokie, Evanston and then everybody else is below 10 percent," he said, suggesting if other towns followed Skokie's suit it would help alleviate the state's housing affordability crisis.

"But you don't solve it by putting straightjackets on developers," the mayor said. "If you do, developers simply go elsewhere."

Several residents in attendance at the meeting questioned the board's decision to allow the development to proceed without requiring they include any affordable units.

"Creating close to 500 units of luxury housing will absolutely increase rents throughout Skokie. It will absolutely make Skokie less affordable than it is now. I would plead with you to consider an affordable housing ordinance," Ted Smukler said.

"Evanston and Highland Park and Arlington Heights — fairly wealthy communities — they set aside units for affordable housing and the developers there are not saying that they could not complete the projects with any affordable units," he added. "I think people who want to make money on our village should give something back."