Residents Express Forceful Concern Over Western Springs Land Purchase

Several Western Springs residents—especially those living on the south side of Willow Avenue—are intensely protesting the Village’s purchase of 4368 Hampton Ave., and forcefully expressed their concern at a Properties and Recreation Committee meeting on Monday night.

The ¾-acre lot at 4368 Hampton is uniquely deep due to its position next to the Western Springs Recreation Center parking lot. It separates the lot from the backyards of Willow Avenue residents. The Village’s stated plan is to truncate the backyard to ordinary size, use the extra space for Rec Center “parking and programming” and renovate and resell the home.

Among the residents’ contentions: that the property was overpaid for at $560,000, that the sale was conducted behind closed doors, that the removal of the tree buffer would create light and noise pollution and that the paving over of wetlands would result in flooding in nearby yards and homes.

“It’s foolish on multiple levels, this acquisition of this property,” said Willow Avenue resident Laura Ozark. “It’s not consistent with other things that have been done in the Village. It would cause a nuisance to the residents… How can we be a Tree City if we’re going to just decide to take down 70 trees to put up pavement?”

“It doesn’t seem like this was ever publically broached, and anyone with half a brain can see you paid too much,” added fellow resident Kathy Kuhlman. “[And] there’s going to be a lot of money that the city’s going to have to spend on top of that to prevent me from suing the Village.”

The debate over price turned on a Cook County Assessor’s report showing the property valued at $330,000, as well as on recent sales of homes on smaller lots in the area in the $300,000-$400,000 range. Village staff contested that the supersized lot merited the extra price, while the protesting residents said that the lot’s extra land was unbuildable and thus worth very little.

“If you look at your assessment, anybody’s assessment, is that fair-market value reflective of what your house is really worth?” asked Village attorney Michael Jurusik, adding that the final price was the result of extensive study; residents replied that while assessments were often inaccurate, real value could be higher or lower, and they felt this property was not significantly undervalued.

As to the closed-door nature of the deal, Jurusik said that “the reality is, as a municipality… we don’t have the same flexibility to buy land. We can’t just go out and say we’d like to buy this, because somebody’s going to say, ‘well, I’m not going to sell it to you,’ and then you’re stuck bringing a condemnation action.”

The other primary debate was over the actual usage of the land. The Village has pursued the land as a permanent location for the Safety Village program, but has not completely ruled out other uses as well, or instead.

“Safety Village appears to be the horse in the lead, and if that’s the ultimate decision for that piece of property, it’ll be engineered, it’ll be built to the standard,” said Village engineer Jeffrey Ziegler. “We’re going to take care of drainage; we’re going to take care of lighting; we are going to take care of a buffer.”

While expressing strong support for Safety Village, protesting residents found staff’s inability to provide a specific plan to be unconvincing. “Who buys a piece of property not knowing what you’re going to do with it?” asked resident Todd Bateman. “You’re going to buy the property and sort it out later; that’s the problem I have.”

Village staff said that other options for Safety Village or Rec Center expansion—like the vacant “Bannerville” lot, or slices of the Public Works yard—had all been considered in an extensive study and discarded for being impractical or expensive.

By the end of the meeting—which had to be cut short for staff to attend the Village Board of Trustees—the only agreement that was reached was that the residents should obtain the planning study (that led to the purchase) through a FOIA request and peruse it.

“A lot of what’s going on is pointing the finger saying ‘you don’t know what you’re doing,’” said Jurusik. “Let’s take a step back. Let’s look at what the board has done in the past. Let’s have everybody take a look at the master plan study that was done for this site.”