On July 30th, 2024, the Oak Park Village Board approved the affordable housing project at 1106 Madison. This will be a five story, 36 unit building. It's being built by the folks who did the Sugar Beet Co-op building and will be run by Housing Forward. It'
The Big Zoning Battle of BerkeleyThis is very important, readers.The Discourse LoungeDarrell Owens Even highly-educated Americans in Berkeley, California are so culturally addicted to suburban living that going back to the normal ways of housing density appears extremely radical to them. So those who want to keep the status-quo
During the July 23rd Village Board meeting, village staff presented a number of re-zoning options to the board. The asterisk in the title above represents that fact that all of these options are quite preliminary, and lacking in specifics. Option 1 - Remove the single family only zoning district entirely,
United Center owners planning massive $7 billion mixed-use campus around the arenaPlans call for a music hall, housing, park and pedestrian-friendly spaces as part of a 10-year development project that could start as early as 2025.Chicago Sun-TimesAbby Miller
Village staff will present zoning options to the board during the July 23rd meeting. They put forth the following 'strategic vision': Modify Oak Park’s Zoning Ordinance to Allow “Missing Middle Housing”: 1. Build consensus on intended goals of missing middle housing and zoning changes necessary to achieve
Thomas Ptacek is doing some historical research on Oak Park zoning codes. I will leave the details to him, but he found that our zoning code was penned by none other than Harland Bartholomew and Associates, who entered into a contract to amend our code in the 1940s. Harland Bartholomew
The super PAC, Abundant New York, is the electoral arm of Open New York,a nonprofit group formed in 2016 that advocates more development. The PAC is a more aggressive attempt by the group to make politicians feel consequences for not doing enough to address a worsening housing crisis.
This was presented back in March to the village board by the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, and I think it's worth revisiting. It's got a wealth of general information about Oak Park, demographics and the current state of zoning and development, well worth a read. It also
Love this, though Chicago has historically had much more permissive zoning than the burbs.I think that Oak Park's ADU ordinance is relatively weak, not many have been built because it's far too restrictive. Oak Park should create a meaningful ADU ordinance that allows economically viable
I can heartily recommend ‘Escaping the Housing Trap’ by Charles L. Marohn Jr. and Daniel Herriges. This is the third in a series of books from https://www.strongtowns.org/, focusing on housing and housing affordability. The book opens with ‘how we got here’, a somewhat depressing retelling of how