The Oak Park Village Board of Trustees moved ahead Monday night with a $5 million project to return auto traffic to the Marion Street mall, setting aside an 11th-hour push to keep the mall pedestrian-only.
The board approved three consulting contracts worth roughly $360,000-nearly a half-million dollars less than the previously estimated $850,000 price tag-for engineering, traffic signals and design of what the board says will be a pedestrian-focused street. The vote was 5-1 at the board's regular meeting Monday, with Trustee Robert Milstein casting the dissenting vote.
Milstein admitted to changing his mind on the matter, having previously voted for the project twice until an online petition started gathering hundreds of signatures. When so many have signed such a petition, he said, "I think we owe it to the village and the citizens of Oak Park to reconsider."
But the rest of the board-which numbers six after the resignation of former Trustee Martha Brock in January-reiterated their support for the plan and the importance in moving ahead in the expectation it will be finished by Thanksgiving, so as to not affect the holiday shopping season.
Village President David Pope responded to criticisms, including charges that the decision to re-street Marion was rushed or was done without citizen input.
"This is, in fact, a decision that was made in November 2005, when this board unanimously decided Marion Street should be open to traffic," Pope said. A year later the board voted that traffic would be two-way, and in February voted on materials to be used on the street, sidewalk and streetscape elements such as benches and planters.
Pope said malls have failed in many communities in the U.S., and many have taken steps to re-open streets to auto traffic.
Feedback to consultants leading the Greater Downtown Master Plan shows support for re-streeting outweighed support to keep it pedestrian only.
Pope said the board, realizing that many in Oak Park cherish the pedestrian nature of the mall, worked to ensure that the remade mall will be pedestrian-friendly.
And, at the very least, the new mall will be able to be easily converted into a pedestrian-only space for special events by popping up bollards at the auto entrances. If in the future the village decides that autos shouldn't be allowed on the mall, "all you do is put the bollards in," he said.
The alternative-remaking the mall as a pedestrian-only space-if unsuccessful, would mean a costly re-streeting on top of today's costs, Pope said.
Trustee Elizabeth Brady said infrastructure improvements (about half of the $5 million will be spent on water and sewer improvements) are exactly what tax increment financing (TIF) money should be spent on, rather than developer incentives.
That shift in TIF money use was called for in the master plan.
Trustee Ray Johnson said the board needed to stick to its previous decision to help reduce uncertainty for businesses and potential investors downtown.
That's a sentiment that Milstein shared in December 2005, when he called the re-streeting a "good first step to reduce uncertainty" in the downtown business community.
Trustee Galen Gockel said the mall will be more attractive to walkers after the project is complete. "It will be a magnet which will draw people from all over the community [to an area] that they've abandoned."
Village Engineer Jim Budrick rebutted claims that opening Marion Street would make traffic downtown worse than it is now. "When we open this street to two-way traffic, it will work very well," he said, adding that he's studied traffic in Oak Park for three decades.
Despite the online petition, which boasted more than 935 signatures as of midday Tuesday, just a dozen speakers addressed the board Monday night opposing the project.
John Abbott, of the 500 block of South Ridgeland Avenue, said comments on the petition represent an "alternative vision" for the street, and suggested that consultants had "sold [the board] and ill-begotten bill of goods."
Les Golden, of the 900 block of Forest Avenue, compared the board's decision to the Bay of Pigs and New Coke and said only one explanation makes sense: "It has to be groupthink. There's no other explanation." He plugged a rally scheduled for noon on March 10 at the mall for supporters of the "Save the Marion Street Mall" movement.
Brady later said that village representatives ought to attend the rally to answer questions about the mall redesign. Village leaders received about two dozen calls or e-mails opposing the project, but no one has asked to sit down to discuss the project, Barwin said.
In a written statement after the meeting, Golden said, "the blatant disregard of clearly expressed, passionate public sentiment against destroying the Marion Street mall by the village board is unconscionable," and urged support for Milstein and his VCA running mates in the April 17 election.
Five speakers supported the mall redesign, including Adriana Kopecka, owner of the Rocking Horse Boutique, 119 N. Marion St., and Bugaboo Shoes-the latter is going out of business.
"If we keep [the mall] the way it is, it's going to be a complete vacancy," she said.
CONTACT: dcarter@wjinc.com
