For more than seven years, the Rev. Liala Beukema watched as Lakeview, a gentrifying neighborhood north of Chicago's Loop, steadily changed. Large parcels designated for industrial use became vacant lots, and developers, with an eye to the next upscale townhouse or condominium development, swooped in to push zoning modifications through the City Council.
"This trend was really eliminating a lot of potential for economic and job development in this area," says Beukema, a former pastor who now works for the Logan Square
Neighborhood Association. "It was especially troubling for me because I serve a large population of low-income people."
Her fear is that the residents she represents in Lakeview and Logan Square will be priced out of their neighborhoods by skyrocketing property taxes. She worries, too, that, as zoning changes allow developers to build high-priced condos instead of job-producing businesses, the community will lose potential jobs that could help people stay in their homes.
In fact, the changes witnessed by Lakeview residents over the past several years have been taking place in neighborhoods throughout the city. As Chicago moves through its largest building boom since the Great Fire of 1871, developers, planners and longtime residents have been trying to maneuver around a zoning code last revised in 1957.
Last year alone, 800 amendments were added to the city's aging code, the ordinance that determines the size, shape and permitted uses of any building within the city limits. This year, there likely will be more than 900 changes. These changes can range from allowing a building owner to operate a store where it is not currently allowed to giving a developer permission to build a high-rise on land previously zoned for factories.
"That's a sure sign that something is wrong," says John Schmidt, the former U.S. associate attorney general whom Mayor Richard M. Daley tapped last fall to head his Zoning Reform Commission. "You've got a law that no longer fits the reality of the city."
As Schmidt's 21-member commission tackles revamping the 105-page zoning code for the first time in 44 years, it will face a wide range of challenges that have changed dramatically since the 1950s. Those challenges include providing relief for crowded neighborhoods, making better use of bus and rail service and increasing the city's affordable housing stock.
The new code, which will regulate everything from the size of a house lot in Beverly to the height of a new downtown high-rise, is scheduled for completion by the end of the year. But rezoning 228.5 miles of city land will be a massive task.
And it will be politically tricky. Community activists like Beukema will be among many constituencies with opinions. "I would say that there are certainly competing interests," Schmidt says. "There are community groups that want to preserve the character of a neighborhood, and developers who want to develop vacant property." Add a business community concerned about a solid property tax base to support schools, parks and other neighborhood amenities instrumental in luring new corporations to the city.
"It's certainly an enormously complicated law," Schmidt says of the tangle of land descriptions, grids and countless maps first compiled in 1923. "We have a huge amount of development and that's a good thing, but it does create pressures," he says. "I think it's a time in the life of the city where you either get control of it [development] or it takes off without any constraint."
Instead of simply updating the code, Schmidt says he has been instructed by the mayor to take zoning into the future. This will mean going beyond creating design standards for strip malls, townhouses and parking structures. Ideally, the new code will take into account ways to create housing for the poor, provide better access to transit for commuters and make neighborhoods more attractive by building more parks and green spots.
While the city has been criticized for proceeding without a comprehensive city plan in place, Schmidt says the Department of Planning and Development is working closely with the zoning commission. Planning Commissioner Alicia Mazur Berg is a member of Schmidt's team and will push for cohesion between zoning and key planning issues such as lakefront improvements and neighborhood revitalization.
Nevertheless, an undertaking of this scope and scale that involves so many political interests has the potential to be explosive, especially in a highly politicized city like Chicago. Yet so far, Schmidt says, the revamp has not become a partisan issue. "I think one of the reasons that it's possible to do this now is that there is a high degree of good will in the city. I would hate to imagine this going on during Council Wars," Schmidt says, referring to the days in the mid-1980s when the late Mayor Harold Washington presided over a racially divided City Council.
While animosity has not heated to that level since, council watchers are keeping a close eye on simmering tensions surrounding the city's upcoming ward remap.
The rezoning effort is still in the early stages, says Peter Skosey, the vice president of external relations for the Metropolitan Planning Council, which has been following the rewrite closely. "I think conceptually it's not much of a hot potato until you get to the mapping," says Skosey, who is working with community groups to help them understand the process. "When it comes time to zone a particular piece of land, that's going to be contentious."
A major task for City Council members will be striking a balance between encouraging new development and preserving the character and economic viability of their communities. This includes making sure that longtime residents can stay in their homes.
"We don't want to create situations where the property values are so high that people who have lived there for 30 years are forced out," says 36th Ward Alderman William J.P. Banks from the Northwest Side.
"With the growth we have, there are problems that go along with it," says Banks, who heads the city Zoning Committee and is co-chair of the Zoning Reform Commission. "You're seeing that a lot in Lakeview. We now have a neighborhood which is quite beautiful, but which is becoming extremely populated. As a result, development is taking place at a rapid pace," he says. "The present code really isn't adapted to what's happening right now. We have to find places for the mom and pop stores, but also for the big box stores so that all of the uses can peacefully co-exist."
While much of the development in Lakeview has already been completed or is well underway, 43rd Ward Alderman Vi Daley, who represents the area, says she is still concerned about lakefront development and the preservation of historic buildings.
"You certainly don't want to stop development," she says. "But you also want to maintain some of the really nice buildings as well."
Six commission subcommittees will hone in on such issues as development in the central business district and the neighborhoods, preservation of open spaces, availability of housing and transportation planning.
Skosey is encouraged the commission is taking a futuristic view and tackling such issues as "inclusionary zoning" and "transit oriented development," areas that weren't hot topics in 1957. "The current code is limited as to what it addresses," says Skosey, author of the Metropolitan Planning Council's Revise, Recreate, Rezone: A Neighborhood Guide to Zoning. "What we ought to look at are issues such as affordable housing."
Under inclusionary zoning, for example, all developers of new market rate housing units are required to set aside a certain number of units that are affordable to people with low or moderate incomes.
As for blending transit issues into its zoning code, Chicago is behind such cities as Boston, Portland and Seattle, all of which have rewritten their codes to encourage development near bus and train stops.
"Chicago's current zoning code doesn't pay much attention to transit," Skosey writes in his zoning guide. "Land around many transit stations isn't zoned for buildings and activities that would support transit use, like buildings with street-level neighborhood retail below offices and multifamily housing."
But Schmidt says the commission is interested in exploring ways to use the zoning code to promote mass transit. "It's dawned on people that you eliminate the need for parking if you promote development near transportation. Offering bonuses for offices accessible to Metra and CTA is something that we are thinking about."
Back when the zoning code was last revised, two-car families were affluent. Today it's common for families to have at least two cars, if not more. "We've got to have uses that will accommodate parking in a different way," Banks says. "That may require that we do something with elevator lots where we stack parking. ... We have to deal with space limitations."
Skosey also wants the new zoning code to do a better job of including open space. "Right now, there is no class for parks ? no zone that says 'this is park space.'"
While the rewrite won't be submitted to the City Council for months, zoning amendments winding their way through signal the new direction the code will take.
Those issues include controlling the height of high-rises in business and commercial districts throughout the city, expanding on a zoning bonus system for downtown developers and making sure proposed zoning amendments are clearly posted throughout the neighborhood so residents aren't caught by surprise when changes are made.
In April, the City Council's Zoning Committee proposed revising the list of "density bonuses," which give downtown developers incentives to include amenities in their projects. Skosey notes that in 1957, Chicago was one of the first cities to create incentives for developers who build public spaces like plazas and wider sidewalks. Under the new system, developers will have 18 bonus options to choose from, compared to just four under the existing code. Through the bonus system, developers who add amenities such as a pocket park or winter garden to projects are allowed to build complexes larger than those allowed under the zoning code. The payoff for the city is that it keeps developers contributing to a vibrant downtown, while creating plazas and parks that make the Loop people-friendly.
Jack Guthman, an attorney who represents developers, would like to see the city have less flexibility in determining whether a developer's proposed amenity qualifies for a bonus. But overall he is satisfied. "The code is outmoded and obsolete," Guthman says. "Today's uses and lifestyles aren't even comprehended by the old code."
Since 1957, the trend has shifted to smaller living units, leading city planners to rethink the number of homes and apartments that should be allowed in a particular space, Guthman says. Automobile use also has increased, greatly affecting the parking crunch downtown and in the neighborhoods.
Guthman, who has been calling for a rewrite of the code since the mid-1980s, also is critical of the commission for moving ahead before a large-scale development plan for the city is spelled out. "I would do a comprehensive plan, decide what we want our city to look like, then I would do the text to follow," he says.
"As a planner, I would have preferred to see a city plan precede a zoning rewrite," Skosey agrees. "But we have a very clear understanding of where our industrial corridors are and of where our parks and schools are."
Schmidt and Banks say they are confident the new plan will work well with the city's planning strategy. At the end of the day. Banks says, a plan will emerge that will be good for another 50 years. But he acknowledges that getting there will be a challenge.
"We want to strengthen our residential communities and their character, we want to strengthen the business community and its character, and we want to strengthen the manufacturing community and its character, but at the same time we want to maintain balance," Banks says. "And that's no easy task."
Curtis Lawrence is a Chicago Sun-Times reporter who writes about housing and urban issues.
