Present-Day Low-Rise, Spread-Out Landscape

New development, whether residential, commercial, or industrial, can be a plus or a minus. Multiple factors influence a community’s support for, say, a six-story apartment complex, a hookah lounge, or a tool-and-die plant that ranges from appearance to function to density to environmental consequences. What is a drawback in one neighborhood can be seen as an advantage in another. It all boils down to the character of the community and how it sees itself changing over time.

If low-density development is the linchpin that keeps Gladstone Park’s wheels from sliding off its axles, then it follows that challenges to its low-rise spread-out landscape are the major threat to its existence. Build a tall automobile storage tower, a big box store, a metal recycling plant, or a huge apartment complex and you’re disrupting the synergy of the entire community. But rehab existing historic storefronts so they can be used for new restaurants, barber shops and mom-and-pop stores with apartments above them and you have a winning formula.

Sometimes Gladstone Park’s location, 10-11 miles from the Loop, is a blessing and sometimes it’s a curse. The distance has always kept it far enough away from the economic pressures of the center city, allowing it to escape dense commercial and residential development. The fact that the community is literally next door to the suburbs with their big box stores has, for the most part, also kept Gladstone Park from being invaded by large national chains that would have displaced the community’s Mom-and-Pop shops.

Part of the reason for the community being out of sync with the rest of the city can be chalked up to timing. It was only when Gladstone Park’s subdivisions were being built out in the 1950s that the population had much need for a business district. When its commercial building boom was delayed until the 1960s, property so far away from downtown was still both available and cheap. Merchants spreading out on bigger plots of land were able to cater to the growing postwar car culture by providing parking lots for shoppers’ automobiles in numbers not found in other parts of Chicago. Larger plots also meant for increased road frontage with plentiful street parking. This set the pattern for Gladstonians getting accustomed to pulling into dedicated parking lots next to large one-story or two-story shops, restaurants, and offices if they weren’t parking directly on the street in front of them.

The legacy is that Gladstone Park is one of the very few communities in Chicago with so much available parking in its commercial zones that it has never had to institute parking meters. Fortunate enough to have wider secondary streets, it has also not had to regulate the great majority of them as one-ways or required permit parking except for a very small number of exceptions. It may not sound like much, but to many Gladstonians, the lack of traffic and parking problems (no meters!) is a vital part of their identity and a huge source of pride.

Ironically, when Chicago city planners conducting research for the 2017 Gladstone Park Corridor Study were confronted by the community’s wealth of parking and lack of traffic problems, they were flummoxed. Describing the differences they found the community’s 2-1/4 mile long N. Milwaukee Avenue business district, they shook their heads and wrote:

The wide street, overall low scale of buildings, shallow lots, unusual car-oriented architecture and the profusion of signs create an environment more similar to major streets in Los Angeles than older, traditional streets in Chicago.

While the same study had much to criticize about storefronts that had stood empty and unkempt since the Great Recession, it did praise Gladstone Park’s relative wealth of historic commercial buildings with apartments on their upper floors. Noting that there are not many of their kind throughout the rest of the city, planners recommended, “As much as possible these buildings should be retained [as affordable housing] whether the ground floor contains an active business or not.”

As if in a time warp, much of the Gladstone Park business community in 2022 looks like it did 60, 70, even 100 years ago. Exteriors of original buildings, perhaps with new windows, doors and signage, otherwise remain virtually unchanged. While some people might lament this makes Gladstone Park a relic that should be put to better use, others see the opportunity to preserve the unusual nature of what the community has before it loses it.

But Gladstone Park has been increasing badgered with building proposals for apartment complexes of four-, five-, six-, seven- or more stories along its business and industrial corridors. Throwing up high-rise residential developments in a community of one-and two-family dwellings not only increases density, but also brings all the problems that come from concentrating large numbers of people together in hundreds of apartments. Such a strategy has the potential to immediately and completely change the character of a proud, friendly, and easy-going neighborhood, previously spread out by design.

Less appreciated is the danger that comes from tearing down Gladstone Park’s low-rise offices, shops, and restaurants to make way for apartment complexes, undermining its bustling “downtown.” Turn a full-service village into a bedroom community and people would be forced to spend their everyday lives elsewhere, losing the cohesiveness they once had as a community.

So how all of a sudden did Gladstone Park get to where unwanted development has become such a real threat to the essence of the community?

Cannabis Dispensaries

Once the Chicago Department of Transportation implemented its “complete streets” initiative on the Milwaukee Avenue corridor in Gladstone Park in 2015, development challenges followed. One of the first was city’s 2016 approval of a medical marijuana dispensary at 6428 N. Milwaukee, Norwood Park one block north of GPNA’s northern border at W. Devon. Located in an existing one-story brick commercial building, it was as close to the suburbs (3 blocks) as one could get.

As dnainfo recounts the situation in a November 10, 2016 release, the Chicago’s Zoning Board of Appeals rubberstamped Union Medical’s application to become the sixth such medical marijuana dispensary in the city after two years of acrimonious community and aldermanic opposition. Ald. Anthony Napolitano (Ward 41) said his constituents’ biggest concern was that the shop, then called Zen Leaf, would eventually sell recreational pot, according to a September 28, 2019 Nadig Newspapers article.

The action left surrounding Far Northwest Side communities, including Gladstone Park, feeling steamrollered, especially when Illinois did, in fact, okay the legal purchase of pot for recreational purposes as of January 1, 2020. Playing musical chairs, the Zen Leaf dispensary was bought by Progressive Treatment Solutions (PTS) along with three others in Illinois and rebranded as Consume Cannabis in 2020 with the capability of serving both medical and recreational populations.

Consume Cannabis hasn’t gone unnoticed in the city. In its 2022 “Your Guide to Every Weed Dispensary in Chicago,” the online insider ratings site Thrillest, described the community’s revamped pot shop as a “straightforward dispensary…tucked away in residential, family-friendly Norwood Park” before advising hopheads, in cringe-worthy fashion, just how to enjoy their tripping in the community with this review:

Consume: Chicago just so happens to sit down the road from Chicago’s iconic old-school hot dog purveyor Superdawg. Grab some weed, grab a Chicago dog, and disappear into the Caldwell Woods Forest Preserve across the street.

But the story doesn’t stop there. In December, 2021, PTS applied for a special use permit to the Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals to move its Norwood Park facility to the grand-sized Rainforest Cafe, 605 N. Clark Street in River North, that had closed in 2020, a victim of the COVID pandemic, according to an April 7, 2022 Fox 32 Chicago news release. The siting, within 1,500 feet of three existing weed shops, would not be permitted by state law unless the corporation came in as a “social equity” applicant to balance the white-dominated weed industry. The twist, Fox 32 Chicago reported, is that PTS had recently formed a partnership with Bio-Pharm LLC and installed Terry Peterson, a former 17th Ward alderman and Black, as their new CEO, thus technically becoming a social equity applicant. The company’s 2023 economic disclosures provided further intrigue when they showed PTS, which is partly owned by David Flood of the Flood Brothers trash hauling company with a history of lucrative contracts with the city, were paying all consultant bills in gearing up for the application. (As if he didn’t already have enough industry clout, Flood was also cited as the principal officer of Medical Cannabis Alliance of Illinois, later known as the Cannabis Business Alliance of Illinois.)

Lo and behold, once the 89,995 influential residents of River North heard about the $7-10 million expansion plan for another pot shop in their neighborhood…even as or because it included four armed guards and 90 surveillance cameras…they began objecting. The Chicago Tribune highlighted the loophole PTS was using to partner with a social equity firm on May 12, 2022, putting it on track to reapply to the Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals to get permission to relocate. Like the nearly 200 social equity licenses for pot shops the state had awarded by the third quarter of 2023, the plans for the PTS dispensary in the former River North Rainforest Cafe at first stalled.

In early January, 2024, attorneys representing Progressive Treatment Solutions announced it was pulling the plug on its application to move from its Norwood Park location to the infinitely larger and more prestigious Rainforest Cafe site due to being “…delayed by litigation and the uncertainty and additional costs it brings.” Both GRI Holdings, owner of the nearby Green Rose dispensary and River North resident Robert Brown had filed suits against PTS’s plans to open within the prohibited 1,500 feet of three existing weed shops. GRI against the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulations and Brown against the city claiming the site’s zoning had been illegally approved. Meanwhile, the state pledged its intention to seek more clarity on the social equity issues that were the basis for PTS’s application. Then everything fizzled and by early 2025 the proposal was considered dead.

Interestingly, although one of Lightfoot’s planks was specifically to keep marijuana dispensaries out of the Loop, River North’s Alderman Brendan Reilly introduced legislation to expand pot sales in October 2023 to downtown, according to The Chicago Tribune. Whether he was motivated by residents’ allegations that his district had unwittingly become the de factor center of the city’s cannabis industry is unknown.

Meanwhile, a second cannabis dispensary opened April, 2022 at 4758 N. Milwaukee Avenue in downtown Jefferson Park, some 4 blocks south of the Kennedy Expressway (and Gladstone Park) after a lot less fanfare. The City Council granted Columbia Care a zoning change to expand into a neighboring storefront only after much debate centering around opposition by a Black Caucus that wanted more racial equity in the industry. Pushing for the expansion for months, the community’s Ald. Jim Gardiner said the weed shop would haul in some $2.4 million in annual tax revenue and be “a business that will bring some life to a depressed corridor in Jefferson Park,” as recounted by Block Club Chicago May 26, 2021.

Considering the state’s announcement it had approved 185 new marijuana dispensary licenses in Illinois according to Robert McCoppin in The Chicago Tribune, June 10, 2022, it would not be unexpected for Gladstone Park to see another potshop come into the community by fall. Winning applicants have been given 180 days to select a physical storefront location and obtain operating licenses with the possibility of a 180-day extension.

Affordable Housing Project, 5150 N. Northwest Highway

Shortly after Gladstone Park residents became embroiled over the siting of a cannabis dispensary at the community’s very northern end, they were blindsided by an even more disturbing and rapidly-shifting proposal at its very southern end. With zoning changes, lawsuits, petitions, complaint filings and the intervention of city and state agencies, the situation quickly grew complicated and controversial. And got very nasty.

The story of what happened when the City of Chicago attempted to ram a nonconforming seven-story affordable housing complex into Jefferson Park’s sub-community of Gladstone Park in 2018 has never before been fully told. It was only possible to piece together all of what transpired after the Civilian Office of Police Accountability released its findings concerning the mostly false allegations Alderman John Arena made maligning his own Far Northwest Side ward as racist in his efforts to fight for the complex against the community’s wishes. By the time COPA had concluded its investigation that ended up exonerating most accused parties nearly five years later, as detailed in The Chicago Sun-Times in May, 2023, it was too late. The disputed housing complex had already been built.

It began in 2016 with LSC Development’s proposal to build a self-storage warehouse on a 1.54-acre plot at 5150 N. Milwaukee that was once an old food processing plant owned by the Archdiocese of Chicago. LSC planned to plunk a five-story nonconforming structure down on a lot just north of the Rt. 90 (Kennedy Expressway) overpass. That positioned it in the Gladstone Park subcommunity that made up the northern part of the greater Jefferson Park neighborhood. In an area of one-and two-story mostly mom-and-pop businesses, the proposed warehouse was surrounded by single family homes.

Residents protested, pointing out that a public storage facility rising to the height of almost 70 feet did not comply with the zoning for the area and was way too tall compared to any business development in their community. Officially classified as “dense suburban,” Gladstone Park had established its identity as one of the safest communities in the city, long defined by its low-rise, spread-out landscape that provided plenty of free street parking.

At the time, there was only one building in Gladstone Park thought to exceed three/four stories. Built in 1942 as an apartment complex on the community’s border with the Union Pacific Railroad, the six-story 81-unit housing project at 5400 N. Northwest Highway, converted to affordable senior housing in 1995, had become Senior Suites of Jefferson Park. (The exact height of a second, possibly nonconforming 1980s-era building most recently operating as Extra Space Storage at 5366 N. Northwest Highway, remains unknown since its size is undocumented on the Cook County Property Tax Portal.)

At first, Gladstonians thought they’d beaten back the unwanted development. Although it’d initially been approved, then-Mayor Rahm Emanual, who’d been at loggerheads with John Arena, then-45th Ward Alderman of the area, echoed complaints that the community had been shut out of the decision-making process, according to a May, 2017 dnainfo article. That got Arena for the first time to acknowledge that LSC’s proposed public storage facility was not the type of commercial development that would help revitalize the community’s southern business district. With the cooperation of the city, he had the site downzoned and managed to get the city to pull the permit it had already issued to the company, as summarized in the local January 18, 2018 Nadig Newspaper.

But downzoning the lot didn’t just restrict what couldn’t be allowed; it opened the door wider to what could be allowed. Next thing anybody knew, the city had made a backdoor deal for the parcel, confirming rumors that approvals for the public storage facility had been switched around to accommodate a tall, dense affordable housing complex.

Shocked residents felt deceived, completely cut out from one very murky decision-making process. This was not the way things usually worked in the Gladstone Park community, located as distant as one could get from the center of the city and still be in Chicago. Being Far Northwest Siders, 12 miles from the Loop was what, they suspected, caused them more often than not to be ignored by the seat of government downtown. They had no fancy brick sidewalk crossings like in Albany Park to their east. Or beautiful planting beds with flowers and shrubs like in Six Corners in the Portage Park neighborhood to their south. Gladstone Park had never even been part of one of Chicago’s hundreds of Tax Increment Funding improvement districts over the years even though its greater neighborhood of Jefferson Park to its south had once been granted a small TIF for sprucing up the streetscape of its commercial district.

Stating the same objections to the housing complex as they’d had against the public storage facility, residents pointed out that the building was too tall, violated their dense suburban zoning, and didn’t at all fit into their low-rise neighborhood. With the housing complex there was the additional complication of dealing with extra human beings rather than excess household possessions. Concentrating so many people into one dense building would increase demand for all kinds of services while, because of its location in the community’s southern commercial corridor, threaten the availability of free street parking that has always been one of Gladstone Park’s main attractions.

But as his constituents looked to their alderman for his expected help, Arena suddenly turned a deaf ear. When residents voiced vehement objections that the scope of the 75-unit project was completely out of character for their neighborhood, he ignored them. When they pointed out that there was no need for the inappropriately-designed monstrosity because their Far Northwest Side community was already home to some of the most affordable single-family homes in Chicago, he paid no heed. When they asked why housing proponents didn’t take advantage of the hundreds of already-existing, naturally-affordable two/three flats in the community to provide housing opportunities for those who needed it, they got no answer. Not even when they pointed out that interspersing low-income households in these family-friendly dwellings with their front and back yards would be the best way to balance their perhaps greater needs while more seamlessly allowing them to blend into the fabric of the community.

How, they asked, had the Mayor’s office determined the best choice for people needing subsidized housing was isolating them into densely-packed units in one big building that a community didn’t want? Why weren’t the powers-that-be listening to Chicago’s own housing authorities who had identified two/three flats of the type that were still abundant in Gladstone Park as one of the most desirable forms of affordable housing there was for low- to moderate-income households? Hadn’t they heard how these forms of housing were rapidly and lamentably disappearing from other areas of the city, so often torn down to yield the way for more profitable development?

Instead of listening to reason, Arena flexed his progressive bona fides and declared his tenacious support for the seven-story development proposal despite overwhelming opposition from the ward he had been elected to represent. A then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a self-declared pro-affordable housing advocate who had vowed to use her policies to reverse the city’s hundreds-year legacy of redlining white districts to keep them segregated, was delighted. Arena’s position relieved her from having to make good on her threat to break aldermanic prerogative, Chicago’s long-standing tradition that gives local officials the ability to reject unwanted building proposals in their wards, to get her way to force the complex to be built. The Alderman was already in her court.

But that left Arena with the task of how to get from Point A to Point B when he would be legislating against what the majority of his own ward wanted him to do. Trying to gather support from wherever it would come, Arena aligned with Lightfoot’s argument that plunking large affordable housing complexes in conventionally white neighborhoods around the city was the one and only solution to correcting what had been a historically-segregated city. Declaring the 5150 N. Northwest Highway complex would have 30 Chicago Housing Authority (Section 8) units and 50 affordable housing apartments, he declared they would begin to end the Far Northwest Side’s legacy of racism.

While it is true that Chicago has a deplorable history of housing segregation, its discriminatory policies had been applied in every corner with the whole city complicit. After Impact for Equity (formerly known as BPI) had won its legal challenge against the Chicago Housing Authority in 1969 for constructing massive high-rise public housing restricted to redlined, racially-segregated areas of the city, the five-decades old Gautreaux lawsuit decision was still being used as the basis for reshaping public housing offerings in the city. Remedying past discriminatory practices that denied Black families the opportunity to live in any neighborhood of their choice, implementation required new mixed-income dense public housing apartment complexes be built in every pocket of Chicago. Unfortunately, there was little creative thinking about the size, shape or suitability about the one type of development that was thought to best fulfill the principles of the court decision.

By this time the community was losing trust in the city government to listen and communicate to them about the plan. Residents worried that congregating that many people who seemed to have no stake in the community in one huge building would threaten the safety of their quiet, family-friendly suburban-like community where–unlike much of Chicago–their children were still free to ride their bikes down the streets and play ball, unsupervised, on the sidewalks. They felt that the red tape that directed low-income households to occupy subsidized rentals in a place they wouldn’t have otherwise sought out would hardly make them invest themselves in the close-knit area where residents did the little things like pick up trash that blew freely throughout the rest of the city. Regrettably, their feelings had been expressed nearly a year earlier when a dozen or two demonstrators from greater Jefferson Park had come out and made a spectacle of themselves, at least one carrying a sign spewing vitriol against the possibility the city was seeking to bring in “Section 8” housing, as detailed in the February 23, 2017 Chicago Reader.

Dredging up the actions of this small group of misguided protesters, TV and print media made hay of it, attracting the disapproving attention of the whole city. Arena saw his opening and took it. On the flimsiest of bases, he filed complaints with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability February, 2018, he alleged 31 Chicago police officers had made racially-charged comments against the complex on social media sites.

Suddenly race became the overwhelming narrative in the controversy, fanning the flames of everyone involved. Emboldened, bad actors on both sides were emboldened to come out of the woodwork.

Locals recalled how Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green 3,606-apartment project not all that far away had become the national poster child for everything that was wrong with public housing. When that failed complex with its subsidized apartments had brought intractable problems in the form of gangs, garbage, rat/cockroach infestations, and crime to what was once a wealthy area, the city had been forced to throw in the towel and tear the whole thing down.

Far Northwest Siders had also witnessed crime steadily migrating north into the Portage Park neighborhood just south of Jefferson Park. In a news piece that is no longer online, Chicago Talks reported that the Bloods and Crips, a notorious gang, had infiltrated Carl Schurz High School in that neighborhood by 2010. So although Jeff Park and Gladstone Park in particular had so far been “largely immune from the creeping surge in violence,” there were 12 shootings and two murders in nearby Portage Park in 2015 and eight shootings with one murder there in 2016. Some of that activity had been attributed to said gangs, according to dna info Chicago.

Things quickly got ugly on the side of housing advocates with finger pointers dredging up the admittedly sordid history of Chicago’s housing segregation problems from 55 years ago when white homeowners reacted hostilely to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Chicago Freedom Movement marching for open housing. Before anyone knew what was happening, the wrath of an entire city suddenly found its way onto the heads on all Gladstonians and Jefferson Parkers. Maligned out of the blue for the sins of the city’s ancestors, they were gobsmacked. All they knew was that they’d started with a legitimate argument against a proposed housing complex that had made sense, feeling it was inappropriately-designed and sited in a place where it didn’t belong. Now their objections were being hijacked and reframed as something altogether different. The unjust cries of racism were so loud and abominable that the local community was effectively silenced.

Those who would be forever affected by a building that would be a megadevelopment in their community were left with no voice. They had no way to point out the true story of their neighborhood was that their people were already diverse in many positive ways. Not only did they support a population that was over 25% Hispanic, but also they were home to Chicago’s Polish diaspora with shop owners and professionals routinely speaking both languages. In 2015 they had welcomed one of the largest Muslim congregations in Chicago to relocate to their community. And even after the whole affordable housing debacle was over, the Gladstone Park Neighborhood Association helped engineer a real estate deal so that the Black Ethiopian Chicago Yemarach Evangelical Church could establish its quarters within their bounds.

Rumors and misconceptions flourished. Forced into intractable positions, every issue was seen through a black-or-white lens. No one on the one side was able to admit that the new housing complex was sited on a lot kitty-cornered across the street from Jefferson Park’s 16th District Chicago Police Department at 5151 N. Milwaukee…an inopportune place for gangs or criminals to want to live. And contrary to the myths then circulating on the other side, King’s Chicago Freedom Movement march had taken place in Marquette Park on Chicago’s Southwest Side, some 15 miles south from the neighborhood where the proposed housing project at 5150 N. Northwest Highway was slated to go. (A full discussion of Chicago’s housing segregation problem is beyond the scope of this zoning review, so readers interested in its history are referred to an excellent distillation of the issues in “Mapping Chicago’s Racial Segregation” in the February 24, 2022 South Side Weekly, which starts with the geographical separation of Native Americans in colonial times and traces segregation along ethnic and racial lines to the present day.)

When the Illinois Housing Development Authority independently refused, for financial reasons, to approve low-income tax credits to Full Circle, the management company for the proposed affordable housing complex for the second year in a row, the action endangered the development’s fate. That led The Reverend Shawna Bowman, a mile up N. Northwest Highway at the Friendship Presbyterian Church, to accuse the state authority of enabling “the forces of white supremacy” to maintain segregation on the Northwest Side, according to a May 21, 2018 article in Nadig Newspapers.

Meanwhile, LSC, the Public Storage company, predictably sued Chicago for downzoning its property in order to revoke its building permit. Eventually they reached a settlement with the city that allowed the company to build its Public Storage facility on the northern half of the site, leaving the public housing project to go on the southern portion. But LSC was not yet done with controversy. In 2018 nine Scabby the Rat inflatables made their appearances on the building site for reported use of nonunion personnel during its construction.

Full Circle Communities ultimately obtained needed approvals and began constructing its seven-story 75-unit housing complex on the southern portion of the tract. It set aside 45 units for Chicago residents with incomes no higher than 60 percent of the city’s median, 15 for those earning no more than 30 percent, and 15 going at market rate, according to the National Equity Fund that syndicated the project.

As the building rose, housing advocates cheered they had beaten segregationists, continuing to distort their victory to force a too-tall building in a low-rise neighborhood as a defeat of racism in Far Northwest Chicago. Gladstone Park not only ended up with a non-conforming building two stories taller than the one building in its boundaries and four stories taller than most, but also was left sullied with unjust accusations of racism that had infinitely hurt the community’s reputation. “Remember 5150” became the bitter motto locals cited from that point on when any nonconforming building proposal needing zoning variances comes before the community. They simply no longer feel they can depend on the city to represent them fairly by upholding its own zoning.

As for Arena, The Chicago Contrarian wrote what it described as an abridged version of the Alderman’s actions during the sordid affair in “John Arena, COPA, and the Defaming of Chicago Police Officers” in February, 2020. With Arena “ignoring residents’ legitimate and principled opposition” and making “the attempt to silence dissent [by lashing] out at his critics from his official Facebook account in a series of grammatically illiterate posts designed to portray opinions differing from his as villainous, sinister, or heretical,” they charged he “publicly branded his detractors racist and painted a portrait of the Jefferson Park neighborhood as a pantheon of deranged bigots.”

Arena’s goose was cooked and the people of the 45th Ward voted him out of office in 2019. Thinking him a compadre, Lightfoot swiftly rewarded him with a $123,996 city Planning Department job that fall and just as swiftly came to regret it when the embarrassing news came out that Arena had engaged in what were called “guerrilla activism” targeting his successor as alderman. She summarily accepted his resignation not six months later.

The irony of the whole mess is that virtually no low-income (read: minority) families were offered the opportunity to apply for apartments in the affordable housing complex when the facility opened in 2021. After determining there was a greater need for housing veterans and the disabled in the neighborhood, Full Circle Communities prioritized those categories. It received in excess of 150 applications from veterans alone. So neither Lightfoot, Arena, nor any of the affordable housing advocates who had lobbied so hard for what they thought would rid the Far Northwest Side neighborhood of white supremacy end segregation got what they were fighting for. And Gladstone Parkers ended up with the legacy of a controversial building in their neighborhood that most still feel was unneeded as well inappropriately-sized.

But it is the precedent-setting action of the debacle that worries them most. How are they going to maintain their community’s identity as a low-rise, spread-out neighborhood that feels like a suburb if other developers come along citing 5150 N. Northwest Highway as the reason why they, too, should get approval for the seven story building they want to put up? That puts the culture of the entirety of Gladstone Park at risk.

Meanwhile, it took nearly five years for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to make its rulings on Arena’s 2018 complaints that 31 officers had made racially-charged comments about the proposed affordable housing complex. Detailing their findings in May, 2023, The Chicago Sun-Times recommended that five of them receive 30- to 120- day suspensions for having made incendiary social media posts, some of which could be or were interpreted as racist. But that action was never implemented because three of the officers had already resigned their positions with the Chicago Police Department and the two others entered the disciplinary grievance process fighting the ruling. All 26 other officers were cleared of Arena’s charges.

How did Arena respond after most of his complaints had been deemed groundless? “The report speaks for itself,” the same Sun-Times article quoted him as responding. “Despite challenges, the building ultimately got built, and low-income, veteran and disabled families are benefiting from that effort.”

Former Restaurant/Bank Property, 5700 N. Central

Soon after taking a bath on “5150,” the seven-story mixed-income housing project that became, by far, the tallest building in the Gladstone Park area, residents were confronted with a proposal for a 4-story, 52-unit apartment/retail complex at 5700 N. Central that the developer floated in the September 12, 2019 Nadig Newspapers.

The plan entailed tearing down a former bank/restaurant on a 33,000 square foot tract on the corner of N. Central and N. Elston bordered on the west and south sides by N. Parkside and W. Seminole. At first the proposal produced muted grumbling. After all, the one-story brick and limestone midcentury structure with its distinct rounded end had been accumulating litter and weeds since the Republic Bank had closed down in 2014. The upscale DiLeo’s Restaurant had gone out of business before that.

Then about 40 homeowners surprised the Gladstone Park Neighborhood Association by putting their collective feet down at its next meeting. Residents of N. Parkside at the back of the plot had already been living on one of the few streets in the community that had had to be converted to one-way due to the heavily-trafficked N. Central/N. Elston intersection nearby. Unlike other Gladstone Parkers, they also suffered from having to have permits to park their cars in front of their houses due to customer spillover from businesses nearby. They didn’t want the additional burden of a large dense building looming over them with 50 or more cars added to the mix.

Homeowners of the 1-1/2 story bungalows and English Tudors two, three, and more blocks from the former bank property also voiced their trepidation. If the four-story complex with 19 studio, 22 one-bedrooms, 8 two-bedroom, and three three-bedroom units were allowed, they were sure parking problems that had never before existed would spill over to their streets.

Gladstone Parkers simply couldn’t see why they should have to approve a zoning variance that would “upzone” the neighborhood with a taller and denser housing complex out of character to the community. They also knew that there was danger in approving one rezoning exception because any other applicant wanting the same consideration to build a four-story apartment building like it afterward could not then be denied. Gladstone Park would then be awash with other large, dense housing projects not at all similar to the community’s existing two/four flat rental housing and other small apartment buildings not above three stories.

Since all apartments in the proposal were to be market rate, Gladstone Parkers could focus on the real issues dear to their hearts: maintaining their zoning and not allowing nonconforming construction to bring in unwanted population densities, traffic and parking problems. “Affordable” housing was a nonissue, so no one could accuse the community of discrimination as they protested the proposal.

When the developer was made aware of the negative reactions of the community even when he reduced the scale of apartments to 45, he withdrew. Meanwhile, 5700 N. Central’s owner, who had unsuccessfully been trying to lease the property after the bank closed in 2014, decided to demolish the building himself to save on “upwards of $100,000” a year in property taxes and the expense of maintaining it, according to his attorney as quoted in the October 29, 2020 Nadig Newspapers. Thus, the community was to lose one of its larger mid-century modern commercial buildings of note (and in good condition) and there was nothing they could do about it.

Beginning demolition in November, 2020, the owner subjected the entire neighborhood to a nightmare of numerous permitting and environmental issues that resulted in multiple stop work orders. For two years and running, the combination of governmental red tape and lack of owner cooperation resulted in a building left half torn down in dangerous condition. It quickly became the community eyesore. Secured with inadequate fencing, the building attracted children who slipped through to play in the hazardous rubble. There was vandalism, broken glass, and boarded up windows.

As of May 26, 2022, the structure still looked like the photo below that was taken over a year earlier. The whole debacle put such a bad taste in the mouth of the community that residents became very unreceptive to plans for any new building plans for the site. But they were made not to worry. According to a notice delivered door-to-door to neighborhood constituents by Ald. Gardiner in May, 2022, there were then no active development proposals for the property. A second notice informed nearby residents the demolition company was going to finally complete the teardown of the old building June 13, 2022.

The property sat for another two years until the developer came back to the community with an updated apartment complex proposal that eliminated ground floor commercial units in response to previous residents’ wishes. Unlike the initial plans floated some five years earlier for 52 market-rate apartments in a four-story building, the new plan called for 40 units in three stories. Because of changing Chicago laws, 4 to 8 of the 12 1-bedroom, 25 2-bedroom and 3 3-bedroom units would newly be required to be designated as affordable. To further address the community’s fears that the dense development would create a “nightmare” of traffic and parking problems, the applicant revised his proposal to include 40 below-grade parking spaces and 21 on-surface slots, providing what he called “an unheard of amount” of 1.5 spaces for each unit. In addition there would be new entrances off residential side streets. Still, a rezoning of the property would be needed to build and the developer wanted the community’s approval to further the chances of that happening.

When Alderman Jim Gardiner called a meeting to allow community members to evaluate the developer’s revised proposal for the housing complex March 26, 2024, 70 people showed up to soundly reject it, as described in Nadig Newspapers. Residents were particularly unconvinced the side street driveways would resolve the inherent difficulties of access to the odd quadrilateral-shaped small lot anchored on the very busy N. Central/N. Elston intersection only .3 mile from CTA’s Forest Park Garage with its additional bus traffic. Exhausted by the changing developer proposals and the 18-month-long saga the owner of the land put the community through during a botched and dangerous demolition of the valued mid-century building that had been on the property, residents had become jaded even with the new concessions. People were also still reeling over what they called the unmitigated “disaster” that had come through the similar zoning variance granted by the city that resulted in a seven-story affordable apartment complex at 5150 N. Northwest Highway that most believed was completely out of character for the community.

6067 N. Milwaukee

In the same September 12, 2019 Nadig Newspapers article revealing prospective plans for a four-story 52-unit apartment complex on the former bank/restaurant property at 5700 N. Central was a mention of another four-story 15-unit apartment/condo complex proposal for 6067 N. Milwaukee.

Near the merger of N. Milwaukee and N. Elston (just behind the new Stefani restaurant), business properties had been combined and upzoned in 2006 from B3-1, the low-density designation of virtually all of Gladstone Park’s business corridors, to B3-3. The new zoning variance increased the allowable density of residential units from one per 2,500 square feet of land to one per 400 square feet of land, thus permitting six times the density. The condo project for which the zoning change was granted never materialized, according to the same article. There have been no more public disclosures about plans for 6067 N. Milwaukee since.

It is unknown if the community can proactively ask the city to revoke the 2006 B3-3 upzoned designation for the latter parcel so that it comes back into conformity with Gladstone Park’s area-wide B3-1 zoning.

The only other B (business) property on Gladstone Park’s Commercial Corridor that is not zoned B3-1 (besides the Planned Unit Development, or PUD, that is the site of Full Circle Communities seven-story affordable housing complex at 5150 N. Milwaukee) is at 6305 N. Milwaukee. Two blocks south of W. Devon, the community’s northern border, the B3-2 property hosts the 6,379 square foot “Park View Crest” brick apartments built in 1968.

There are also a handful of C (commercial) zoned properties on Gladstone Park’s N. Milwaukee Business Corridor that allow for more intense business uses such as liquor stores, warehouses, auto shops, strip mall shopping centers and factories that aren’t considered manufacturing. Would it be wise to look into these and see whether they make sense where they are located before unwanted, but technically conforming, businesses apply for building permits on these tracts?

For more information, consult charts at 2nd City Zoning by DataMade outlining Chicago’s nine main zoning categories with their multiple divisions that delineate what can legally be built on every piece of city land.

Former United Methodist Church Property, 5850 N. Elston

As if N. Elston residents hadn’t gone through enough defeating the 2019 proposal to build a too tall, too dense apartment building at the corner at 5700 N. Central and then having to suffer through the former restaurant/bank building’s ongoing demolition as it sat half torn down as hazardous eyesore over the course of more than two years.

The next thing they knew, a similar proposal four blocks down the road was on the table. Hudson Construction Services proposed building a four-story 18-unit condo complex on the 24,500 square foot property where the Elston Avenue United Methodist Church at 5850 N. Elston had recently closed down, as reported March 25, 2021 by Nadig Newspapers. Like at 5700 N. Central, plans would have required a zoning change for more intensive use from the single-family homes and two/three flats that were legally allowed on the street.

The proposal involved tearing down the striking mid-century brick and limestone church, built in 1958 with sweeping roof lines, stained glass windows, and attached classroom wing. Most of the parking lot, informally shared with next door’s Kolping Center (a Roman Catholic social aid society), were to be taken up by the housing.

Objecting to the upzoning that would be needed for the condo project to go forward, residents maintained the height and density of the buildings would be out of character for the neighborhood of two/three flats and single-family homes. With N. Elston serving as a major thoroughfare through the community, there was also the fear that increased numbers of vehicles would severely aggravate parking problems on surrounding streets. Again, there were no affordable housing issues to muddy the waters.

When nearby homeowners reported to the Gladstone Park Neighborhood Association that an Ethiopian Christian congregation was looking to buy a church building to use for faith-based purposes, all concerned parties were urged to seriously consider this solution as one everyone could support. GPNA welcomed the Chicago Yemarach Evangelical Church congregation to the historic church building in June, 2022. It was a win-win with a noteworthy mid-century building saved from destruction while the street it was on was spared upzoned gentrification.

JP MORGAN CHASE BANK REDEVELOPMENT, 5813 N. Milwaukee

In 2019 JP Morgan Chase announced plans to redevelop its bank site at 5813 N. Milwaukee at the corner of N. Austin by building a new one-story 6,602 square foot branch office in the present facility’s front parking lot. So that it would operate continuously, it would only tear down the older two-story 12,000 square foot facility behind it once the new building was completed. The proposal called for reducing the new facility’s parking lot to 46 spaces and replacing 4 drive-in slots with two new drive-in lanes with ATMs.

Although the new drive-in lanes required a special use permit, the 50 residents attending the Gladstone Park Neighborhood Association meeting November 20, 2019 were generally in favor of the bank’s overall redevelopment plan, according to the next day’s article in Nadig Newspapers.

However, there was concern for what would arise on the 27,000 square foot former parking lot of the larger Chase Bank that would be split off to be sold. Homeowners of the single-family homes on the surrounding streets opined that potential plans for a three-and-a-half-story six-flat on the plat would be too dense. According to the same Nadig Newspapers article, any residential proposal on the tract would probably require a zoning change since the property is now zoned B3-1 for low-density business.

Ald. Jim Gardiner deemed the bank redevelopment as positive for the community in his May 12, 2022 online newsletter, emphasizing that Chase is investing over $5 million in the project. Meanwhile, the Gladstone Park Chamber of Commerce posted on its website that the development would create over 120 union construction jobs.

As of May, 2022, no building proposal had as yet been submitted for the empty lot the bank is selling.

Hookah Lounges, 5394 N. Milwaukee and 5762 N. Milwaukee

Perhaps Gladstone Park’s most frustrating battle in striving to determine its destiny began in the spring of 2023 when an application for a 55-seat hookah lounge was filed to open in a vacant 2,100 square foot former title loan office at 5762 N. Milwaukee. The operation, which would involve people socializing while drawing in tobacco smoke from a hose connected to a heated water chamber, is in a special business category that needs a special use permit from Chicago’s Zoning Board of Appeals.

In order to mute local objections that were already fomenting locally, Warren Silver, attorney for the two applicants, made a presentation to the Gladstone Park Neighborhood Association June 8. Maintaining his clients, formerly of Kyrgyzstan, had successful experience operating such establishments in their home country before immigrating to America, he emphasized how hookah was an important part of Kyrgyz culture.

But Gladstone Parkers—and particularly those who live in the surrounding residential area—were bent out of shape by the fact the hookah bar just barely met the city’s law banning new tobacco licenses within 100 feet of a school. The St. Elizabeth of the Trinity (Roman Catholic) School at 6040 Ardmore Avenue is only about a block beyond the 100-foot prohibition area. And although Hitch Elementary School, the neighborhood public school at 5625 N. McVicker Ave, is some 500 feet away, residents claimed its students, too, would be walking past the hookah bar when going home from school with children getting the message that tobacco use “is okay.”

Parking was another issue even though the property includes seven parking spaces. Residents said they already fight for street parking when a restaurant and other nearby businesses are busy. They disputed the supposition that seven parking spaces would be enough for the hookah bar when it is full with some 50 customers.

In making its case, the applicants promised that no one under the age of 21 would be admitted. They would charge $40-45 for two people and no alcohol would be sold although there would be a BYOB policy. There would be no live music. In response to community objections, however, the applicants later voluntarily agreed to change their proposed opening hours from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. six days a week to 5 p.m. to midnight with an extension to 2 a.m. on weekends.

However, that small concession did not placate the community despite the fact it has spent three years waiting to see a viable tenant come into the storefront on the triangular lot at the intersection of N. Milwaukee and N. Austin. Even the Gladstone Park Chamber of Commerce—whose number one task has been to reduce business vacancies—stated its opposition to the hookah bar. Meanwhile, Thomas Tsaganos, the property owner of 5762 N. Milwaukee said there have not been many prospective tenants since the title company closed in 2020. The current applicants, having hired an attorney and an architect, are strongly motivated.

Despite widespread condemnation of the hookah bar proposal, Gladstonians had little hope their wishes would be taken seriously. That’s because they knew of a very similar case 10 years earlier when the Prince Hookah Lounge, 5001 N. Harlem Avenue in the Oriole Park neighborhood was approved by the Board of Appeals despite strenuous community objection. Even though residents have complained to the ZBA about how it is now being allowed to stay open until 4 a.m. on weekends, generating noise, litter and overall bad behavior, they have been met with deaf ears. (Customers apparently aren’t wild about the Prince Hookah Lounge either with Yelp reviewers giving it an overall 2-1/2 star rating with one-third more 1-star than 5-star ratings as of December, 2023.)

Then, in a surprise move, the city Department of Planning and Development announced at the two-hour Zoning Board of Appeals meeting that it did not recommend approval of the hookah bar’s special use permit the business needed to open in Gladstone Park, a rare event said to occur in only 1 percent of ZBA cases. However, the DPD had no authority to intervene. And because the Board of Appeals is a quasi-judicial panel that acts independently of the City Council, even the additional opposition of local Alderman Jim Gardner made no difference. The special use permit was granted at its October 20, 2023 meeting with only one member, Sam Toia, voting no.

Residents were not placated when, as part of the approval, the ZBA reduced the bar’s closing hours to 10 p.m. on weekdays and a ban on the BYOB policy. It was unclear by December whether the applicants would still want to open with the reduced hours and alcohol prohibition. But as Attorney Silver made clear, any and all restrictions such as these can be struck down in a year’s time if the hookah bar operates with a positive track record.

Ironically, while the Kyrgyz businessmen were actively working to prepare the 5762 N. Milwaukee Hookah Bar site for opening, new applicants came in with a proposal to develop a second larger, more upscale Hookah Lounge at 5394 N. Milwaukee at the intersection with N. Manila Avenue only 6/10 a mile south of the first. Proposing to demolish what is now one of the most dilapidated buildings in Gladstone Park (or rebuild it, if possible), the new owners would be cleaning up what is perhaps the biggest eyesore in the entire Milwaukee Avenue Business Corridor. Presenting plans to invest $1 million in a 6,000 square foot airy dining room-style operation, the applicants, who already run similar successful operations elsewhere in the city, stated their aim is to attract more well-heeled patrons from throughout the Chicago area.

At its June, 2024 meeting, the Gladstone Park Neighborhood Association decided not to oppose their plan as they had for the first hookah lounge…and not only due to the city’s recent propensity for giving approvals for such applications despite opposition from local neighborhoods and their alderpeople. GPNA members expressed the opinion that, despite the business not being one they perhaps would choose, the development would be a significant improvement to the most run-down portion of the community’s entire commercial district. Not only would the new hookah lounge create more exposure for existing local businesses on the southern end of N. Milwaukee, the thinking went, but also it could foster interest from other entrepreneurs interested in investing in the community’s most neglected business area with its empty car lots and more than its share of vacant storefronts.

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