Daily Archives: July 11, 2006

Bradley University, City Council, City of Peoria

Supermajority restriction fails

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Only three council members voted in favor of the zoning commission’s recommendation to require a supermajority of the council to expand the boundaries of an institutional district. The general consensus was that the system isn’t broken, so they didn’t want to “fix” it.

One of the council members trotted out the popular notion that there’s no harm being done by Bradley because they’re buying out their neighbors at above-market prices — in some cases, five times the property value. It sounds like they’re a really good neighbor, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you just love to get a cool half-million for your $100,000 house?

The problem with this reasoning is that it doesn’t take into account the whole neighborhood. Take the example of Bradley University buying the houses along Maplewood across from the Fieldhouse. Yes, the people on Maplewood are getting a great deal, but what about the rest of the Arbor District? What about the properties on Cooper or Rebecca?

The answer is that the neighborhood as a whole is destabilized.

Why? Because who wants to buy in a neighborhood when the university is expanding west and that beautiful historical house on Cooper may be the next to be acquired within a few years? It’s not the family who wants to put down roots in the neighborhood and raise their kids there. It’s someone looking to buy a property for $100,000 and hopefully get $500,000 for it when the university decides it wants it.

And for those neighbors who are already there, how many of them want to put new landscaping around their house? Or put in new windows? Or new siding? Or even a new paint job? If the residents reasonably expect the university to keep moving west, it would be silly to put a lot of capital improvements into their houses.

Speculative purchases. Deferred maintenance. This is what happens when institutions disregard the boundaries of their institutional district.

But the council, judging by the rhetoric of the “nay” voters, thinks everything is hunky-dory with Bradley’s property acquisitions. They’re not interested in taking any action against Bradley’s encroachment into the Arbor District, let alone enacting the modest proposal that came before the council tonight. As far as they’re concerned, Bradley’s doing the neighborhood a favor by disobeying the city’s own ordinance.

Peoria Journal Star, Village of Peoria Heights

Dear Alexis, xxoo, Love, Phil

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Alexis KhazzamPhil LucianoIf I were Elizabeth Khazzam, I’d keep an eye on Phil Luciano. He wrote another love note to her husband Alexis in today’s paper.

Forgive me for not crying big crocodile tears over Khazzam’s ill-fated basketball court on Grandview Drive. If a schmo like me built a basketball court on an easement, I’d buy the contention that it was just an innocent mistake. But this guy is a developer. He knows about easements. He knows about permits. He should have known better.

His offer to tear out the basketball court at his own expense if the village ever needed to use the easement is silly. First of all, there’s no guarantee he’s going to live there forever. Would this agreement be transferrable to the new owner?

Secondly, the crux of the argument that he deserves our sympathy is that he was making this for the public good — it was going to be a little public park he’s creating out of the goodness of his heart for the poor little children of the neighborhood. Yet when the villiage asked him if he’d deed the property to the villiage to officially make it a public park, he blinked.

He can’t have it both ways. If he wants it to be private property and control the use of the land, then he has to abide by the villiage’s laws. As a developer, he should certainly have known that. When it comes to municipalities, the old axiom that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission never works.

Kudos to the village board for treating Alexis just like any other citizen. Hopefully he won’t take his ball and go home, as Phil suggests. Hey Phil, even nice guys have to fix their mistakes.