Richard J. Daley was about to okay reforms to Chicago`s zoning ordinance, a top aide recalls, when the mayor was told that the changes might force his favorite funeral home to move out of his Bridgeport neighborhood.
”We were explaining to him how non-conforming buildings would be given time to relocate,” said Lewis Hill, Daley`s planning czar. ”And right away he asked: `Does that mean McKeon`s will have to go?”`
Hill answered `yes` to the question. Daley said `no` to the changes.
It`s a classic story of neighborhood zoning in Chicago, where decisions about the use of land are guided by politics, by emotion, and by a badly outdated civic blueprint called the Chicago Zoning Ordinance.
The story also helps explain why the ordinance-a 30-year-old book-length dinosaur of a document, has not been changed much except on a piecemeal basis even though the city itself has changed enormously since 1957.
City officials and aldermen for years have been promising a complete revision of the zoning ordinance, but there has been no action thus far and none appears to be on the horizon.
The ordinance is riddled with amendments, exceptions, special uses, and compromises-most of them produced by long-forgotten run-ins involving existing residents, developers, and politicians who took one side or the other.
A close reading of the current ordinance`s fine print reveals that:
– Churches and golf courses are allowed in single-family residential districts, but not sheltered care homes or driving ranges.
– Chickens may be slaughtered in light commercial districts, but clothes may not be washed there unless the capacity of a coin laundry`s washing machines are less than 10 poundss.
– Bowling alleys must have three parking spaces per alley, but movie theaters only one space per 10 seats.
– Colleges are permitted in low-rise apartment districts, but not
”business colleges or trade schools.”
– A legal ”family” consists of ”one or more persons each related to the other by blood (or adoption) together with such blood relatives`
respective spouses who are living together in a single dwelling.”
– That family may keep an unlimited number of domestic servants but ”not more than one gratuitous guest.”
”Listing things which we wish to exclude from our lives can be very revealing,” said Jack Hartray, Jr., an architect and zoning expert. ”If the Samoans had written a zoning code, (anthropologist) Margaret Mead would have had very little to do.”
From reading its zoning ordinance, one might infer that Chicago is a family town with a soft spot for fresh poultry, in-laws, covenient bowling and religion. The city has less patience, it seems, with theatergoers, troubled outsiders, those who don`t wash their clothes at home, and deadbeat boarders. But a document that makes for good anthropology doesn`t necessarily make for good planning in a fast-evolving post-industrial city.
Hartray and other experts claim Chicago has outgrown its zoning ordinance. And nowhere is that more evident, they say, than in the
neighborhoods.
”What`s needed,” said Jack Guthman, one of the city`s foremost zoning attorneys, ”is a fundamental and comprehensive rewrite based on what we want Chicago to be in the future.”
Guthman pointed out that the ordinance`s set of 240 square-mile maps-maps that dictate what can and cannot be built on every square foot in the city-already has been amended more than 1,000 times.
”Spot amendments have created a crazy quilt,” said Jane Heron, an urban planner who recently organized some brown-bag lunch seminars on zoning.
”These map changes were not devised by an orderly process,” Heron said. ”They were simply granted where the outcry was loudest.”
About the only thing that hasn`t been spot-amended, she said, is the stated purpose of the ordinance: ”To promote and protect the public health, safety, morals, comfort, convenience and the general welfare of the people.” But experts like Heron charge that the ordinance works against the
”general welfare” of neighborhoods in several ways:
– It reserves the right to work at home for ”professionals” engaged in
”consultation, emergency treatment or performance of religious rites” but forbids ”the use of any mechanical or electrical equipment customarily incident to the practice of any such profession.” That means thousands of Chicagoans working at home on their desktop computers are technically breaking the law.
– It zones for far more business and commercial space along main streets than can possibly be leased, stringing out the city`s shopping districts into ragged strips while making it difficult to convert vacant storefronts into much-needed residences.
– It retards popular new forms of housing, like town houses, by requiring developers to apply for a ”variance” on the rule that each single family home be surrounded by an open yard. ”This is marvelous for a few people,”
said architect Hartray, ”like lawyers and zoning consultants.”
– It places thousands of buildings throughout the city, like McKeon`s funeral home, out of conformance with the law-either with the original 1957 law or one of its many amendments. Nonconforming owners are placed in legal limbo: They are forbidden from expanding, rebuilding after a fire, or resuming use after a long period of vacancy. ”Nonconforming” buildings should be legalized, reformers say, or else removed after a multi-year ”amortization” period during which owners can recoup their investment. For political reasons, however, the amortization ”clock” has never been started.
– The code makes the rehab of a coach house apartment illegal with a rule that says: ”Not more than one principal detached residential building shall be located on a zoning lot.” Nowadays, living in a coach house is considered chic, Hartray said, but in 1957 ”everyone was going to live in a Dick-and-Jane ranch house with a white picket fence and a dog named Spot.”
– It inhibits expansion of thousands of single-family dwellings by counting the space added by a new dormer, an enclosed porch, or a finished basement against the maximum living area allowed on a given lot. For many cramped city residents, the solution has been to to buy a bigger house-in the suburbs.
– Its requirements for off-street parking are outdated and inflexibly linked to the type of building, not the nature of the building or its neighborhood. For instance, the largest of houses need have but one parking space-the same number per dwelling unit as is required of a 50-unit seniors`
complex located next to a rapid transit station.
Critics also contend the zoning ordinance is overly protective of the city`s basic pattern of rectangular lots along grid streets. As developer Harry Chaddick, an author of the `57 ordinance, put it, ”Here and there we need to get away from the grid with cluster-type development that is protected from fast traffic.”
