The developers of a controversial townhouse and condominium project in downtown Elmhurst told city officials that they cannot complete the project if they have to comply fully with current storm water management requirements.
Members of the Renzi/Gammonley Group recently asked the city’s Storm Water Oversight Committee to grant them a variance of the county’s storm water mitigation ordinance, which requires that any detention area that is developed be replaced with another one of equal size.
The developers want the variance so they can begin a 74-unit building on the former 1.6-acre Market Plaza site at Addison and Third Streets.
Project opponents described the latest request as a similar refrain from the developers.
“Every time they come in here, they tell us the project can’t get built unless they get something more from the city,” said one critic, John Connelly, noting that Elmhurst has had a long history of flooding problems. “But if everybody gets a variance, that will put us back where we were in 1987, with the same (flooding) problem.”
The committee is expected to hold another public hearing on the issue Monday.
