In the end, it wasn’t the unusual combination that killed the plan for an intergenerational day-care center and senior home in Highland Park, but rather standard zoning issues of density and appropriate land uses.
After two hours of debate and public comment last week, the Highland Park City Council unanimously rejected a joint proposal from Highland Park Hospital and Minneapolis-based Rosewood Estate USA Inc. for a 160-unit senior housing building on 8.9 acres on the southeast corner of U.S. Highway 41 and Illinois Highway 22. The project also included a day-care center for both seniors and children.
The idea has been under discussion in Highland Park for about six months. Developers had scaled back the size of the project to try to appease city officials, but they still couldn’t convince the council that traffic in the area wouldn’t become congested by the center.
“Really, this was not a discussion on day care and senior housing,” Councilman Steven Mandel said. “It was a discussion on density.”
Mandel and other members of the council encouraged hospital and Rosewood officials to continue working with city staff to find a new location for the facility. But hospital officials refused to comment about whether they will do that. City staff said they had not heard from either institution.
Michael Coppola, business development analyst at the hospital, would only repeat what officials said at the hearing–that the hospital had hoped to provide a needed service to the city.
“This project goes beyond being just a financial interest to the hospital,” Coppola said.
Coppola said there were two main benefits to the plan. One was the Rosewood concept of senior care, which aims to preserve the dignity of the resident by providing private rooms where discreet medical care can be administered.
The project’s proponents also have trumpeted the concept of a combined day care for seniors and children as a way for both generations to learn and benefit from each other.
They also stressed the need for a new day-care facility, saying there are 175 Highland Park parents on waiting lists at day-care centers in the community.
“We need to bring the two sides of these populations together,” said Mark Newton, senior vice president of Highland Park Hospital. “There is a lot of wisdom that an older person can bring to a child, and vice versa. There is a lot of excitement that a child can bring to an elderly person.”
All that sounded fine to some members of the council. But the idea was still defeated because of the traffic it threatened to bring to an already clogged area. Opponents also argued that the neighborhood was not right for senior living because it was so far from any stores that could be considered within walking distance.
Councilman Marilyn Weinger said she didn’t believe that seniors would benefit much from living in a neighborhood that had limited services and no nearby shops.
“As an elderly facility, it was very isolated,” she said.
The Highland Park Plan Commission had recommended that the City Council approve the senior citizen center, but the commission argued that the day-care center would create traffic problems, especially along Half Day Road.
Besides changing their original plan from two buildings and 300 units to one building and 160 units, hospital officials said they were also willing to install a stoplight at the entrance to the facility to ease traffic congestion.
But residents and councilmen remained unconvinced about the plan, which was also questioned because of its proximity to flood plains.
