Cook County Board President John Stroger and the Cook County Forest Preserve District were greeted as heroes last week when they formally objected to building an assisted living center on the site of the FitzJoy equestrian farm in Palos Park.
Joseph Nevius, superintendent of the Forest Preserve District, read a statement from Stroger supporting local residents, horse owners and open-land advocates who turned out in force at a Palos Park Plan Commission hearing Wednesday to urge retaining the 9-acre site at 12211 S. La Grange Rd. as a horse farm.
Cook County Commissioner Herbert T. Schumann (R-Palos Heights) took the same stance.
They were applauded and met with cheers in the Palos area, where residents are fond of saying they relish the woodlands, wildlife and wide-open spaces.
With the cheering behind them, now comes the hard part. If the district is serious about buying the land, it must find county money to add it to the vast parcels of the Forest Preserve District in the south and southwest.
The controversy also dramatizes the conflict between the rights of private property owners and a community and a government agency that would block them from realizing their full potential profit in a move, ostensibly, to protect open space and provide recreational opportunity for a relative few.
“We feel that with the forest preserves, the stable fits with the character of Palos Park, and I would like to see it stay that way or have the Forest Preserve District buy it,” said Palos Park Mayor Don Jeanes, a home developer himself. “I also understand that the people who own the property have a right to sell their property and get whatever they can for it.”
The four owners of the FitzJoy Farm have been offered $1.7 million by a nationwide developer of senior residence centers. That price appears to be out of reach of a cash-strapped Forest Preserve District, which is under legislatively mandated tax caps.
The owners are a couple in their 60s who want to retire from the business and a divorced couple who also want out. They’ve owned the stable for about 10 years and say mounting costs make it difficult to make a profit.
“My position is it’s my property,” said Bob Joyce, one of the owners. “The people who want to buy it aren’t going to ruin it or make it worse. In fact, they will make it better. We have a yellow tin building, no grass, no trees, just dirt on the ground and a manure pile out back.”
The offer by Assisted Living Investments, a joint partnership between SunHealthcare Group Inc. and Hammes Corp., is contingent upon issuance of the special-use permit from Palos Park. The land is now zoned for agricultural purposes or for 1-acre, single-family sites.
The Forest Preserve District is lobbying against the requested special-use permit because it believes the current zoning puts a reduced value on the land. Without the special-use permit, it believes it could negotiate a sale, or condemn it and purchase it at a lower price than the developer is offering.
The land sits amid the vast Palos preserves, whose 15,000 acres represent the largest tract of contiguous open space in Cook County. It is adjacent to forest preserve land on the north and is the beginning of access to 32 miles of riding trails in the Palos preserves.
Stroger wants the stable to remain to afford equestrian recreational opportunities for Cook County residents, but his desire overlooks the fact that the stable doesn’t offer horseback riding to the general public. The only people using FitzJoy Farm as a starting point for the trails are about 120 horse owners who board their animals at the farm and those enrolled in riding lessons.
Stroger, who as president of the Cook County Board also sits as president of the Forest Preserve District, is interested in purchasing the parcel but only at a “reasonable price,” according to his spokesman Jack Beary.
The district owns two stables in Morton Grove and Barrington and leases them to a private company to offer riding for the public.
Schumann wants a similar arrangement for the Palos preserves.
“The district is in a difficult position as far as available funds, but if there’s anywhere we’re going to look at purchasing property, this is an ideal spot,” Schumann said. “We have all these wonderfully maintained equestrian trails that I think should be made available to the casual user, not just the horse owners.”
The difficulty is that the district has only $10 million in its land acquisition fund, and half of that is already earmarked for purchases. Beary said Stroger wants to keep the remaining $5 million in reserve.
There are other expensive, priority parcels on the board’s list, including lands for the greenway between McGinnis Slough and Tampier Lake in Orland Township.
Alan Durrant, president of Hammes, a joint partner in the residence venture, said it would be more economically feasible for the district to build state-of-the-art stables on land north of the FitzJoy Farm, which the district purchased under condemnation in 1992.
After the hearing Wednesday, the Plan Commission continued the matter to July 16.
