After a 4-4 vote on a proposed townhouse development on Northwest Highway, the Palatine Plan Commission has recommended the Village Council table the project until a re-evaluation of the village’s comprehensive plan and a study of the area in question are complete.
Inverness Development Inc. has proposed the project for a tract bounded by Northwest Highway, Maple Avenue, Alva Street and Franklin Avenue, an area known as Merrill’s Triangle. Eight single-family homes on the 6.25-acre site would be razed and replaced by 52 townhouses in 16 buildings.
Plan commissioners who voted against the project questioned the need for more townhouses in Palatine and their appropriateness for the site, which is surrounded primarily by single-family homes.
Commission Chairman Dennis Dwyer said, “I’d like to see the comprehensive plan re-evaluated rather than develop this area piecemeal.”
Palatine Planning and Zoning Administrator David Fieldman said the comprehensive plan was last updated in 1990.
The site was zoned for office-research use until 1995, when the roughly 50-acre Merrill’s Triangle area was forcibly annexed and the zoning changed to single-family residential.
