Orland Park has ended the freeze on new building permits for developers of the Marley Creek subdivision, acknowledging it may have overreacted to resident complaints.
The Village Board voted unanimously Tuesday to lift the ban after hearing a report, prepared by the village staff and summarized by Village Manager Rick Boehm, that found that most of the issues have been or are being addressed by developers.
“There are definitely some concerns out there and it does appear that a good number of these issues are normal subdivision problems,” Mayor Dan McLaughlin said.
Two weeks ago, Orland Park officials halted the issuance of new permits to the developers of Marley Creek. The subdivision has been plagued by complaints from its residents about issues such as inadequate street lighting and signage, inadequate landscaping and speeding truck traffic.
McLaughlin said the Village Board probably overreacted in banning the new building permits without hearing from developers but defended the results of the action.
“It wasn’t done as properly as possible, but it certainly shook things up out there,” he said.
Lead developer of the subdivision, located just west of 179th Street and Wolf Road, is MGM Development and includes S&K Builders, Centex Homes, Sleeman Builders and Distinctive Homes.
MGM Development and MGM Construction owner Jack Mayher, who was critical of the building ban, said Wednesday he was happy to hear it had been lifted. He said he did not know how many permit requests were pending, but he estimated that the developers typically go to the village for two new building permits a week.
McLaughlin also asked the Community Development and Building Committee to look into developing a formal complaint process with the possibility of having an employee from the building department act as a homeowner advocate.
“In the past, there has been no continuity on whether there is follow-through and no real good way to see if we are responding as well as we should be,” McLaughlin said Wednesday.
Mayher agreed that a formal complaint process would be a good idea.
