A proposed two-home development on 2.4 acres in Wheaton has angered neighbors, who are criticizing a developer’s attempt to circumvent a restriction against subdividing the property.
Well-known Wheaton office developer Jeffrey Walker and his attorney, land-development lawyer Henry Stillwell, have requested rezoning for the land at 104 W. Farnham Lane.
A restrictive covenant from the 1980s bans the land from being subdivided, so Walker has proposed the project as a planned unit development, or PUD, not a subdivision.
Typically, only commercial developments such as shopping malls and office developments are PUDs, which are designed to give developers more flexibility in developments’ layouts. PUDs have one landowner but provide long-term ground leases for owners of the buildings on it.
Under Walker’s PUD, he would demolish an existing house and build two homes. He would own the entire parcel–thereby conforming to the property’s restrictive covenant, which forbids only a legal subdivision. He would own one of the homes, leasing the land under the other house to another homebuyer for 199 years.
City officials, who aren’t sure if the covenant is legally enforceable, said they know of no similar example of a small single-family PUD. Stillwell told Wheaton’s Planning and Zoning Board recently that such arrangements were used in the Sun Belt in the 1980s, when high interest rates prompted dual-ownerships in order to spread out and reduce struggling homeowners’ monthly mortgage payments.
Neighbors in the more densely developed, adjacent Farnham neighborhood to the west urged the planning panel to recommend against the PUD. They said it was an attempt to get around the no-subdivide covenant and charged that the two homes would exacerbate neighborhood flooding problems.
“This ground lease is a way to get in the back door,” neighbor Diana Muchiyama said. “The whole reason we’re here is because he can’t do it any other way.”
Walker’s property was part of a tract donated to Wheaton College in 1982.
In 1983, the college proposed a seven-lot subdivision for the land. After neighbors objected, the college negotiated a deal allowing for just one buildable lot.
The college and the neighbors also signed off on the covenant, barring subsequent owners from ever subdividing the 2.4-acre lot.
The planning panel will vote on the plan Tuesday, with a preliminary council vote Feb. 19.
