Preservationists are girding to fight a proposed ordinance before the Chicago City Council that they say would open a gaping hole in the city’s law protecting historic buildings.
The ordinance, submitted by Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd), essentially exempts more than a dozen buildings from landmark protection status in a proposed extension of the Washington Square landmark district on the Near North Side. The exemptions would cover buildings with owners who don’t consent to city landmark status.
But critics say the ordinance would create a loophole in the city’s law establishing landmark districts and one that preservationists lobbied for decades to bring the law to its current strength.
If the ordinance is adopted, preservationists fear it would defuse the city’s main weapon to save historic structures from demolition–designating a property as a protected landmark against the owner’s wishes. In the future, aldermen could exempt properties with non-consenting owners, citing Natarus’ ordinance as a precedent, its opponents say.
It also would lead to disconnected landmarks in a neighborhood of prime urban real estate, preservationists say. The district includes a section of brownstone row houses in the 800 and 1000 blocks of North Dearborn Street. In Natarus’ proposal, some of the row houses would be landmarks while others would not.
“This turns back time,” said David Bahlman, president of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, an advocacy group. “This would turn the city into a toothless tiger, like most of the suburbs, where there is no clear method to protect a landmark from an owner who wants to tear it down.”
Built just after the Chicago Fire in the 1870s and 1880s by some of the city’s wealthiest families, the properties in the proposed Washington Square extension consist of 33 ornate mansions and row houses along five blocks of Dearborn between Chicago Avenue and Division Street and on Chestnut Street just east of Dearborn.
Those were the boundaries approved by the city’s Commission on Landmarks in July 2001.
Two weeks ago, Natarus submitted a substitute ordinance that would give landmark protection to some homes in the proposed district: 13 on North Dearborn Street and two on West Chestnut Street. The addresses not identified in Natarus’ new ordinance are the ones owned by those who have not consented to landmark status.
“There are a lot of people objecting and I just don’t see the city’s needs on this one,” Natarus said. “These are single-family owners and it costs a lot of money to maintain their properties. And they have maintained their properties nicely. They don’t need the burdens and restrictions that come along with being a landmark.”
Natarus said he imposed residential zoning in the Washington Square area years ago that forbids tall buildings, so it is unlikely that any of the row houses would be demolished for new condominiums or new development.
The alarms being sounded by preservationists, Natarus said, are an overreaction.
“I don’t think the preservationists are correct when you say if you don’t landmark it, it will disappear. There are some people who probably want to landmark the whole city,” Natarus said. “I wrote this landmark law 20 years ago and I am not steering around it. You have only a few property owners out of 33 who consent and we’re going to tell all the rest their buildings have to be landmarks? Tell me if that is democracy.”
Those kinds of statements worry preservationists, particularly because aldermen wield vast control over their wards.
Meanwhile, preservationists argue that the ordinance is a piecemeal way to determine landmark protection. Most of the addresses in the proposed district along Dearborn Street are connected row houses, they say. Natarus wants to give landmark protection to some of the homes and not to others.
That would mean, for example, that the Italianate row houses at 804 and 808 N. Dearborn St. would become city landmarks, while the row house between those two–at 806 N. Dearborn St.–would not. That would occur even though 806 is a physical extension of the other houses and is the architectural equivalent of its neighbors.
“How can you just pick and choose like this?” asked Jim Peters, planning director for the preservation council.
“To me, it also raises another issue: Is any of this legal?” Peters asked.
Landmark protection decrees that significant alterations to a structure, such as new windows or door frames, must be approved by the city’s landmark division in the Department of Planning and Development. Those restrictions are cited by some owners who object to landmark designation.
John Vaillancourt, owner of Color Epidemic Salon at 808 N. Dearborn St., said he is concerned that it would be hard to sell his property if it were deemed a city landmark (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
“Had the landmark process already gone through, I might not have bought this property,” said Vaillancourt, who purchased the salon in November. “It adds that extra layer of government red tape when you want to change anything.”
Natarus said the matter will be discussed in July.
It’s possible that the council could take no action on the matter. If the council doesn’t approve some ordinance by July 26, the Commission on Landmarks’ all-inclusive plan would become law.
A spokesman for the Commission on Landmarks declined to comment specifically on the dispute or Natarus’ proposal but said the commission staff would work with Natarus on the issue.
