As a flurry of teardowns changes the face of Deerfield, officials recently shelved a historic preservation plan after the state said a gaping loophole in the proposed ordinance made it ineffective.
“It’s dead,” said Trustee Bill Seiden, head of a redevelopment task force that crafted the proposal. “We tried, we lost and we’ve got to move on.”
Village officials hoped to get the ordinance approved for a state property-tax freeze program that creates an incentive to renovate locally designated landmark homes. But a provision to allow homeowners to opt out of the designation at any time didn’t go over well in Springfield.
“There is no community anywhere in Illinois that has an opt-out privilege for landmarking or historic districts that we have certified for the tax freeze program,” said Catherine O’Connor, local government services manager of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
Statewide, there are 37 municipalities with preservation ordinances in the Property Tax Assessment Freeze Program, including Evanston, Glencoe, Highland Park, Wilmette and Winnetka. Started in 1984, the program allows homeowners who invest at least 25 percent of a designated home’s property value on approved rehabilitation projects to freeze their tax payments for eight years.
Though an owner-consent clause in the Deerfield ordinance concerned state officials, Highland Park and Winnetka received certification with a similar approach. But Deerfield’s insistence on a homeowner’s perpetual right to relinquish historic status led to the impasse.
“I don’t see a great deal of difference between opting out on day 1 or opting out on day 5,000,” Seiden said. “There doesn’t seem to be right now a meeting of the village, the state and the residents.”
With more than 200 teardowns in Deerfield since the task force was formed in 2001, including several homes of historical significance, some question the sincerity of the village’s preservation effort.
“What’s the point of having an ordinance on the books that’s absolutely going to do nothing,” said Lisa DiChiera, spokeswoman for the Chicago-based Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. “You may as well make it clear to your constituents that you just have no desire to preserve or protect any heritage of that community.”
Tom Roth, an architect and president of the Deerfield Area Historical Society who was a special adviser to the task force, said he was not consulted about the ordinance and called the opt-out provision a cop-out.
“That’s about as wimpy as you can get,” Roth said. “They don’t understand historic preservation and they don’t think it’s important. But they certainly understand development.”
Last year, Roth led an unsuccessful campaign to save one of Deerfield’s most recognizable landmarks, a 1915 estate known as Deep Dene. Purchased by Deerfield-based OGI Development for $800,000 in May 2003, the Mediterranean-style villa was razed to build an enclave of million-dollar-plus properties on its secluded 1.6-acre Deerfield Road site. Three homes are under construction on the cul-de-sac, with a fourth to be built next year, said Ryan Johnstone, a principal with OGI.
“It’s a great idea from the outside looking in, saying we should keep these houses around because they represent the past,” Johnstone said. “But if you actually have to try and live in a house like that, that’s kind of crumbling under you, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense realistically. We looked at trying to save the house and renovate it, and it just wasn’t cost-effective.”
The demise of Deep Dene, a longtime centerpiece of an annual 4th-grade history hunt, prompted the groundswell for a preservation ordinance. But after dropping the proposal at a Village Board meeting last month, Seiden said the response has been muted.
“Nobody contacted me after the ordinance was [withdrawn],” Seiden said.
DiChiera, of the Landmarks Preservation Council, believes a few more homes may be relegated to history before the tide can turn.
“Sometimes it takes a lot of teardowns to happen to really make a community wake up, and, of course, half of what they had is lost,” DiChiera said.
Deerfield’s handful of venerable homes may not last long enough to warrant an ordinance.
Though the historical society has a list of about 30 local historic properties, Roth said just a few remain that are central to Deerfield’s history. They include a “Painted Lady” Victorian and the mid-19th Century Deerlick Farm, both on Deerfield Road, and the Wilmot House at Wilmot Road and Central Avenue, believed to have been a way station on the Underground Railroad, according to Roth.
“This isn’t something we have one, two, three, four years to fight through,” Roth said. “It would seem like we’re waiting until they’re all gone.”
