The general trend in Northbrook house construction has been toward smaller, less expensive houses this decade.
But the ongoing attempt by Pulte Homes to build Willow Crossing on about 5 acres along Willow Road has resulted in proposals for bigger houses each time the company has appeared before the Northbrook Plan Commission.
Pulte brought a plan for 18 houses of up to 3,300 square feet each to the commission Feb. 17. After commissioners and prospective neighbors blasted the density of the project, the firm came back March 17 with a plan for 16 houses that could be as big as 4,000 square feet each.
The developer is scheduled to return April 21 to the Plan Commission.
The houses also grew in height, from a range of between 28.8 and 29.38 feet in February to a range of between 30.33 and 33.83 feet in March.
Pulte Vice President Peter Tremulis said March 17 that the homes in the 16-house package are bigger and better than the first group in order to achieve “a higher price point to offset some of the loss” inherent in losing two homes.
An hour later, after the project was criticized again over density by commissioners and residents, Tremulis posed one technical question before he left to re-plan: Could Northbrook ordinances let a new 14-house plan feature wider driveways to serve three-car garages instead of two-car garages?
Garages, which average about 350 square feet, aren’t counted in the square footage reported by Pulte.
But they do count when figuring out the retail value of the homes, which started at about $800,000 and likely have gone up from there, Tremulis said March 18.
“There is more price elasticity toward the upper end of the market,” he added.
In other words, as fewer houses on the same site may drive prices north, buyers want more bang for the buck. That means, Tremulis said, higher-end buyers won’t want houses with room for just two cars.
Fewer houses, however, also put downward pressure on the price of the land, which has not yet been sold to Pulte. When members rejected the 18-house plan on Feb. 17, Tremulis told the commission that reducing the density is mainly a matter of “talking to the landowner about some details.”
The situation might be different this time. Tremulis’ question about driveways under the 14-house plan doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what commissioners will see next month, he said.
A zoning code variation Pulte requested for the homes’ front setbacks would reduce them from 25 to 15 feet, which may not provide enough length for a driveway to gradually widen from two lanes at the curb to three lanes at the garage, Northbrook Building/Planning Director Tom Poupard said.
The three-car version, then, might require a concrete strip, leading from the curb to the overhead doors, that would be as much as 27 feet wide – about the width of a standard street, Poupard said.
Some towns don’t allow that much cement, and Tremulis said he thought Northbrook might be one of them. It’s not, officials said.
Other variations requested in the Pulte planned unit development proposal include narrower street rights of way and a smaller cul-de-sac.
The rear yards are a permissible 25 feet deep, but 15 feet are taken up with a swale, and the resulting small yards have been a sticking point in the neighborhood.
“Even tiny city backyards are deeper than 10 feet,” said Dawn Shallberg, testifying on behalf of the Marshak family, which lives just north of the west edge of the proposed development.
She said it was “inconceivable” that houses with such yards were fit for Pulte’s avowed target market of “young families with school-age children.”
Lots of about 6,600 square feet don’t belong alongside the mostly 1-acre zoning of the immediate area bounded by Willow, Highland, Pfingsten and Landwehr roads, with properties ranging between 22,000 and 78,000 square feet, Shallberg said.
“This plan does nothing but create a wall of houses lined up 25 feet from existing homeowners,” she added.
Several residents who live in the immediate area of the proposed Willow Crossing project echoed Shallberg.
George Stutz, a central Northbrook resident, expressed his distaste, calling the plans “a gross imposition on the zoning code, on the village of Northbrook and on the neighbors.”
He said that instead of building houses on small lots, Pulte should build houses on lots three or four times the proposed size, such as those built just to the northwest in the 1990s, along Jasper Court.
Plan Commission member Steven Elisco largely agreed, saying that instead of building in the R-5 zoning code framework, “R-4 should be minimum, R-3 ideal.” The Jasper Court homes in question are in the R-3 zoning district.
Elisco added that the proposed Pulte buildings are too high, considering the houses would be about 14 feet apart on lots 66 feet wide.
Most of the attending commissioners said they agree.
Commissioner Muriel Collison said that Pulte’s Kensington Court development in Glenview – used as a model by Tremulis last month – was much better designed than the one planned for Northbrook, with bigger lots and shorter houses.
“If you would use Kensington as a model, that would be awesome,” she said. But she added that hasn’t happened yet.
“Your price point cannot be on the backs of people who live there (in the neighborhood),” Collison said.
Measurements of distance between Pulte houses on Kensington Court indicate the smallest is 2 feet more than the 14 currently sketched in Northbrook, with some almost twice as far apart as the Northbrook proposal.
Only Commissioner Bryan Schimel said he was satisfied.
“I appreciate and respect the concerns of the neighbors,” he said. “But … I think it’s unrealistic to expect to get the number of … units they expect on the property.”
Neighbors suggested Pulte build about half as many homes as proposed in February.
Twitter: @IrvLeavitt
