For the sixth time in 17 years, a developer has asked Northbrook to build on the same Dundee Road property sandwiched between the Cotswolds and the Oxford Townhomes.
The latest scheme, a seven-house project, may have an advantage: the additional purchase by the developer of an adjacent lot increases the room for the latest project. The Drehobl family of Skokie has control of the .38-acre lot just to the north of the primary lot at 2600 Dundee Road, giving the total parcel slightly more than two acres to work with.
The inclusion of the smaller parcel may have already led to improvements for some of the neighbors, officials say. Now the Drehobls are cleaning the property, which was garbage-strewn for years, and village employees no longer are forced to mow the grass there, according to Tom Poupard, Northbrook’s director of development and building services.
Poupard said previous developers of the bigger lot tried to buy the parcel to create a larger piece of property that is easier to develop. But they could never make a deal, he said. The Drehobls have, and have knocked down the old house there, too.
The plan from the family’s Dre Realty Investments was aired at a recent Northbrook Village Board meeting, and the four members present all said the amount of homes was adequate for the land size. Village officials previously smiled on slightly bigger developments on the smaller piece of property at Dundee and Greenwood roads, alone – before the projects were dropped due to market weakness or other factors.
Trustees also made positive comments about the mini-park planned within the U-shaped road serving the houses, which would have a gazebo, benches and barbecue. According to a village staff report, it is reminiscent, on a smaller scale, of a feature planned for the bigger Timbers Edge development, now under construction further west on Dundee Road.
The small contingent of trustees were split, however, on how much control to exert over the project, as it heads to the Northbrook Plan Commission for public hearings on a rezoning from large-lot R-2 zoning to R-5 zoning of 7,500 square foot lots (9,000 on corner lots).
The project also needs a couple of zoning variations: permission to build on lots only 100 feet deep instead of 125, and to squeeze the width of the right-of-way for parkways and sidewalks from a total of 33 feet to 23 feet. Village President Sandy Frum noted that these variations, on multiple-lot developments in Northbrook, usually are agreed upon only as part of planned unit developments, which give the village more governing power.
Developers don’t speak at Northbrook preliminary reviews, but Poupard said he knew why the plans weren’t submitted as a planned development. The developer wants flexibility in house styles to sell them more easily, and with PUDs, the village’s Architectural Control Commission judges the styles up front, he said.
That was fine with Frum.
“If there are six cottage-style houses and one huge English countryside, I don’t think that would be appropriate,” she said. She said she was all for flexibility, as long as it didn’t lead to “a mish-mosh of housing styles.”
Trustee James Karagianis, who heads the board’s building and zoning committee, took the opposite tack, saying he preferred “tremendous flexibility.” Trustee Kathryn Ciesla said she was torn, and Trustee Todd Heller wasn’t clearly on one side or the other, either.
A Plan Commission public hearing date has not been set.
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