Michael D’Onofrio jokes that he still doesn’t know what to do when he grows up. But D’Onofrio, who has led Winnetka’s community development department for the past 16 years, will get his chance to find out when he retires June 16.
D’Onofrio, 60, announced his departure in February. This week, he reflected on the changes he has seen in Winnetka and in the art and science of community planning itself during his time with the village.
Community planning was probably always going to be a part of his life, he said. Growing up in Madison, Wis., he became familiar with the concept; his father was a municipal civil engineer, “so I grew up in village halls, so to speak. I wasn’t interested in being an engineer, but I was interested in communities, the way they developed,” he said.
D’Onofrio said he graduated in 1981 from the University of Wisconsin with a community development degree. His first job was as a housing specialist in Dane County, Wis., according to the Winnetka press release announcing his retirement. He came to Illinois and worked as a planner for the Cook County Department of Planning and Development before spending 12 years working for the city of Des Plaines, first as a development specialist and then as the city’s director of community development, the release stated.
Winnetka Village Manager Robert Bahan said he and other village administrators would miss D’Onofrio’s “wealth of experience” in all things related to planning.
Bahan lauded D’Onofrio’s work on the One Winnetka retail-residential project that began in 2015 and is making its way now through final village review processes. He also pointed to D’Onofrio’s work on the recently completed downtown master plan, now part of Winnetka’s comprehensive plan.
Bahan ticked off other D’Onofrio accomplishments when the retirement was first announced:
* Reorganizing his department by setting up paperwork tracking policies and installing automated building permit tracking systems;
* Updating the village’s building codes;
* Drafting the village’s planned development regulations and updates to its land use and zoning regulations;
* Managing the village hall rehabilitation project in 2011 and 2012;
* Serving as staff liaison to multiple advisory boards, including the zoning board of appeals, the business community development commission, and the Urban Land Institute’s technical assistance program and its downtown master plan steering committee.
“Mike has been very effective in his position,” Bahan said. “He’s been a contributor to the team. We wish him the very best as he goes off into retirement – but we’re going to miss him.”
During his career, D’Onofrio said, he watched municipal planning evolve at an ever-faster pace.
“There’s an ebb and flow to it,” D’Onofrio said. “In the 1980s, 90s, and in the 2000s, first you saw the spread of the giant malls, which was where development was – until the downtowns started to die. Then we started what I call the ‘mall-ing’ of every downtown, like Chicago’s State Street mall. That didn’t work. Then you saw the influx of ‘big box’ retail, and that in turn wasn’t successful.”
While failure of many so-called big box chains could be traced to burgeoning Internet commerce, he said, it was also because people realized that they wanted their non-online buying to be a more general experience, with the ability to shop, dine and have other social interactions in the same store, or the same area.
D’Onofrio said that when he came to Winnetka he found the community’s residents were very sophisticated about land use issues: “I was amazed when I came here 16 years ago at how invested people are in the process. It’s meant that change is not from the top down, it’s from the community on up.”
Winnetka’s business districts, strung like a necklace along and across the Metra line, have evolved during his time in the village, D’Onofrio said. For instance, the Hubbard Woods business district has become an eclectic collection of design-oriented businesses, he said. South of that, residents and village officials have realized that the east and west Elm Street areas should really be a single business district despite their bifurcation by the Metra line, he said.
Whatever lies in Winnetka’s future, D’Onofrio said it’s important to remember that community planning is most often a matter of common sense and, occasionally, serendipity.
“As planners, you listen to your residents and consumers and find out what they say they need. When you educate them, sometimes they realize that they actually need something else,” he said. “And If you’re a thoughtful consumer, you can understand planning.”
Once he retires, D’Onofrio said he wants to travel, perhaps to visit some of the nation’s baseball stadiums, “to take my mind out of this business for awhile.” He may take up a hobby now that planning doesn’t take up the majority of his life, he said.
“My biggest goal is to learn to enjoy every day. To look at the journey, rather than the destination.”
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
