The superintendent of Glenbrook High Schools District 225 said Tuesday that as the Heritage Woods assisted living project’s plans returns to the Northbrook Plan Commission Aug. 15, the process has yet to reveal whether “this will be untenable, or not much of an impact” for nearby Glenbrook North High School.
But Supt. Mike Riggle added that anything that mixes it up with the traffic generated by his school should not be taken lightly.
“The traffic flow is real,” he said. “There’s a lot of flow right on the corner where that assisted living center is supposed to go.
“We have this massive flow of student drivers that happens in this window of traffic, 7:25 until about 7:45” in the morning, and 2:45 to 3:25 in the afternoon. “It’s not only the students, but the parents that have to drop off their kids, so we’ve got these two windows of time that are really heavy.”
Of the more than 2,000 students who attend the high school, about 650 are drivers, enrolled in their junior or senior years. For them, “Techny Road, right past this development, is a conduit to Second Street,” where student drivers line up to go in and out of the parking lot, Riggle said.
Opponents of the 105-unit project maintain the project is a hazard to GBN pedestrians and drivers, and project operators say very few residents will have cars. A traffic study submitted by developers last fall indicated the expectation that 19 vehicles would go in and out in a morning peak hour, and about 31 in the evening peak.
“I don’t think that there’s a concentration of foot traffic right there at Shermer and Techny,” Riggle said. “I think there’s some.”
He said runners, bicyclists and the few school walkers are already warned to be careful around potential nearby perils such as The Commons townhouses, where walls can shield them from the view of drivers of emerging cars.
“It’s something the village is going to have to measure, with traffic count, analysis,” he said. “Anytime you put something that large next to a major intersection I think you need to do your homework.”
He said he had confidence Northbrook officials would ensure anything approved would be safe, as did District 30 Supt. Brian Wegley, responsible for Maple School, also close by.
“More of the debate will center on what’s the impact to the small residential area,” Riggle said. “They’ve invested quite a bit of money, and we want to make sure we protect those residences.”
At a December 2016, Plan Commission public hearing, homeowners warned both of losses to their property values and of traffic hazards. They said the three-story, 92,000-square-foot project was out of scale for the mostly single-family neighborhood. Commissioners advised the developer to shrink the 105-unit project.
Developer Steve Barron asked for delays before returning for another hearing, but said in January that he would be unlikely to reduce the size much, partly because if it got smaller, he said, it would reduce the economies he needed to include an affordable component of about 25 percent. Tom Poupard, Northbrook’s building and development chief, said last week that plans have been changed little.
Barron said in January that he wouldn’t build the Northbrook facility without the subsidized component.
“It’s not who we are. We are affordable housing advocates, and we are affordable housing developers,” he said.
Barron did not return calls for this story.
An anti-Heritage Woods Facebook page called SaveNorthbrook has generated – as of midday Wednesday – 508 petition signatures, 445 from Northbrook residents, according to the Care2 online petition site.
Village President Sandy Frum said that when developments like Heritage Woods petition for zoning changes, “A petitioner has the absolute legal right to do so, and we cannot deny their right of due process.
“We can’t say to someone, ‘No, we don’t want it, go away.’ We give them our (preliminary) opinions, and then it’s off to the Plan Commission.”
Twitter @IrvLeavitt
