Highwood commission votes against Fort Sheridan music school seeking to build new concert hall, raising bar for final city approval

The Highwood Planning and Zoning Commission voted on Wednesday against a local music conservatory’s plans to build a new concert hall adjacent to the Fort Sheridan neighborhood, delivering a temporary sigh of relief to area residents who argued the proposed development bears too many risks.  

Commissioners voted 8-1 on June 18 to recommend denial of a request by the Midwest Young Artist Conservatory to rezone a four-acre plot of vacant land next to their headquarters from residential to commercial.

The petition will now appear before Highwood City Council on another date but require a supermajority vote from council members to receive approval, meaning at least four would need to support the music school’s proposal to override the commission’s negative recommendation.

The council could also vote to offer a final denial to the current plan for the concert hall that MYAC President Allan Dennis said is needed for its students. 

The Wednesday evening meeting in Oak Terrace Elementary School ran four-and-half hours, drew approximately 150 people in attendance and more than 30 individuals to the public comment section — the majority of whom spoke out against MYAC’s plan. 

Numerous speakers who identified themselves as Fort Sheridan residents reiterated they support the arts and MYAC’s educational mission, but argued that the proposed 728-seat concert hall building does not fit the setting and stated that the nonprofit music school has failed to address a host of concerns about its plan. 

Speakers argued that MYAC’s traffic studies did not take into account Friday and Saturday evenings when the already dense Highwood is more busy, that increased congestion will hinder local EMS access, that the school’s outline for how often the venue will be used is unreliable and that residents moved to Fort Sheridan with the expectation it would remain residential.

“It takes less than two minutes for someone to bleed out from traumatic or arterial bleeding,” resident Barbie Oliff said. “By adding a large venue on an unpassable single-lane street, two blocks from a railroad crossing, two and a half miles from the nearest fire department, MYAC have you considered safety first?”

Speakers also argued the venue does not appear to have a business plan, an expanded parking lot will exacerbate existing storm water runoff issues, its proposed grass pavers won’t last, the tree buffer proposed to obscure the venue from the neighborhood view won’t grow out for 10 years, birds will hit its wide-glass windows, a concrete facade won’t match the nearby yellow-brick homes, a long-burnt-out light bulb in its parking lot indicates MYAC doesn’t maintain its current facility and that overall, the music school has ignored community feedback.

MYAC hosts about 450 students every weekend throughout the academic year for instructing a variety of ensembles, but its headquarters cannot accommodate its 100-plus musician orchestras on stage.

Appropriately-sized venues like Ravinia or Northwestern University’s Pick-Staiger Hall have become less available in recent time, making MYAC’s 900 enrollees in need of their own space to practice and perform, Dennis said.

“We continue to believe in the value this project will bring to our students, to Highwood, and to the broader North Shore arts community,” Dennis said in an email to The Record.

“As we work through this process, we remain focused on our core mission — providing the best learning environment for young musicians,” he continued.

The blueprint for the new concert hall building MYAC submitted to the commission shows it would boast a total of 41,702 square feet across four stories on a footprint of 23,000 square feet.

By sinking the concert hall in the ground, the venue would sit at the same height as its nearby headquarters, Dennis said. 

MYAC has incorporated multiple rounds of feedback from neighbors into its site plan, Karen Dennis, Allan’s wife and MYAC’s administrative director told The Record.

That included a 2013 meeting with Fort Sheridan residents after the school first bought the site, a fall 2021 public meeting where MYAC heard its proposed seven-floor concert hall plan was too tall and an August 2024 public meeting where it presented the revised and current blueprint. 

Addressing the commission on Wednesday, Dennis said MYAC has discussed gaining its own venue with “everybody” since it first moved to Fort Sheridan in 2000.

Will Tippens, a member of MYAC’s building committee, said the City of Highwood designated the vacant plot of land by the school’s headquarters as public/semi-public during the drafting of the city’s 2013 comprehensive plan in support of the school eventually expanding. 

But MYAC “didn’t mobilize until relatively recently” for this project after it started to get so difficult to find available performance space, Dennis said.

The school was waiting to start fundraising for the $29-40 million needed to build it until gaining city approval first and wouldn’t start construction until it had the money, he said.

Other members of the public who voiced support on Wednesday for the MYAC plan argued that the bigger venue would better support its students, which may be a more important mission than preserving local flora and fauna, and that it would be a net positive for Highwood to gain more visitors.

The Wednesday session was a continuation of a May 21 Highwood Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on the MYAC plan that ended without a vote after about three hours of public comment. 

Tensions ran high in the Oak Terrace auditorium as the public comment section that began at 6 p.m. again stretched past 10 p.m. Some audience members booed or hissed when speakers showed support of the MYAC plan.

Chris Meyer, chair of the Highwood Planning and Zoning Commission, repeatedly asked public speakers not to repeat concerns others had already stated about the concert hall and to focus comments on the building itself. 

At one point, when a woman speaking in favor of the MYAC plan for more than 15 minutes ignored calls to step aside, Meyer asked if there was a police officer available.

If Highwood City Council rejects MYAC’s request to rezone the proposed build site, there is no provision preventing the music school from filing a new petition. That said, the school will have to start the process from the beginning again with a review from the Highwood Planning and Zoning commission.

Shortly after the commission delivered its decision, opponents of the project rejoiced.

“We’re elated, we’re grateful,” Susan Lazar, president of Friends of Historic Fort Sheridan, a volunteer group that formed in 2024 to organize opposition to the MYAC development, said after the vote. 

“We’re ready to go immediately into strategy planning to walk into city council and help them understand what we believe and why they should continue with the vote in the direction that the planning and zoning committee just voted,” she continued.

The Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan community newsroom that relies on reader support to fuel its independent local journalism.

Become a member of The Record to fund responsible news coverage for your community.

Already a member? You can make a tax-deductible donation at any time.