Vet clinic incoming to Green Bay Road in Glencoe — though, conditions apply

A new veterinary clinic has secured approval to come to Glencoe, with village trustees adding conditions in order to mitigate potential noises and protect a longtime neighboring restaurant.

The Glencoe Village Board granted unanimous approval to a special use permit at its regular meeting on Thursday, July 17, allowing a veterinary clinic to move into a vacant storefront at 55 Green Bay Road.

Rich McGowan, a planner with the village’s development services department, said the 2,255-square-foot storefront has been vacant for around two years and was previously a fitness center. It is located adjacent to Frank and Betsie’s, a 40-plus-year-old neighborhood restaurant.

McGowan said the applicant is not asking for an expansion or additional parking spaces, and the plans received a unanimous recommendation from the Glencoe Zoning Commission on July 7.

While nobody made public comments for or against the clinic, nor has the village received any written concerns, an unidentified “neighbor” shared concerns with Trustee Dudley Onderdonk.

While Onderdonk didn’t elaborate on what those concerns were, he recommended adding a number of conditions to the special use permit, all of which had reportedly been agreed to by the applicant.

Those conditions include limiting the hours of operation from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; specifying that the clinic will only provide services that include checkups, vaccinations and surgeries; that the veterinarian will see one pet every 30 to 40 minutes; and that medical waste will be handled according to guidelines set by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

Applicant Khagendra Singh Thakuri confirmed to the trustees that the clinic will have one veterinarian and fewer than 10 employees.

In addition to those conditions, Village President Howard Roin suggested adding another that limits the amount of noise and odor that is allowed to come from the clinic. His concern was with any disturbance the noises may cause to Frank and Betsie’s customers; although he also said he does not actually believe noise will be an issue.

“I’m no expert, but it doesn’t seem like (the noise and odor) should cause a problem,” he said. “But you can imagine potentially noise, you could imagine potentially yelping animals, and we don’t want any of that happening, and would like to have the ability, if something like that happened, to do something about that.”

Much of the discussion that followed surrounded defining what would count as “loud” noise, with Stewart Weiss, the village’s legal counsel who is with Elrod Friedman LLP, saying that noise complaints are difficult to enforce.

Thakuri also said he wasn’t really clear on what the village was asking in terms of noise enforcement, and shared concerns that the clinic would face consequences if a dog was barking as it came inside.

Roin assured Thakuri that is not the purpose of adding restrictions on noise and would only refer to pets that are inside of his clinic.

“I don’t want a restaurant to listen to howling for an hour because that would disrupt their business,” he said. “I don’t have any reason to think that’s going to be a problem. I don’t have any reason to think that your building won’t have reasonable soundproofing to deal with that.

“But if, in the event that it turns out there’s something bad (with the noise), I would like the neighbor to have some recourse to come to the village.”

Taylor Baxter, the village’s director of development services, suggested that the language in the conditions specifically cite “consistent, repeated audible noises from inside the neighboring property,” test to which trustees were agreeable.

Roin said to Thakuri that “the goal is not to torture a new business in town,” but rather make sure that both the clinic and restaurant can exist side by side without any concerns.

“We’re balancing two interests here.”

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