Are zoning changes needed to boost downtown Kenilworth? Village trustees aren’t yet ready to decide.

Kenilworth trustees have pumped the brakes on potential commercial zoning changes, deciding at their Thursday, Aug. 13 committee of the whole session to give themselves more time on the issue. That will allow them to decide if permitting developers to build higher and more dense projects in the business district is what they need to revitalize the village’s small downtown.

Trustees will also ponder if zoning adjustment is the only way to do that, or whether tools like TIF assistance, public-private partnerships, facade upgrades, beautifying the streetscape and doing more market analysis would be more effective tools to utilize. 

Some trustees wondered why Kenilworth needs to revise its commercial zoning at all. They suggested smaller and lower buildings along the town’s stretch of Green Bay Road — the type of buildings and businesses currently successful there — might be what they, and many residents, would prefer.

“I think we should go to residents, and say ‘These are the options, these are the tradeoffs, this is where our zoning code right now is, and this is what we feel the market is preventing our village in certain respects to accomplish’,” Trustee Joseph Vitu said. 

Vitu acknowledged what consultant Michael Blue of Teska Associates said, that modern developers no longer do smaller projects popular years ago. They’ve generally abandoned the so-called “10-10-10” standard for 10 foot tall ceilings in projects with retail on the ground floor and residential or other uses on higher floors, he said. 

Trustee Christopher Ottsen said Kenilworth’s downtown already has successful businesses in the downtown core; the U.S. Post Office, the local barber and a luggage repair business, for instance. Trustees should ask what makes those enterprises thrive in the downtown, and what kind of new businesses could be equally successful, he said. 

Trustees and village staff have worked since last year to revise Kenilworth’s zoning code, which hasn’t been tackled in decades. Work on chapters about residential districts came first, and any proposed changes in those sections of the code can still move through reviews and a potential final outcome, while work on the business zoning chapter continues into next year, trustees agreed Thursday. 

The board turned its attention to the commercial district along Green Bay and west of Park Drive during a July 28 meeting. Thursday’s session was planned as further discussion on height and bulk zoning change possibilities. That included talk about potentially increasing the village’s current 35-foot height limit along Green Bay Road, with another 5 feet allowable under certain conditions. 

Other items discussed included potential edits to Kenilworth’s planned unit development regulations, language for which was front and center during the board’s lengthy consideration of Park Place, a luxury residential development planned for 515-519 Park Drive that received conditional Village Board approval in June but which was withdrawn by the builder, who said he couldn’t make his project work with the village’s requirements.

However, talk on Thursday turned to larger policy issues when Ottsen noted the size of Kenilworth’s business district.

“No matter what we wish and dream and would like it to be, this is not going to be a Hubbard Woods or a Wilmette. We don’t have the parking, we don’t have the space,” Ottsen said. “I’m totally supportive of attracting development in this tiny little stretch we have, but I think we have to temper our expectations … I wouldn’t even call it a business district. I’d call it four blocks of storefronts.”

Residents who spoke Thursday asked trustees to pay less attention to potential developers and more to people who desire to bring their businesses into existing Green Bay or Park Drive spaces.

Jeanne Keiler also said the board should market existing buildings better, to attract business owners, rather than pay attention to developers.

“Taking advice from builders is like the fox giving advice on how to build the henhouse,” David Joyce said, adding “You’ve already reached the right decision; leave things alone for the time being.”

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