http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/business/266083001.html
Despite this putting another black mark on my already questionable conservative creds, I tend to agree with those who feel that 4 stories would have been more appropriate.
I became aware of this initially during a conversation I had with a woman who was attempting to get signatures from Shorewood residents outside of P&S on Oakland.
This is an area of Shorewood that has pretty much reached its feasible limit in terms of the ratio of population density to traffic mobility, when taking into account the upcoming expansion of associated retail offerings designed to draw more traffic to the area. In addition, it has the less than desirable effect of making 6 stories more of the "norm" in terms of any future developments within the Village - and more are being discussed, from what I've heard - more on that shortly.
In my discussion with this woman and another who happened along (who stated she worked for the State Senator representing the district), mention was made of Shorewood already being one of the most, if not THE most densely populated communities in the state. I have no way of knowing if that's true or not but, if so, obviously any addition to the population base is a system stressor of sorts.
During my conversation with the woman petitioning, mention was also made of some consideration (on the part of whom I don't know specifically, other than it being some folks in Village government) being given to annexing the part of the parking lot at SHS that runs closest to Oakland and converting it to retail/commercial and, possibly I suppose, residential zoning. Thus paving the way for yet more development in the area.
I can't vouch for this personally, but based on the conversation I had with this woman, she seemed well versed in the way things seem to happen as regards what some might term the "runaway development" that most definitely has already and will continue to change the character of Shorewood.
There is a degree of inevitability to all this. The folks who promote the developments have a huge vested interest in getting things passed through as they would like and, generally, are more than happy to help local officials avoid speed bumps put in place by concerned residents. At this point, with this development, short of hiring a lawyer and attempting to get it halted in court, this one appears to be a done deal.
The consensus amongst those I spoke to seemed to be that, until some of the elected officials currently charged with the decision making processes involved are voted out of office and replaced with those more willing to take into consideration concerns expressed by residents, nothing much is going to change.
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The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?