After formerly introducing herself to the twenty or so residents who had filtered into the cafeteria of the Francis W. Parker School last Thursday evening, Ald. Michelle Smith (43rd) turned to the small group of developers waiting in the corner of the room.

“You’re going to be a bit of a guinea pig for us,” she told them.

The team, a three-man partnership known as BRB Development, had come to discuss their proposal to convert an old parking garage on Clark Street into a 500-unit “self storage” facility. The firm was hoping to win community favor to cinch a zoning change for the property, but most of the audience seemed to be there mainly to lament the loss of parking that the project would inevitably bring.

It wasn’t the firm’s first encounter with neighbors on the matter, but it was a first for Smith.

Since taking office in early May, she’s brokered deals with developers, pushed projects in city council and met with neighborhood groups on a range of issues. Yet the new alderman admitted that she had yet to host, as Smith put it, a “really local meeting” — a core undertaking for any alderman, and an especially relevant duty in her development-sensitive Lincoln Park ward.

As Democratic Committeeman of the 43rd Ward for past four years, Smith has attended her share of public meetings. Most were held by then-Ald. Vi Daley, with whom Smith did not always meet eye-to-eye, especially on matters of development. She even played host to her own forum on the state of retail investment in the ward last year, a rare service from a committeeman.

But now she was truly holding the reins of the ward.

With her notebook in hand, and a noticeable degree of nervous excitement, the alderman passed the meeting over to the developers.

“I’m here to listen to their request and hear from developer, just like you,” she said to the audience before the presentation began.

The public meeting unfolded like most do in the affluent North Side neighborhood. Richard Hielscher, a partner with BRB, which operates four other self storage facilities in the Chicago area and 32 locations nationwide, explained that the project, estimated to cost $5 million, would be a “tax generator” and result in a less intrusive use than the 138-space parking garage that has stood on the property, at 2036 N. Clark, since the 1930s.

“This is a market that we know quite well,” he said.

Hielscher explained that the garage, currently owned by PNC Bank, was in need of repairs that were so costly that a rehab project to continue its use as a parking facility was unfeasible.

That explanation didn’t cut it with residents.

Nancy Brown, a 30-year resident of the Lincoln Park West Condominium located a few blocks south of the site, told the alderman that the neighborhood would be at a loss if the garage went away. Local valet services, car rental companies and patrons at the nearby Belden Stratford Hotel all relied on the facility as a supplier of valuable off-street parking.

“We already have a parking crisis, this is a very dense neighborhood,” Brown said to Smith. “We don’t need less parking, we need more than we have now.”

The firm maintained that the garage is currently under-utilized, and that converting the building would be the only option, outside of letting the property slide into vacancy.

“This will not continue to be a parking garage,” said Hielscher.

Other residents speculated as to the whether the storage facility should be allowed to use a back exit onto the residential Orleans Street, and some questioned whether the project should be made to adhere to the building standards of the bordering Mid-North Historic District.

Throughout the meeting, the alderman took notes, mediated questions to and from the developers and occasionally posed comments and inquiries that she had received from constituents via email.

Smith promised to pursue the “unanswered concerns” voiced in some of the residents’ comments, such as whether the building could viably be kept as a parking garage — while other queries, like a request for a tax revenue comparison between the existing parking garage and the proposed storage facility, were out of the alderman’s scope.

“That’s one thing that I’m not going to promise, because I really don’t have a clue how to do it,” she said.

Toward the end of the meeting, Charles Frankel, a resident at a nearby condo building, stated that he wasn’t quite convinced of the purpose of the meeting.

“Is this decision made already?” he asked.

The decision, Smith replied, was “absolutely not made.”

The alderman stood — with her scratch pad still in hand — and gave her statement of purpose.

“An ordinance of the city council is only introduced by one of two ways: by the mayor or by the alderman,” she said. “As a matter of practice, [this] puts the power in the hands of aldermen.”

Smith continued: “Now some of these aldermen operate completely unilaterally. You go to Dick Mell or Ed Burke, or any of these old guys, and they say ‘looks good to me’ and they just do it. This is what it is.”

“I ran [for alderman] because I believe that residents should have significant input into what goes on around them,” she concluded, “so that’s why we’re having a community meeting.”

Resident Joe Farago walked out of the school that evening with the sense that Smith was on the right track.

“I think she’s trying — she’s new at it, as she said,” he told Skyline a few days later.

Farago, who works as a realtor, said that Smith’s next move should be to organize a meeting with the neighbors and business owners in direct proximity of the garage to hear their input on the proposal.

“Whatever one can do to figure out what’s good for the area, I’m for it,” he said.

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By ChicagoPJS from Lincoln Park
Posted: 10/13/2011 3:25 PM

I'm sort of *over* community meetings.