Heather Kenny’s June 17 cover story, “Preservationist, or Pest for Short,” was compelling; I wanted to read more so I went to Marty Hackl’s Web site and found some glaring inconsistencies with his public persona.
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The Reader article went on at some length about Van Bergen and the fact that Hackl once owned a Van Bergen historic home. What the article neglected to say, or what Hackl did not volunteer, was that he never gave a historic easement on his home. It is common practice for people concerned with preservation to grant easements to a not-for-profit entity such as LPCI, or in Hackl’s case, to the Oak Park-River Forest Historical Society. On Hackl’s site he writes about his historic home in anticipation of selling it and says, “Also a great buyer incentive is being offered: Sellers have left the option, and will assist in the transaction, for the buyer, to donate a preservation easement to the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. Such an easement could be worth up to an estimated $120,000 in federal income tax deductions.”
However on his Web site Hackl says that he has “tried to overcome the ignorance, the lack of creativity and imagination, the bigotry, the racial intolerance and the chauvinism of many of the Club’s members.”
