For years the city hounded Walter Ogloza to hurry up and sell his properties on West Lawrence and North Laramie, insisting they were needed for a condominium complex that would rejuvenate the area. In October Ogloza crumbled and sold his two lots. The city finally got the land it coveted. But not only has no development begun, Ogloza hasn’t gotten paid. “The city bugged me–‘Sell, Walter, sell,’” he says. “So I sold. Now where are the condos? They were supposed to pay me in November. It’s March. Where’s my money?”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
From the start other property owners resisted. One of them, Tony Kurzac, wound up selling Kozonis his tire store after the city unveiled its plans. A second, bike store owner Donald Zordani, held out, then aggressively sued, charging the city with “using the power of government to allow [Kozonis] to avoid the open real estate market and develop an area . . . for purely private gain.” The city backed off on its attempt to seize Zordani’s land, and at a public meeting in November Kozonis proposed a new development plan that would build around the bike store.
For a time in 2003, Ogloza says, he negotiated directly with Kozonis, but they could never agree on a price. On December 21, 2004, the city sued to seize his property using the power of eminent domain. In most such cases it’s only a matter of time before the city gets its land–the main issue is how much it will have to pay the owner. Ogloza figured he’d run out of options. “They wouldn’t let me build on it, and once they sued me I couldn’t sell it to anyone else,” he says. “What could I do?”
The city “put the cart before the horse,” says Ron Ernst, a Jefferson Park activist and longtime opponent of the TIF development plan for West Lawrence. “They made a mockery of the zoning process by entering an agreement to build something that requires a zoning change even though they had not asked the community for its consent.”
On March 14 Judge Alexander White ordered the city to close with Ogloza by March 31. In addition to more than $1.4 million for his land, Ogloza’s now owed interest on his loan and an unspecified amount in attorney’s fees; his fines for weeds and debris have been waived. It remains to be seen whether another deal can be brokered with Kozonis or some other developer.
