For the past several months South Loop resident Peter Ziv has made a pest of himself, criticizing city officials for ignoring their own plans and allowing a developer to build a 34-story high-rise at the northwest corner of Polk and Clark. Last month the planning department shut down Ziv’s attempt to hang four large protest signs on the side of his building. “It doesn’t get any pettier,” Ziv says. “They killed this sign because they didn’t want the community telling them what to do.” Now the dispute is threatening to have repercussions on politics in the Second Ward.
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In September, when I last wrote about the development deal, planning officials and Second Ward alderman Madeline Haithcock said there was nothing they could do to make Terrapin Properties alter its plans for Burnham Pointe, which was to have 298 units and a 300-spot parking garage. Ziv and his allies, most of whom lived in the building just west of the site, wanted Terrapin to move its building to the north so it wouldn’t block their view. At the very least they wanted the city to force Terrapin to change the plans for its parking garage: while the city’s Near South Community Plan, drawn up by the planning department in 2003, calls for “enhancing” Polk as the “primary east-west pedestrian route” from State Street to the river, under Terrapin’s proposal pedestrians would have to weave between cars entering and exiting the parking garage on Polk. Residents wanted the garage’s entrance moved to Clark. Terrapin officials dismissed them as bellyachers exaggerating the potential traffic problems because the high-rise will destroy their view.
For several months the city bounced Ziv back and forth between the zoning and planning departments as he sought a temporary-sign permit. He wound up filling out 13 different applications and paying some $1,000 in fees before getting turned down. (The city returned his fees.) “I went to zoning, I went to planning. I went to the desk in planning that specializes in sign permits–yes, there is such a desk,” he says. “You can’t believe how cumbersome this has been. I was told it went all the way up to [planning commissioner] Lori Healey’s desk. On April 7 a planning official told me it was killed. I asked why. She said it wasn’t approved by code. I asked, ‘What’s the code?’ She said, ‘It’s not written down.’ I said, ‘If it’s not written down, how is it code?’ She said, ‘You find it,’ then hung up the phone. That was their official explanation to me.”
“I saw [Ziv’s] protests and said, ‘You look like you need some help,’” says Susan Ritacca, an ACORN organizer. “Balanced development is our issue. But there could be some common ground.”
