During the decade she’s lived in East Village, Denise Doppke has seen scores of historic houses come down only to be replaced by massive, aesthetically vapid concrete condo buildings. Doppke owns three rehabbed historic buildings on a block near Division and Damen. She’d like to see the neighborhood retain its picturesque charm, but her worry that it may lose its character is well-founded: According to statistics from Preservation Chicago, over the last eight years more than 217 buildings have been demolished in the one-square-mile area that stretches from Chicago to Division and Damen to Ashland.
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The moratorium began on April 1 and is scheduled to last until October. So last month Doppke and Scheer were surprised to find that their next-door neighbor, Konstantin Shelegeda, was about to be granted a permit to level a building at 1934 W. Thomas. The 105-year-old brick three-flat is what preservationists call an “anchor” building–it occupies a prominent corner lot on a street that for the most part remains historically intact. When Doppke and Scheer questioned Flores’s legal adviser, Raymond Valadez, they learned there was a loophole in the development moratorium: while Flores could hold building permits for six months, he was without the power to hold demolition permits for more than ten working days. The city handles demolition and building permits separately.
Scheer and Doppke felt duped. “They’re not communicating to the neighborhood that there’s only a two-week waiting period,” says Doppke. In July the couple circulated a petition urging Flores to stop the demolition of 1934 W. Thomas, collecting 65 signatures in less than two days–“and that was without trying,” Doppke says.
Fine fears that without such a hold, developers will continue to have incentive to tear down historic buildings before neighborhoods can be landmarked, a designation that prevents property owners from tearing down and rebuilding. Moreover, he says, the city’s new zoning ordinance–approved by the City Council in May and set for a November launch–will be “pointless without some legal process of holding the line on rampant demolition. By the time tougher zoning laws take effect in the East Village,” Fine predicts, “there will be nothing left to rezone.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Joeff Davis, Nathan Mandell.
