Parking concerns still stall Schaumburg apartments
Concerns over providing an adequate amount of parking again stalled a proposal for a 192-unit apartment complex in Schaumburg at a zoning board hearing Wednesday.
Though developer UrbanStreet Group LLC had identified space for 48 of the 50 additional spaces zoning board members asked for last October, a new request was made to provide at least 1.5 spaces per unit on site.
As currently planned, that would require 17 more spaces on the 6.5-acre site at 680 E. Algonquin Road, near the Motorola Solutions campus.
But Bob Burk, managing partner of UrbanStreet Group, said his firm would be willing to look at balancing a slight decrease in the number of apartments with a slight increase in the number of parking spaces.
The zoning board continued its hearing on the proposal until 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 11.
Though the request to add only 50 more spaces to the 224 in the original proposal seemed clear cut in October, the issue became more complicated at Wednesday's hearing. This was due to a perceived conflict over how much parking the apartment complex would be able to share with a neighboring office building.
Burk said the deeds to both properties provide the right to perpetually share 74 parking spaces between them. These spaces were counted on the apartment complex's parking plan - which was still 179 short of the number required by the village zoning code.
But Vernon Reizman, chief financial officer of Meridian LLC, said his company wanted half of those shared parking spaces permanently reserved for the use of the office building at 650 E. Algonquin Road.
The conflict reminded zoning board members how uncomfortable they'd been with the six-building apartment complex's parking plan in the first place.
"I just think we're getting a project presented that is too big for the property," zoning board Member Harry Raimondi said.
But village staffers endorsed the developer's market study showing that the parking plan would adequately serve a combination of one- and two-bedroom apartments.
In fact, 159 spaces are garages located mostly in the ground level of the buildings.