Downtown plan died because of politics
It's really sad to see the deterioration in the functioning of the Buffalo Grove board of trustees. The sniping and insulting remarks by some trustees against other trustees - although they may be deserved - illustrates the dysfunction of the entire board in their treatment of the proposed "downtown" proposal, the one that was to be built on top of a floodplain on which the Buffalo Grove golf course is built.
The board's failure to recognize the outrageous requirements in the engineer's soil test report, e.g., $20 million for "land repair" (that came with no guarantee it would work) and one to three years to get a building permit, and then fail to pursue the details of the "financials" required of Buffalo Grove over a year ago, manifests their blind obsession with their dream of a Buffalo Grove "downtown" and the pursuit of more revenue, more revenue!
At the Dec. 15 meeting, we saw the recurrence of the ridiculous reports of (phantom) phone calls from residents in support of the project, versus the hundreds that appeared at every meeting for the past two years, objecting, protesting, pleading with the board to reject the oncoming fiasco. And the thousand steps that were needed for the past two years to "evaluate" the project, were now needless.
It seems to me the decision to end pursuit of the "downtown" design came to pass in the immediate aftermath of Trustee Sussman's decision to run for president of the board against President Braiman, and in her publicly spoken opposition to the project. While other trustees made not one reference to the people's ardent pleas and concrete logic to reject the insidious plan, Trustee Sussman did. Her decision to challenge Braiman introduced the fear of political retribution, and thus the project is dead.
Frank Sears
Buffalo Grove