Failed downtown plan looms large in Buffalo Grove president race

The Buffalo Grove downtown proposal may be dead, but it continues to cast a shadow over the campaign for village president.

Incumbent Jeffrey Braiman never had to chance to vote on the proposal in his role as village president, but he supported efforts to give full consideration to the plan for a $320 million mixed-use development on 65 acres along Lake-Cook Road, on the site of village hall and the Buffalo Grove Golf Club.

His challenger, Trustee Beverly Sussman, was a longtime opponent of the plan that first came before the village board in 2012, voting against both an engineering study of the proposal and sending it to the village's planning and zoning commission for further study.

The plan ultimately died in December after village leaders balked at developer CRM Properties Group's request for $80 to $100 million in financial assistance.

Braiman said that if a village is to consider itself business friendly, it must be willing listen to such proposals.

"We would have been remiss - we would have been derelict in our duty - if we didn't give the proposal all possible interest or concern," he said. "This is a project that (the developer) came to us with. We didn't go solicit.

"I also have a responsibility as a village president to comply with the laws. And if we didn't give him his due process, we would be not only derelict in our duty, but also putting us in a position of a possible lawsuit from the developer," Braiman added.

Sussman said she had good reasons for opposing the development.

"First of all, it was (in) a floodplain, and people forget it was a floodplain, and you have to be very careful what you can even put on a floodplain," she said.

There were other problems with the plan as well, she said.

"So this gentleman comes in (and) he wants to tear down the municipal campus. He wants to build village hall and the police station on his development, in which we will be paying him rent forever," she said. "Now where the police department was, (the plan called for) a big huge supermarket down a very quiet street, down Church Street, which is very quiet, with private homes and St. Mary Parish, where children go to school. And this just did not belong there."

Rather than moving forward with the developer's proposal, Sussman argues the village should have first hired an urban planner to determine what kind of development would be appropriate for the site.

But in Braiman's view, the proposal was worth considering. He noted that forecasts indicated the project could have generated between $5 million and $8 million in property and sales taxes annually.

Reason, not emotion, should be the guiding force in considering such a proposal, he added.

"It's important to get all the information, to get all the facts," he said. "You need to find out what's the benefit, what's the risk, what's the detriment. Only when you have that information can you make a rational, logical choice that's beneficial, not for a hundred people in the room who are claiming they are against it, but for 43,000 people."

Sussman disputed claims she had a personal dislike for CRM President Chuck Malk, but believes he should have been more willing to compromise with the village.

She said she voted against the $78,000 Christopher B. Burke Engineering study because it was linked directly to the CRM proposal.

"There was no reason to mention any company if we wanted to do (the study)," she said. "But instead they had to mention CRM Properties three times. And I said, 'For CRM Properties, I'm not voting for it.' And I did not vote for it."