Council expected to approve Elmhurst Extended Care Center expansion

Elmhurst aldermen will vote Monday to approve the planned expansion of a nursing and rehabilitation center in a residential neighborhood east of York Road.

Residents in the East Fremont Avenue neighborhood strongly opposed the proposed addition on the south end of the Elmhurst Extended Care Center during a nearly two-year saga.

Critics say the scale of the addition - a two-story, 31,000-square-foot structure - is incompatible with the character of the neighborhood and the city's long-term zoning blueprint for the area.

But alderman voted 10-2 earlier this month to direct the city's attorney to prepare an enabling ordinance that would grant a conditional-use permit and other zoning requests needed for the center's expansion. The council is poised to approve the plans Monday.

Aldermen Dannee Polomsky and Michael Bram cast the two dissenting votes March 22. Aldermen Bob Dunn and Mark Sabatino were absent.

Polomsky said she believes the center "made the effort" to improve designs by incorporating suggestions from neighbors. But she echoed some of their concerns after nearly an hour of public comment.

"Like the neighbors, I see a large facility being an anomaly in the middle of a block of single-family homes," she said.

The city's development, planning, and zoning committee originally voted against an earlier version of the project. But the committee has supported the latest plans after the center made "substantial changes," Alderman Mike Honquest said. The addition would still allow the center to provide 108 beds, up from roughly 85.

"Since then, the building's orientation shifted 90 degrees, but the size of its footprint is nearly identical," said Ben Silver, a community lawyer with the Elmhurst-based Citizen Advocacy Center. "The (committee's) change of heart then does not appear to come from a difference in the application but rather as a response to a legal threat from the applicant."

After a committee meeting in mid-February, neighbors presented a letter to Polomsky requesting that 13 conditions be attached to the conditional-use permit. The center conceded to 11 of the 13 requests, agreeing to limit outdoor lighting to the first floor and to modify landscaping to screen the addition, among other things.

But that failed to appease neighbors worried about property values and the size of the addition onto vacant land the center has purchased. Existing homes were demolished at the site.

"This is wrong for East Fremont. This is wrong for Elmhurst and you know it," neighborhood resident Mary Young told the council. "No amount of landscaping or lighting will change the fact that this enormous building will dissect our neighborhood and put at risk the six properties to the east to the very same fate. We ask you to stand behind your zoning standards. They are there for a reason."

But Alderman Scott Levin said the new configuration represents a key change in the plans.

"The orientation is not north-to-south, so it sets back the building substantially from where it was in the original iteration," he said. "There were significant complaints by the neighbors about parking being in front, traffic on Fremont and the driveway being used, and that was all eliminated."

On its website, the center says an expanded building could accommodate 54 private rooms. Construction could begin in the fall.