Elmhurst approves expansion of nursing home

An Elmhurst nursing and rehabilitation center plans to break ground on a building addition this fall now that the city council has approved the controversial expansion project.

Aldermen voted 12-2 Monday night to grant a conditional-use permit and other zoning requests needed for the center's expansion in a neighborhood east of York Road.

Ahead of the vote, the project's opponents on the council and from the neighborhood reiterated many of their concerns that the two-story, 33,000-square-foot addition on the south end of the building is out of character with the residential area.

Aldermen Dannee Polomsky and Michael Bram cast the two dissenting votes Monday. Bram shared neighbors' concerns about property values and stormwater detention if the addition were built on vacant parcels facing East Fremont Avenue.

After a city committee meeting in mid-February, neighbors presented a letter to Polomsky requesting that 13 conditions be attached to the 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 the center rejected a request to provide underground stormwater detention in place of a bio-detention pond. Center officials previously proposed underground storage but dropped that plan because a parking lot accessed from Fremont Avenue is no longer part of the concept, according to a city report.

"At the very least, this should have been a condition ... it should have been underground detention, not open-area detention," Bram said. "This is safety issue, and if this moves forward, this is a precedent that we won't be able to move from."

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

Alderman Bob Dunn said the initial design for the structure and the parking lot off Fremont would have been too intrusive to the neighborhood. But he supported the enabling ordinance Monday, noting the addition would be "set back past the adjoining houses."

"The applicant has done a very good job of continuing to refine it and make it more suitable for that block," Dunn said.

Love Dave, the center's administrator, said in an email that construction could begin in the fall, pending approval from the Illinois Department of Public Health and securing additional financing.

"We don't anticipate any problems though," he wrote.