Wheaton's Northside overlay staying put

There just aren't enough reasons for Wheaton's Northside overlay district to go south, or any other direction in the city for that matter.

The city council reviewed the success of the Northside overlay district during a planning session Monday night.

Created in 2005, the overlay district encourages detached garages, raised basements and front porches by allowing houses to be larger if they have those attributes. The idea is to make new homes resemble those already standing to preserve the aesthetics of the Northside neighborhood.

A second year of data showed the overlay is neither perfect, nor fatally flawed .

The city issued 156 building permits within the overlay district in 2006. The vast majority were for fences, roofs and interior remodeling. The overlay does not affect those home projects.

There were only four homes in the overlay demolished last year. The new homes built in their places all featured raised basements as hoped.

But only one has a detached garage, leading Councilman Phil Suess to question the garage restrictions.

Suess is a longtime opponent of the overlay district.

"What's the public benefit of the city deciding where you locate your garage?" Suess questioned. "We're making an issue where there shouldn't be an issue. Why are the rules different for one segment of the community versus the other?"

The rest of the council did not share Suess' concerns. The majority view was the overlay has done an OK job in reaching the expected goals so far. The one aspect of the overlay that may spark discussion in the near future would be applying the overlay's design incentives to the whole city.

Councilmen John Prendiville and Howard Levine said they saw nothing wrong with keeping the overlay only on the Northside. Zoning laws establish rules and restrictions all over various parts of the city, they said. The moratorium on banks downtown is another example on restrictions that apply to only part of the city.

Mayor Mike Gresk said he had no problem with the overlay as it stands, but wouldn't oppose discussing an expansion.

"Could it go citywide? I suppose it could," Gresk said. "But it's most important in the area of homes of that (Northside) vintage."