Elgin sticks with apartment 'deconversion'

Elgin city leaders not long ago signed off on a last-minute grant that raised some eyebrows.

Councilmen agreed to give the owners of a four-unit condominium building at 269-275 DuPage St. $50,000 for emergency repairs to an unstable foundation that caused floors to sag and walls to crack.

In turn, the owners promised to sue the contractor who did the work that caused the sagging foundation and give whatever they won back to the city.

But for the city of Elgin, a preponderance of councilmen concluded, the $50,000 was a necessary evil to protect its initial investment: $200,000 to convert the building from the apartment complex it had become back to a condo building.

Since 1995, the city of Elgin has offered nearly $7 million in grants and other incentives for property owners and builders to restore single-family homes or condos to their original state after they'd been carved up over time into two or more apartments that usually resulted in building and fire code violations.

The end result of removing apartments is fewer people living in each building, less noise, more available parking and new owners who have a greater stake in their neighborhood.

"It's really been a significant help to our neighborhood," said Dan Miller, past president of the Gifford Park Association, who also lobbied city leaders in the 1990s to begin a deconversion program. "It's an absolute godsend for us."

The $50,000 in emergency repairs to the DuPage Street building was a wrinkle in the city's deconversion program. In fact, it didn't come without some debate.

During the project, a firm installed steel support posts in the basement crawlspace. But city inspectors missed this area before the building was sold, and the problem caused by the poorly installed posts got progressively worse and even threatened to cause the building to collapse.

City lawyers said Elgin was not legally obligated to help in this case.

Councilmen Dave Kaptain and Juan Figueroa voted against the grant.

Kaptain said he supports the deconversion program but worried the move would set a bad precedent.

"Everybody signed off on the (project)," Kaptain said. "Where does our obligation end?"

But other council members and residents believe the emergency grant merely protects the city's initial investment to help clean up a problem property.

Councilman Mike Powers said the building could become uninhabitable if the problem was not fixed. If that happened, the property could revert to being a blight on the neighborhood and the people would be clamoring for the city to step in and do something.

"Since we seemed to have goofed up in the first time around, it's the right thing to do," he said. "To not repair it would be foolish. It would be a waste of our initial $200,000."

Miller, who lives in the neighborhood, said he is pleased the grant will ensure the building remains occupied by young professionals.

"The city was morally obligated to do that," Miller said.

In 13 years, Elgin's program has eliminated 312 apartments from the city, an average of about 23 per year.

Last December, city officials and neighbors celebrated a deconversion of a 1871 Second Empire house that once belonged to John Murphy, a former Elgin alderman who invented the motorized Elgin street sweeper.

With the apartments eliminated, the home now has four bedrooms and three baths. Before, it was a problem property - drug deals were common and neighbors estimated up to 30 people lived there.

The city has doled out $6.8 million since the program started. Funding comes from casino revenues.

Elgin's program is modeled after Aurora's "Reconversion" program, which started in 1994.

Through 2007, Aurora handed out a total $4.5 million to eliminate 205 units, an average of nearly 16 a year.

Gwenn San Filippo, a planner in Aurora's Neighborhood Redevelopment Department, said most of the grants were issued so a two-flat with an exterior stairway and second-floor entrance could be converted back to a single-family home.

Compared to Elgin's commitment so far to the deconversion program, the emergency $50,000 grant is a drop in the bucket.

So how do deconversions apply to this condominium building?

Years ago, Elgin leaders doled out more than $200,000 in incentives for the 12-unit building to be reduced to four owner-occupied units.

So far this year, 13 deconversion projects in Elgin have received funding.

Another four are awaiting funding because casino revenues are down in Elgin as well as across the state.

But don't expect the program to slow - it's one of the city council's top priorities.

"It completely changes the dynamics of a neighborhood," said Sue Olafson, city spokeswoman. "We are very committed to the program simply because it's a quality of life issue."