Mount Prospect residents outraged over land-use map proposed in Comprehensive Plan

What began sedately as a discussion of Mount Prospect’s proposed 2040 Comprehensive Plan Tuesday night turned into a venting session for downtown-area residents concerned about future development.

Neighbors claimed they were blindsided by a future land-use map in the draft plan that marked residential areas — including those near St. Mark Lutheran Church on South Wille Street — as “high-density mixed-use.”

Residents reported they only learned of the proposal just one day before it was presented to the Village Board and the Planning and Zoning Commission.

They also registered concern about possible future development of the St. Mark property that was recently purchased by the village.

“The draft future land use map designates our block as high density, commercial, mixed use, the most intense category,” Wille Street resident Adam Koszyk said. “This is not negligence. This is not an oversight. That is a deliberate effort to move this through before the people it affects most had a chance to organize, prepare or respond.”

Village officials said the purchased St. Mark building is slated for demolition.

Several trustees were sympathetic to the residents’ concerns about the designation, with Trustee John Matuszak saying, “We really have to take that out and change the map.”

“Dipping in any further south of Prospect Avenue into neighborhoods where single-family homes are and people like their way of life there is a no go, a non-starter for me,” Trustee Vince Dante said.

Community Development Director Jason Shallcross acknowledged that the draft map may have been drawn with “too broad of a brush” through the middle of downtown, but said, “We have built on previous plans,” adding the village received good feedback from residents Tuesday.

The 2040 Plan is built on more than 1,200 “points of engagement,” including 665 in-person conversations and 565 survey responses.

The next steps involve bringing a revised version of the plan back for public review, with the goal of eventual board adoption later this year.