advertisement

Hindu group sues Elgin to get OK to build temple

A Hindu congregation that wants to build a temple and townhouses in eastern Elgin is suing the city to get a 59-year-old court-ordered restriction on the land removed.

Umiya Mataji Sanstha Chicago Midwest argues in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court that a 1967 consent decree violates the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which forbids discrimination based on religion when it comes to land uses. The federal law was enacted in 2000.

The lawsuit also argues the decree violates the congregation’s First Amendment religious freedom rights and Illinois law.

Umiya Mataji Sanstha wants to build a temple, education and social facilities and 38 townhouses on the 34-acre parcel at 890 Galt Blvd.

In January, the Elgin City Council approved a preliminary plat of subdivision and a planned development, changing the land use to residential and community-facility use, contingent on the consent decree being removed.

“The Hindu community we represent seeks only to establish what thousands of other Americans already have, a place of worship and townhouses,” the congregation’s attorney, John Mauck, said in a written statement.

“Americans have long created religious settlements, from monasteries and convents to Quaker villages, Mennonite enclaves, Shaker societies, and Amish fellowships,” Mauck added. “Even the city of Evanston was founded as a haven where Methodists could live and worship together.”

The lawsuit says the consent decree “enables unspoken exclusions based on ethnic and religious, as well as residential, grounds.”

Besides the city, the suit names the owners of more than 200 nearby properties, who are successors to the landowners who sued the city in 1966 to prevent industrial development of the property.

Elgin Mayor David Kaptain, who voted in favor of the plan, said Wednesday he could not comment on the technicalities of the lawsuit, but he reiterated the city’s support for the plan.

“We have no objections to the temple,” Kaptain said. “From our standpoint, it was acceptable.”

The city annexed the 34 acres, plus another 63 acres, in 1966 and zoned it for manufacturing. According to Chicago Tribune articles of the time, nearby neighbors, including a church, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court, contending the vote was illegal because it occurred in closed session.

Neighbors were worried that the land would be used for surface mining, according to the articles.

The lawsuit was settled with a consent decree in 1967 that listed what could and could not be built on the property. Residential use was banned. Religious use was neither permitted nor banned, according to the decree.

At a city council meeting in January, a resident of the nearby Oak Ridge subdivision, Jessica Astrug, was one of about 20 people who spoke against the plan for the temple.

She said building the temple would create “astronomical” traffic disruptions on Route 20 and endanger a wetland. “This opposition has absolutely nothing to do with religion,” Astrug told the council.