Mount Prospect amending zoning rules for ‘last-mile’ distribution centers

Responding to concerns about “last mile” distribution facilities near residential neighborhoods, Mount Prospect officials plan to tighten the village’s zoning code to make such businesses undergo a case-by-case review.

The facilities are warehouses where products are sorted for final delivery to customers.

“We are talking about the Amazons of the world,” Community Development Director Jason Shallcross said.

Some of the facilities have hundreds of employees making deliveries and operate around the clock.

A proposed text amendment to the zoning code would remove distribution centers as a permitted use. In its place would be a new category, including distribution centers and last-mile delivery facilities, as a conditional use.

“Ultimately, each individual user would have to be approved by the village board,” Shallcross said. “And that is only for distribution centers where distribution, parcel distribution, last-mile delivery is their primary use.”

A warehouse company or manufacturer that happens to make deliveries would not necessarily need village board approval.

Last week, the planning and zoning commission recommended the village board approve changes to the code.

Village staff said Mount Prospect has received complaints about recently approved distribution centers. Most complaints cite increased truck traffic, pedestrian and vehicle safety, and noise, odor and emissions.

“I would estimate that we probably have less than 10 of these in town, but the ones that we do have, we have received complaints about,” Shallcross said.

The most complaints have been about a delivery center that opened on Wolf Road in 2022. Neighbors’ problems with the facility were brought up again in July, when the village board approved a warehouse at the southwest corner of Kensington and Wolf roads in the Kensington Business Center.

The conditional use process would involve notifying neighboring property owners and conducting a public hearing before the planning commission.

“It basically creates an even playing field for all other I-1 Limited Industrial properties in the village,” Shallcross said.

szalusky@dailyherald.com