Buffalo Grove board allows OTB facility to stay open

The Buffalo Grove village board will allow an off-track betting parlor at Adam's Roadhouse Sports Bar and Grill to stay open, despite complaints the business recently violated its terms of operation.

Under a measure approved 5-1 by trustees, the wagering facility at 301 N. Milwaukee Ave. will continue operations under its new licensee, Hawthorne Race Course Inc., which acquired the OTB assets from Inter-Track Partners in September.

Trustee Beverly Sussman, the only board member to vote against the measure, insisted the OTB should have been closed down in November, when officials learned Hawthorne failed to notify the village or receive approval for the change of ownership, a violation of the special use permit allowing the OTB.

Sussman noted that the agreement calls for the immediate closure of the facility if the special use is transferred to new ownership without village approval.

“And when I looked up the word immediately, immediately meant at once, instantly, without any intervening time,” she said. “I would encourage us in the future to use terminology in our ordinances that is 100 percent correct and accurate.”

Other board members, however, said the change in ownership is not really a change in the special use.

It's an amendment to an existing special use. Is that correct?” Trustee Jeffrey Berman asked Village Attorney William Raysa.

“It's the same special use,” Raysa answered,

“The use has not changed one iota,” nor have there been problems at the facility, Trustee Jeffrey Braiman added.

The OTB's operator provided testimony and documentation to the board indicating their failure to notify officials of the change was an honest mistake.

“I don't think so at all,” Hawthorne simulcast director John Walsh said when asked if there was any violation. “I just think it was confusion by people thinking...you know, sometimes you think there is a conspiracy, even though there is not.”

The amended ordinance approved Monday also requires Adam's Roadhouse to remove its billboard sign by the end of the year, an issue that had been a bone of contention between the village and the business.

Village officials maintain that the OTB, approved in June 2009 following long and controversial meetings, has not had a detrimental impact on the village, including law enforcement.

Only one resident appeared at Monday's board meeting to protest the OTB. Craig Horwitz called the special use illegal and claimed there have been several violations of the ordinance.

“I don't think there is any question how much has gone under the wire with this OTB, from the moment it was deemed a special use,” Horwitz said.

Raysa defended the special use, telling Horwitz that the village's Plan Commission held a hearing on the matter, and found that the requirements of the special use had been met.

He added that through the measure approved Monday, the village board has also found the requirements were met and “that there has been no detrimental effect to the village of Buffalo Grove since the enactment of the original ordinance.”