Arlington Heights votes 4-3 against home for mentally ill

A parents group that wants to develop housing for their mentally ill adult offspring will have to find another community more welcoming than Arlington Heights, said the developer whose project was rejected early Tuesday by the village board.

"With the reasons the Arlington Heights trustees gave us for denying such an important project, I don't think we can possibly find a site that they won't deny," added Jessica Berzac, vice president of Daveri Development Group.

Arlington Heights' zoning is the problem, she said. To make a building of this type affordable, the number of units has to be greater than what the village allows.

The developers proposed 30 apartments on slightly less than 1 acre at 120 E. Boerger Road, but the institutional class zoning the group sought would allow only 16.

"We will talk to other communities and see if we can find a community that wants to make this happen," said Berzac on Tuesday. "And we will find it."

More than 225 people attended Monday night's standing-room-only meeting and about 50 spoke. At 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, the board voted 4-3 to deny the proposal, despite support from the village staff and plan commission.

The site in question is just east of Arlington Heights Road and south of Dundee Road.

Trustee John Scaletta said the building should be less dense. "You are putting way too much on that property," he said, voting no.

Joining Scaletta against the proposal were trustees Norman Breyer, Thomas Hayes and Bert Rosenberg.

Mayor Arlene Mulder and trustees Tom Stengren and Carol Blackwood supported it. Joseph Farwell was absent, and Thomas Glasgow recused himself and left the meeting early because of a relationship with KinderCare.

A KinderCare center is immediately next door to the site, and representatives of both the day care company and the owner of the building spoke against the project.

Most residents who live in the nearby Arlington Heights and Buffalo Grove neighborhoods said they believe such housing is necessary but should not be built on that site.

Their complaints included fear for the safety of students walking to and from nearby Buffalo Grove High School.

Daveri spent $50,000 on preliminary work for the proposed housing since early signals from the village were so positive, she said.

"We had over 150 letters of support," said Berzac. She agreed the group will modify its community outreach strategy if it proposes building on another site, but does not think earlier meetings as suggested by some officials and residents would have changed opponents' opinions.

Scaletta criticized the developer for failing to reach out to nearby residents early in the process and said perhaps supporters could have enlisted students at the high school to convince parents that mentally ill people are not to be feared.

He added, however, that some of the comments made Monday night made him scared to live "so close to people who have that kind of attitude or prejudice toward people with mental illness."

Daveri is a for-profit company working with Thresholds, a nonprofit group that provides services to mentally ill people. Daveri and Thresholds were brought together by parents of mentally ill adults who formed the North/Northwest Suburban Task Force on Supportive Housing for Individuals with Mental Illness.

It will be impossible for the partners to apply for funding for any other site in a different community for at least a year because the annual deadline for the most important tax credits was Monday, said Berzac.

The developer had submitted an application for those credits based upon Arlington Heights plan commission approval.

Gina Valio, who pays for an Arlington Heights apartment for her son, said the task force she helped found and serves as a director of will regroup and may look again at other sites that were considered when this one was chosen.

"I think the village had more responsibility to tell people that these people aren't endangering children now, (so) why will they when they move into supportive housing?" Valio said.

"The same people are living here now," she added. "The village board listened to the fear rather than to the experts who explained about mental illness."