Bravo to Palatine plan commission

Bravo to the Palatine Plan Commission. Last week it voted 7-1 to recommend approval of Catherine Alice Gardens, a proposed 33-unit supportive housing apartment building for people with disabilities to be built at the corner of Eric and Cornell in Palatine.

This is an excellent location for such a building. It is within a two-block walk of the Palatine Post Office and the Metra Station, and a four block walk will take its future residents to the busy corner of Smith Street and Northwest Highway, where there are restaurants, a grocery store, a pharmacy, two banks, a family medical center and more.

It is a beautiful building, on the edge of an area of multifamily homes, and has been designed to match some of the other buildings in the area.

Currently the site contains an old warehouse that has been vacant and on the market for 11 years without a buyer. There are other empty industrial buildings on Eric Drive as well as others nearby on Colfax. Replacing the empty warehouse at the site will not deprive Palatine of much needed industrial property. There is clearly a surplus of industrial property now, and building Catherine Alice Gardens will replace an unused building with one that is greatly needed and will be well used.

The Palatine village council should accept the plan commissions’s recommendation and let Catherine Alice Gardens be built.

Ken Doruff

Palatine