Bad feelings linger in Buffalo Grove over proposal to create a downtown

As Buffalo Grove leaders work to update the village's strategic plan, the specter of the rejected $320 million downtown renovation still looms large.

Trustee Jeffrey Berman said the community is divided — those who think of Buffalo Grove as a bedroom community and those who think the village needs to be competitive in the marketplace.

Trustee Joanne Johnson said the recent controversy over the proposed downtown redevelopment revealed the fissure within the community.

“Whenever there is an issue, the naysayers show up more than the people who might be supporting something,” she said.

“So you hear them loud and clear, but you don't hear the people who might be for something.”

Berman added, “If you're standing still, you're falling behind. We are not competing effectively for many of our potential customers.”

Both Berman and Johnson had supported giving a full hearing to a proposed $320 million mixed-use development on the site of village hall and the Buffalo Grove Golf Club along Lake-Cook Road.

The plan died in December 2013 after village leaders balked at developer CRM Properties Group's request for as much as $100 million in financial assistance.

But the argument clearly didn't die with the proposal.

Trustee Dave Weidenfeld didn't agree with how Berman and Johnson interpreted the nature of the opposition. “The debate was not, ‘Do we want a downtown,'” Weidenfeld said. “The debate was whether that is the right place.”

Berman and Trustee Lester Ottenheimer III disagreed, saying the public opposition to the proposal sounded less like an objection to the site and more like an objection to the plan.

Village President Beverly Sussman, who rode her opposition to the proposal into office over incumbent Jeffrey Braiman, said any new proposals will be listened to objectively.

But Ottenheimer and Trustee Steven Trilling wonder if that's possible. The board couldn't even talk about the $320 million proposal without members of the opposition accusing them of having a “done deal.”

“I thought we asked a lot of relevant questions. We spent a lot of time on it,” Ottenheimer said. “But even when we (concluded) it wasn't going to work, they didn't believe that.”

Trilling said that attitude will be a problem going forward.

“We're going to have to listen to each other and listen to other people, and ... not shut something down just because there are people over in one corner who are against something,” he said.