Rolling Meadows planners OK with mosque plan, with an exception
A Rolling Meadows panel issued a mixed recommendation Tuesday on a proposal to build a mosque on Hicks Road, saying the plans are satisfactory but the religious site shouldn't be within a manufacturing area.
The city's planning and zoning commission - which reviews building plans before they are sent to the city council for final review and approval - voted 6-2 to recommend against the Islamic Society of the Northwest Suburbs' request for change to city zoning code that would allow religious uses within a manufacturing zoning district, with council approval.
But the commission also took a separate 5-3 vote - with the understanding that the council could approve the initial change to city code - to support the council granting the society a special use to allow the proposed mosque at 1200 Hicks Road.
"I believe M-1 should be M-1," Commission Chairman John Bisesi said of the manufacturing zoning district where the proposed mosque site is. "But should religious institutions be allowed in an M-1, then I would fully support this plan. I think all the T's are crossed and I's are dotted."
The commission took advisory votes Tuesday night, after the initial presentation of plans June 5 by mosque leaders. They're seeking to relocate from a 1-acre site at 3950 Industrial Ave. around the corner to the 8-acre Hicks Road site they've purchased. Plans call for renovation of a shuttered one-story, 47,534-square-foot brick industrial building into a prayer hall and Sunday school.
The mosque was established at another nearby Industrial Avenue site in 1985 before moving to its current location in 2004. An earlier request to move to Hicks Road was rejected by the council on a 4-3 vote in April 2016.
On Tuesday night, commissioners Todd Fink, Steve Rybarcyzk and Mike Lynch recommended the council vote "no" on both requests of the mosque - for the change to zoning code and for special use permission - arguing the area should remain a manufacturing area.
"I'm not convinced there is no buyer for this property," Lynch said. "Maybe not in the near term or the condition it's in, but I still believe the integrity of the M-1 should be maintained."
Commissioners Kevin O'Brien and David Patterson voted in support of both items.
"Having a religious facility there is better than nothing," Patterson said. "Nobody looked at that site for manufacturing in so many years. The building is so outdated for any kind of manufacturing now that it would have to be totally leveled."
Bisesi was joined by Dave Whitney and Tom Rataiczyk in voting for one item, but not the other.
The city council is expected to take up the matter July 24.