Wheaton objects to plans for video gambling restaurant
Wheaton officials are raising objections to a proposed video gambling restaurant just outside the city limits in unincorporated DuPage County.
The owner of a one-story building along Gary Avenue wants to lease a vacant space to a new tenant who plans to operate a restaurant with "incidental" video gambling, city officials say.
The project ultimately falls under the purview of the county board, but the restaurant site is immediately north of the Wheaton Montessori School and Wheaton's municipal boundaries.
The county's zoning board was supposed to hold a public hearing on the restaurant plan Thursday night, but the meeting has been canceled and will be held at a yet-to-be-determined date.
About 214 square feet of the building would be dedicated to food preparation and service, while 318 square feet would be devoted to video gambling.
"They want to have a restaurant business which is basically a screen for video gambling," Wheaton Mayor Phil Suess said.
A dog and cat grooming business previously occupied the space. The rest of the building is used by a Thai restaurant.
The building owner is now seeking exemptions from county zoning rules to accommodate another restaurant at 0N684 Gary Ave.
But Wheaton city planners are "very concerned about the number and scale of the zoning variations necessary to accommodate the proposed tenant," Planning and Economic Development Director Jim Kozik said in a memo to the mayor and city council.
Council members agreed to outline the city's concerns in written comments to the county's zoning board. The advisory panel is considering a request from the property owner to reduce the required number of parking spaces from 15 spots to six. The owner also wants to reduce the required front yard and backyard setbacks from 40 feet to zero.
"Because it's a restaurant, they don't meet the parking requirements, and that's what's triggering these variations as far as the zero lot line," Suess said.
The restaurant plan is nearly identical to a proposal that surfaced last year for the old Hot Shots Photography Studio building on the same stretch of Gary Avenue.
County officials in May 2019 secured a court order to shut down the studio and settle a lawsuit claiming it operated as an adult business. The complaint alleged Hot Shots violated county ordinances by operating as an adult business within 1,000 of a school (Wheaton Montessori School and Wheaton North High School).
The agreement forced the establishment out of the Gary Avenue building - an opaque storefront with darkened windows and no exterior sign.
Just months after Hot Shots was ordered to close, Wheaton adopted a formal resolution opposing the use of the building for a restaurant with "incidental" video gambling and grab-and-go service, raising issues with parking and traffic congestion on Gary. That earlier zoning request was withdrawn after the city filed its objections with the county.
"As with the previous application, if the property were located within the corporate limits of Wheaton, it would have similar parking requirements and setbacks as are required by the county," Kozik wrote in the July 12 memo.
A decade after DuPage became the first county in Illinois to prohibit video gambling, the county board lifted the ban in 2019.