TribLocal Elmhurst - 2 September 2010
TRIBLOCAL.COM
More than 400 Elmhurst residents seek help for flood damages High School Player of the Month contest to begin next week
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Elmhurst | Lombard | Villa Park
VOICE OF THE TOWN
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SEPTEMBER 2-8, 2010 | SPONSORED BY THE
Zoning commission weighs parking plan
By Annemarie Mannion
TRIBLOCAL REPORTER
Imagination heats up at Big Rigs and Kids event
The Elmhurst Planning and Zoning Commission is slated to make a recommendation by Sept. 9 on whether it endorses Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare’s proposal to add parking and divert storm water at the 259-bed hospital it is building at York and Roosevelt Roads. The hospital is asking to add about 65 parking spaces to the northwest corner of the property, for a total of 563 parking spaces. About 50 people, many residents at the Royal York Condominiums located just northwest of the 60-acre hospital campus, turned out for a public hearing Aug. 26 about changes in the hospital’s development plan. The new parking spaces would take the place of a detention pond the hospital had proposed on the site. To handle storm water, the hospital is now asking to increase the size of a detention pond on the southwest corner of the property, and to pipe storm water from the northwest to the southwest side of the 50-acre campus. Carol Vicich, who lives in the 120-unit condo building, said she and other residents do not want the hospital to develop the area on the northwest side of the campus where they would put the additional parking. Even without the new parking, she said
Euclid Avenue, which is on the east side of the condo building, flooded during storms in June and July. She does not recall it flooding previously during large rain storms in 2008 and 1987. “We haven’t had a flood scenario before (in years prior to 2010) in a community that has a history of flooding,” Vicich said. “We don’t want to create one now.” She noted that condo residents are especially fearful about flooding on the building’s east side because its mechanical equipment, such as its furnace, is housed on the ground floor facing Euclid. According to a presentation by the hospital, the storm water detention pond on the southwest side of the campus is designed to hold about 8.3 million gallons of storm water, which represents the volume of storm water expected to fall on the area and surrounding roadways during a 100-year storm event. During the July 24 flood, the pond came to within one to two feet of cresting over the top, officials said. The hospital’s new plan would increase the storage capacity on the southwest side by 500,000 gallons, Scott Day, an attorney representing the hospital estimates. Vicich said she approves of a hospital plan to raise the height of the ground by six
PLEASE SEE ZONING, PAGE 11
A Villa Park resident takes a fire engine on an imaginary ride. For more photos, see Page 13. Photo submitted by Al Stasch, citizen contributor
Storm water tax on the table in Elmhurst
By Annemarie Mannion
TRIBLOCAL REPORTER
A storm water tax is one of the solutions Elmhurst is considering to solve its flooding problems. The amount of tax a homeowner would pay would be based on the size of a structure’s roof or parking lot. “If you’re contributing storm water you
pay more. Elmhurst doesn’t do that now, maybe we should,” said City Manager Thomas Borchert at a finance committee meeting this week. Other city council committees also met this week to weigh other ideas the city is considering for addressing flooding including a temporary building moratorium, us
PLEASE SEE TAX, PAGE 11
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