Core News Facts
- Metropolitan Planning Council is awarding the 2008
Burnham Award for Excellence in Planning to the Village of Arlington Heights
for the Timber Court Condominium Development.
- MPC will present the award at its Annual Luncheon,
from noon to 1:45 p.m., on Monday, Sept. 8, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151
East Wacker Dr. , Chicago .
- Each year for the past 21 years, MPC has presented the Burnham Award –
named in honor of Daniel H. Burnham, the creator of the 1909 Plan of Chicago –
to the plan that:
· Promotes and implements sensible planning and development policies;
·
Encourages public
participation and follows an open process;
·
Provides long-term
benefits to the community and its surroundings;
·
Is provocative, balancing
realistic expectations with vision;
·
Is innovative, breaking
new ground in planning practices; and
·
Is sufficiently completed
to evaluate whether the desired results have been
realized.
- Timber Court is a 108-unit development that includes
20 percent – or 21 total – condominiums priced to be affordable for a family
of four earning at or below $60,300, or 80 percent of area median income, as
set by the Illinois Housing Development Authority.
- The units will remain affordable in perpetuity
through a deed restriction, setting a precedent for other communities to
follow.
- The village’s approval of the development is, in
part, a response to the region’s shortage of homes affordable to the local
workforce. In Arlington Heights , 32.8 percent of homeowners and 45.3 percent
of renters spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing, exceeding
what experts recommend as the limit.
- The village negotiated the inclusion of affordable
housing in the development in exchange for granting the developer’s rezoning
request from light industrial to residential. (The site was zoned for light
industrial, but the village agreed that a multi-family building would offer a
transition from existing commercial uses to the west and residential uses to
the east.)
- The village also supported a departure from its
zoning regulation to allow the developer to build to 52 feet, rather than the
code’s maximum height of 40 feet. The village supported this departure because
a taller building meant the developer could provide a parking garage on the
first level of the building, which preserved more of the nearby trees and
provided more green space.
- The development was approved after a public process
that included 15 public meetings and four public hearings, all of which drew
many supporters and opponents.
- A PACE bus route is nearby and accessible to Timber
Court residents, as are Arlington Heights Road, Dundee Road, and the region’s
interstate system.
- Arlington Heights deserves special recognition for
joining the City of Chicago as the only Burnham Award winners to receive
the honor more than once. In 1999, Arlington Heights won the Burnham Award for
its Downtown Plan.
- MPC will present the award at its 2008 Annual Luncheon. Keynote speakers
at the luncheon will be surrogates for Presidential candidates Sen. Barack
Obama and Sen. John McCain. Henry Cisneros, executive chairman of the CityView
companies, former San Antonio mayor, and former Secretary of the U.S. Dept. of
Housing and Urban Development, will serve as the surrogate for Sen. Obama.
Sen. McCain’s surrogate is to be announced.
Quote Attributable to Arlington Heights Mayor
Arlene J. Mulder “Arlington Heights residents, Housing Commission,
Plan Commission, Village staff, Village Board members, and Tandem Realty Corp.,
all deserve this recognition for striking the right balance between bold
leadership and savvy compromise to produce 21 new homes that will remain
affordable in perpetuity in Arlington Heights. In addition to creating new
housing opportunities near jobs, Timber Court condominiums are proof it can be
done for communities across the region that are
working to maintain
a mixed
and high-quality housing
stock.”
Quote Attributable to Joseph Gregoire,
president and CEO, Illinois Banking, National City Bank; and member, MPC Board
of Governors “Arlington Heights and Tandem Realty Corp., were able
to address community concerns about affordable housing with good information,
creative solutions, and, ultimately, a beautiful product that didn’t cost
taxpayers a bundle. Not only is Timber Court an asset to Arlington Heights, but
the 21 affordable condominiums help to counter-balance
the region’s overall
shortage of affordable homes near jobs, and serve as a model
for communities across metropolitan Chicago.”
Links to Related Content
Village of
Arlington Heights Web site
Tandem Realty Corp.
Web site,
developer of
Timber
Court
An case study on Timber Court
, published in the MPC 2006 publication Home Grown: Housing Strategies
in Action
Welcome Home, Housing Our Community, a short video in which
Arlington Heights Mayor Arlene J. Mulder speaks about the importance of
workforce housing
A complete list of past Burnham Award winners
Contact
Mandy Burrell Booth
Asst. Communications Director
Metropolitan Planning Council
312-863-6018 (office)
773-640-1206
(cellular)
mburrell@metroplanning.org
Metropolitan Planning Council Mission
Statement
Founded in 1934, the Metropolitan Planning Council
(MPC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of business and civic leaders committed
to serving the public interest through development, promotion and implementation
of sound planning policies so all residents have access to opportunity and a
good quality of life, the building blocks of a
globally competitive
greater
Chicago
region.