A Power Grab Masquerading as Preservation: When the Post Office Site Gets Zoned as a Park

For two months, the Village has sold its new Open Space Institutional District as a gift to the trees. Preserve open space. Who could be against that? Not us.

This week the Village posted the two ordinances up for Wednesday’s hearing. One writes the rules for the new district. The other redraws the zoning map to put specific public properties inside it.

But the devil really is in the details. There, after information about the parks and the beaches and the schools that would naturally fit into an open space district by virtue of, well, their open spaces, sit two addresses that are not green at all:

• Former Post Office, 512 Chestnut Street
• Chestnut Court – Moffatt Mall

Both are zoned C-2. Commercial. In the heart of downtown. And arguably — in the case of the Post Office — the most valuable public land in Winnetka.

That is the real story. This was never only about preserving grass and saving trees. It’s not even about maintaining the character of Winnetka. It’s a power move to block progress dressed up as preservation.

What the ordinances actually do

The draft ordinances cover about 35 properties and 82 parcels:

• Every park and beach
• The Green Bay Trail
• The golf club and Skokie Playfields
• The five District 36 schools
• New Trier’s Winnetka campus
• The library
• The Skokie Lagoons
• Stormwater basins
• Two street medians — and
• Those two commercial parcels downtown.

Inside the district, one category of use is allowed automatically: Village “essential public uses.” That means Village-run infrastructure — the water pumping station on Willow Road, the stormwater detention basins, drainage land. Municipal plumbing.

Everything else needs Village Hall’s permission. Schools, preschools, the library, the country club, and parks themselves are all in the “special uses” category, approved case by case. Any use not on that list is prohibited.

Today’s uses are protected. Existing special uses continue, and current operations keep the development standards they have now. Then comes the condition. Those protections disappear, the ordinance says, “if the property is no longer publicly owned.” Read that again, and then look at 512 Chestnut.

Connect the dots

The Post Office site has been Winnetka’s open question for 44 years. The Village demolished the building in April and — in its own words — planned to “restore the property to grass” and open it to the public in late summer. Six concepts are now before the Council, from leaving it as lawn to a mixed-use building with shops and housing that would put the land back on the tax rolls. The Council takes up the results this fall, with a study session October 13.

Now follow the timeline.

• In April the Council passed over staff’s option of negotiating agreements with the parks and schools and chose zoning instead, with four residents in the room.
• In July it told staff to build the district and to expedite hiring the consultant, with about 10 watching.
• In August the rewrite went out to bid.
• On September 3 the hearing was noticed and 1,485 letters went out.
• Wednesday, September 23 brings the one Plan Commission public hearing, which is the minimum.
• In October the Council can vote on the district — the same month it decides the Post Office.

Put those together. The Village tore the building down, seeded the lot with grass, and now asks to zone that same lot “open space” before the town has settled what belongs there. Commercial use is not on the new Open Space District list, which means it is prohibited. A future development partner would have to come back and ask the Council to rezone the land all over again. And if the parcel ever left public hands, the protections in this ordinance would fall away with it.

Call that what it is: a lock on the door before the town votes on what’s behind it.

Whether that is the intent or only the effect, the record does not say, and we will not pretend otherwise. But the people doing this know exactly what a zoning map is for.

The “mandate” is 940 people

Where is the mandate for this? The Council says the priority “emanated from the Winnetka caucus platform plank number two,” President Bob Dearborn said on April 14. It is “a clear mandate from the public,” with no need to “get so many different parties involved,” Trustee Rob Apatoff added that night.

Follow the plank to its source, and you reach one yes-or-no question on the 2024 Caucus survey: “Should the Village preserve all open space in Winnetka from being developed or sold to a private entity?” Of course 75% said yes. Who wouldn’t?

Where we take issue. Our Town Winnetka is on the record as favoring thoughtful commercial development for the Post Office site. And in that, most of the people who answered the WCC survey agree. Where there is a desire for open space, even that is posited as open space mixed with retail and commercial. And as we have said, residents and business owners were presented with ideas, not plans. Plans would have asked residents to consider the cost of forgoing revenue-generating projects and instead adding new expenses to the budget.

• For the Post Office site, respondents picked retail and restaurants over open space.
• The 75% is 940 people — about 7.5% of Winnetka residents — out of 1,623 who took an opt-in online poll. Not a scientific sample. A sign-up sheet.

Peter Eck, the former Caucus platform chair who presented the plank, told the Council himself: “People generally feel like we have enough open space… most people said we have enough, but let’s protect what we have.”

Protect what we have. Not hand Village Hall permitting power over every acre in town.

None of this is the Caucus’s fault. It runs a survey and writes platforms annually, and its work is useful. But the surveys and platforms are advice, not an election, and it was never built to authorize a rezoning.

So how should the Village have surveyed us?

The same way it did on the Post Office: its own survey, with costs and tradeoffs on the table, and open houses. Ask the question that matters — should Village Hall hold permitting power over land the parks, schools, and library already own? — before drafting the ordinance, not after. Or take staff’s April option and negotiate with those boards directly.

Winnetka knows how to run public engagement. It chose not to here.

Be there Wednesday, September 23, 7 p.m., Council Chambers, 510 Green Bay Road — or send the Plan Commission your written comments before the hearing.

Published by Our Town Winnetka · Our Town. Our Future. Your Voice.

Related: OTW’s analysis of the six Post Office concepts, the September 17 Council recap and the September 1 Council recap.