The Open Space Institutional District

What this is, in plain English

The Village has applied to itself for two zoning changes. Together they create Winnetka's eleventh zoning district and move most publicly owned land into it.

• Ordinance MC-05-2026 — the text amendment. Adds a new Chapter 17.51, “OSI Open Space Institutional District,” to the Zoning Ordinance. It defines a district for public open spaces, parks, beaches, recreation areas, natural areas, schools, government facilities and similar public and civic lands that, in the Village's words, “are not well suited to regulation as residential, commercial, or industrial property.”
• Ordinance MC-06-2026 — the map amendment. Redraws the official zoning map to place specific properties inside the new district. Those properties sit today in single-family residential, multi-family residential and commercial districts.

The Village describes the district as a temporary, Phase One measure while it rewrites the whole Zoning Ordinance — a Phase Two project expected to take 18 to 24 months once a consultant is hired. Essential public uses would be permitted outright in the OSI district; other public and quasi-public uses would be special uses. The ordinance sets no bulk standards of its own, so height, setbacks and lot coverage would continue to follow each property's old district until Phase Two.

What changes, and when

For now, nothing. Any special use already in effect continues, and existing uses may continue under the development standards that applied before adoption. A school stays a school; a beach stays a beach.

If land is sold, a great deal changes. Section 17.51.040 says that if a property rezoned to OSI “is no longer publicly owned,” those protections no longer apply and the property becomes subject to all provisions of the chapter. A private buyer who wanted anything other than an essential public use would have to ask the Village Council to rezone the land first.

That is the hinge of the whole debate. The same acre carries one set of rules under a public owner and a stricter set under a private one. Supporters call that the point — residents, not a handful of board members, should have the final say on whether public land leaves public hands. Critics call it zoning by ownership rather than by use, and say it belongs in an intergovernmental agreement or a conservation easement, not the zoning map.

The map

The properties

The property list attached to the October 20 ordinance names 44 facilities. Three of them — Village Hall, the Public Works facility (The Yards), and the Police and Fire facilities — were added after the September 23 Plan Commission hearing, and the item was re-noticed for October 20 with mailings to taxpayers of record within 250 feet.

Parks, beaches and natural areas

Arborvitae Park · Bell Woods Park · Centennial Park and Beach · Crow Island Woods · Dwyer Park · Elder Lane Park and Beach · Franklin Dunbaugh Park · Green Bay Trail · Hill Road Park · Hubbard Woods Park · Indian Hill Park · Library Park · Lloyd Park, Beach and Boat Launch · Maple Street Park and Beach · Merrill Park · Nick Corwin Park · Robert E. Burke Memorial Park · Sheridan Park · Station Park · Tower Road Beach and Park · Village Green Park · West Elm Street Park · Skokie Lagoons

Recreation facilities

Winnetka Golf Club, Skokie Playfields and Tennis Center (1300 Oak Street, 540 Hibbard Road) · Winnetka Ice Arena (490 Hibbard Road) · Duke Childs Field (1321 Willow Road)

Schools and the library

Carleton Washburne School · Crow Island School · Greeley School · Hubbard Woods School · The Skokie School · New Trier High School, Winnetka campus · Winnetka Public Library

Village facilities and infrastructure

Village Hall (510 Green Bay Road) · Police and Fire Departments (410 Green Bay Road) · Public Works Facility, The Yards (1390 Willow Road) · Willow Road Water Pump Station · Crow Island Stormwater Detention · Hibbard-Willow Stormwater Detention · Boal Parkway drainage · Vine-Burr Median · Sunset Road Medians

Downtown commercial parcels

512 Chestnut Street — the former Post Office site · Chestnut Court — Moffatt Mall

Both are zoned C-2, commercial. They are the two properties on the list that are not open space, not institutional, and not in public recreational use — and the Post Office site is the parcel the Village is simultaneously preparing to market to developers.

Full property list with addresses and PINs (PDF) →

Where each body stands

• New Trier Township High School District 203 — opposed. Board Vice President Courtney McDonough told the Council on October 20 that New Trier “remains strongly opposed to including our property in the proposed open space institutional district,” and that the Village “is asking us to accept the label now and learn the rules later.” New Trier has proposed a separate district for schools and institutions instead.
• Winnetka Public Schools District 36 — opposed. Dan Waters said the ordinance “lumps our highly developed, active school campuses into open space.”
• Winnetka Park District — opposed, and still waiting. Elise Gibson said the district's questions, sent September 15, had gone unanswered.
• Plan Commission — recommended approval. On September 23 it voted 6–1 to recommend the text amendment and 5–2 to recommend the map amendment, while members questioned the timing against the pending Zoning Ordinance rewrite and raised concerns about rezoning schools to open space and about which properties are in and which are out.
• Zoning Board of Appeals — a written objection. Lynn Hanley, a retired land-use attorney who has served on the ZBA for nearly eight years and teaches constitutional law at Loyola, wrote the Council on October 12 that using the zoning ordinance to affect the sale of public property is “an indirect and potentially constitutionally problematic way to accomplish that objective.” She recommended intergovernmental agreements, conservation easements, or property-specific planned developments.
• Village Council — deadlocked. On October 20 Trustees Scott Myers, Kirk Albinson and Bridget Orsic voted to pause until a consultant is hired. President Bob Dearborn's vote made it 3–3 and the pause failed. The ordinances themselves then deadlocked, and everything was continued to December 1.

How Winnetka got here

• April 14, 2026 — Council study session. Trustees discuss options for regulating open space uses and direct staff to draft an ordinance creating a new zoning district, rather than pursue staff's option of negotiating agreements with the parks and schools.
• July 21, 2026 — Council reviews how neighboring communities zone open space and directs staff to proceed with Phase One, the text and map amendments. It also directs staff to issue an RFP for the full Zoning Ordinance rewrite and to establish a steering committee.
• September 3, 2026 — Public hearing noticed in the Winnetka Talk; roughly 1,485 notices mailed to taxpayers of record within 250 feet of the subject properties.
• September 23, 2026 — Plan Commission public hearing. Six members of the public speak, including both school districts and the Park District. The Commission recommends approval of both amendments.
• October 1, 2026 — A second notice runs after the Village adds Village Hall, The Yards and the Police and Fire facilities to the map amendment.
• October 12, 2026 — Lynn Hanley's letter to the Village Council.
• October 13, 2026 — Council study session on the Post Office site; several trustees favor exploring partial redevelopment, and staff is directed to ask developers what they might build.
• October 20, 2026 — Public hearing and introduction. The Council also adopts Resolution R-79-2026 creating the Ad Hoc Zoning Ordinance Rewrite Steering Committee. The pause motion fails 3–3; the ordinances deadlock and are continued.
• October 28, 2026 — Plan Commission takes up written Findings of Fact for both amendments and its September 23 minutes.
• December 1, 2026 — Both ordinances return to the Village Council.

The steering committee

Resolution R-79-2026, adopted October 20, creates a seven-member Ad Hoc Zoning Ordinance Rewrite Steering Committee: two members from the Plan Commission, two from the Zoning Board of Appeals, two from the Design Review Board and one from the Environmental, Forestry & Sustainability Commission, plus a non-voting Trustee liaison appointed by the Village President. Its duties are to hold public meetings guiding the rewrite, to propose amendments with the consultant and Village Attorney, and to review the draft for completeness and feasibility.

There is no seat for the Park District, the school districts or the library — the bodies that own most of the land on the map. The Village Manager has described a process in which partner staff would present and take part in discussion. That is not the same as a seat with a vote.

The documents

OTW hosts these so the links do not rot. All are public records.

• Agenda item executive summary, Ordinance MC-06-2026, and Resolution R-79-2026 — the Village's own summary of both amendments, the map-amendment ordinance, the property list, and the steering committee resolution. (PDF, 11 pages)
• Open Space Zoning Map, September 29, 2026 — the full-size village map showing every parcel proposed for the district. (PDF)
• Lynn Hanley to the Village Council, October 12, 2026 — the six-page legal objection from a ZBA member and retired land-use attorney. (PDF)
• OSI property list, October 20, 2026 — every facility, address and PIN proposed for the district. (PDF)
• Video: the October 20, 2026 Village Council meeting — the public hearing, the board testimony and the 3–3 votes.

Where OTW stands

We support protecting Winnetka's open space. We oppose the Open Space Institutional district as drafted, and the structure of the committee that will guide the decisions. We ask the Council not to adopt it on December 1.

• Fold the district into the rewrite. Phase Two is starting anyway. Write the rules first, then draw the map.
• Zone by use, not by owner. A separate district for schools and institutions, or property-specific planned developments.
• Take the downtown commercial parcels off the map. The Post Office site and Chestnut Court are zoned commercial. Remove them, or explain — before developers are asked to bid — why they belong in an open space district.
• Protect true open space directly, through conservation easements and intergovernmental agreements, beginning with land the Village already owns.
• Give each land-owning board a seat and a vote, and answer the Park District's September 15 letter in public.
• Weigh it all together — open space, the tax base and the $600 million capital bill — in one public conversation, before anything is locked in.

How to be heard before December 1

1. Write the Council at contactcouncil@winnetka.org. Correspondence goes into the public packet. Say which of the six points above you support and why it matters to your household.
2. Come to Village Hall on December 1 at 7 p.m. and sign up to speak. On October 20 only a handful of residents did.
3. Bring a neighbor who has never been. That single act changes the arithmetic more than any letter.
4. Ask your own board. If you serve on, volunteer for, or have children in the Park District, District 36, New Trier or the library, ask them where they stand and what they have asked the Village for.

OTW's coverage

• Open Space, Yes. Going It Alone, No. — October 27, 2026
• A Power Grab Masquerading as Preservation: When the Post Office Site Gets Zoned as a Park — September 20, 2026
• Council Recap, September 17: Six Days Before the Hearing, Not One Word on Open Space
• Council Recap, September 1: The Cameras Came On. The Open Space District Stayed Off.
• Council Recap, August 4: A Gaga Pit Gets Three Hearings. The ‘Open Space District’ Gets Zero Words.
• Council Recap, July 21: An ‘Open Space’ District That Runs Every Public Body's Land Through Village Hall
• The TRUTH About the VC's New “Open Space District” — the plain-English explainer, August 6, 2026
• 44 Years, Six Concepts, and the One Question the Village Never Asked — the Post Office site

Last updated October 27, 2026. OTW will update this page after the Plan Commission's October 28 Findings of Fact and after the December 1 Council meeting.