Link to full article at The Chicago Sun Times
Patricia Sharkey and Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development repeatedly invoke a 2006 downzoning referendum as proof that Broadway’s rezoning violates “community-driven planning.” They present that vote as a democratic ideal. It wasn’t.
In 2006, roughly 800 voters across four precincts approved a referendum during an off-cycle primary election. That narrow, low-turnout vote was then used to justify downzoning the entire west side of Broadway from Devon to Foster avenues — far beyond the precincts where ballots were cast. Tens of thousands of residents affected by the decision never voted on it, never consented to it and had no meaningful voice in it. Describing that outcome as “inclusive” takes some impressive mental gymnastics.
Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development now treats this deeply flawed process as sacred precedent. In reality, it was classic old-school Chicago machine politics: low participation, limited geography and sweeping consequences imposed on an entire corridor by political insiders. The result has been two decades of frozen development along the CTA’s Red Line — locking in strip malls and whole block surface car parking lots while demand for homes exploded and rents climbed.
That is the legacy the folks behind the group are fighting to preserve.
The contrast with today’s process could not be clearer: months of meetings, more than 1,600 written comments, hundreds of letters to the Chicago Plan Commission, public hearings, zoning committee proceedings, block club debates, rallies, letters to the editor, extensive media coverage and constant social media discussion. Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development even paid for anti-upzoning billboards, threatened litigation for months and spoke at the zoning committee hearing, with some members removed for repeated disruptions when they heckled our neighbors who supported the upzoning. Claims that there was “no community input” belong in the realm of fiction.
Edgewater voters also weighed in directly. They elected Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th) after she ran openly on building more housing near transit. Implementing that platform is not a betrayal of democracy; it is the point of it.
Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development’s lawsuit is not about process or fairness. It is about a tiny, well-organized group refusing to accept that the neighborhood — and the city — have moved on from a deeply flawed decision made 20 years ago. In democracy, when you lose, the answer is not to run to court — it’s to persuade more people next time.
Neville Hemming, Edgewater