O  A  K    P  A  R  K    A  R  C  H  I  T  E  C  T  U  R  A  L 
L  E  A  G  U   E

111 NORTH MARION STREET
OAK PARK, ILLINOIS   60301
(708) 848-8844
 

March 5, 2003

Michael Chen
Village of Oak Park 
123 Madison
Oak Park, Illinois 60302

Dear Michael:

At our meeting on February 17, 2003, The Oak Park Architectural League 
reviewed the preliminary site plan, plans, and elevations for the proposed 
Whiteco Development project at Harlem and Ontario prepared by Antunovich 
Associates.  The design concept for this project is not supported by the
League. 
 

The following are our comments:

The Architect, Joe Antunovich, is a very good architect and we have had a 
high regard for his work.  When he designed the Euclid Terraces project 
two years ago, the League supported that project at that time because of 
the high level of design. He is capable of doing a great building on this site. 
In addition, as a group, we architects who live or work in Oak Park are 
naturally pro-development.  It is in our best interests to see new buildings
created.  We love buildings, and we love architecture.  It is our way of 
thinking. But we also realize that buildings are not islands in themselves. 
They exist in a community and within an environment of other buildings 
and culture. They contribute to and are informed by that culture.  As 
Winston Churchill so aptly said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they 
shape us.”

We believe that the project is too dense.  The B-4 (and R-7) zoning for
the site has a purpose and should not be disregarded.  The as-of-right
maximum height under B-4 zoning is 125 feet, vs. the proposed 178 feet
– a 42%  increase.  The as-of-right maximum number of housing units
under R-7 zoning is 103 vs. the proposed 215 – a 109%  increase!  The
“Planned Development” process in Oak Park was created to “enable 
the granting of certain allowances or modifications from the basic 
provisions of the Zoning Ordinance to achieve attractive and timely 
development in furtherance of the Village’s objectives and proposed 
land uses as stated in the Comprehensive Plan (Oak Park Zoning 
Ordinance page 3-38).”  The Oak Park Comprehensive Plan 1990 is 
the current plan which is referred to in the Zoning Ordinance as being
the document by which planned developments are to be judged.  Not 
surprisingly, the Comprehensive Plan states on page 23 that, for 
planned developments, the maximum density limits of the zoning 
ordinance should be adhered to.  If one followed the Comprehensive 
Plan, as one should for this planned development, the density would 
be limited to a maximum of 103 dwelling units, not 215 as proposed
by the developer.  If there is interest in mega-buildings, a special 
district or corridor should be created through proper advice and 
consent of the governed. 

There is little or no open space. With residential uses taking up more
than 75% of the total building area, there should be some substantial
landscaped open space provided on the site. “The beneficial uses 
of open space” is one of the objectives of Planned Developments, 
according to the Oak Park Zoning Ordinance (p. 3-38). 

The building is poorly designed with relation to its immediate 
environment and the Village in general.  Fenestration size, spacing, 
materials, and even shape, are uncharacteristic of the neighborhood
buildings.  The Oak Park Zoning Ordinance (p. 3-41) states that 
one of the standards for review of Planned Developments is “The
proposed design…will complement the character of the surrounding 
neighborhood.”  According to The American Heritage Dictionary 
of the English Language, Fourth Edition, the word “complement” 
means “Something that completes, makes up a whole, or brings 
to perfection.” The proposed design does not complete the 
neighborhood, but confronts and conflicts with it.  We have asked 
the developer for, but have not yet received, an overall model of 
the building in its surrounding context.  This will indisputably show
how the building in fact does not complement the surrounding 
neighborhood, less even the Village of Oak Park. 

The exterior is provided with vague classical detailing.  The details 
are monumentally overscaled and inappropriate for the type of 
building and its secondary peripheral location. It is not an important
building.  It is not located in a part of the village which could be a
focal point, yet it tries mightily to be one. It jumps up from the back 
of the crowd yelling “look at me!” It should not say “look at me,”
but it must enhance the arrival experience at the entrance to Oak Park. 

We object to the use of false windows and balconies on floors 2nd to
5th floors on the Harlem and Ontario sides of the building.  The 
attempt to make these floors look like apartment units when they are 
actually parking floors flies in the face of the deep-rooted tradition 
of “form follows function” which Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 
mentor, first advocated. 

This building will use materials which are inelegant and unattractive. 
While the first two floors are proposed to be clad in stone to echo 
Marshall Field’s building on Lake Street, there is no such attempt to
be compatible with all the other brick masonry buildings in its immediate
surroundings.  Moreover, the majority of the façade on all sides will 
be painted concrete, a material we associate with industrial buildings 
or cheap parking structures.  We maintain that this monolithic, 
featureless facade will be an assault on our community’s visual 
sensibilities. It will be a building just like those Mayor Daley lambasted
in a Chicago Sun-Times February 16 article, “No more Ugly Buildings.” 
The article stated that Daley was “fed up with concrete “boxes” being
added to Chicago’s storied skyline….”  Daley said, “Instead of just 
plain old boxes, we want something different.  Developers better realize
that.  Also, the public wants it, as well.”  We demand it in historic 
Oak Park. 

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding by the developer
of the visual nature of Oak Park.  We have heard our fellow villagers 
debate whether Oak Park is “urban.” It is usually stated in the context
of social problems – that is, we must be “urban” because we have 
some of the social problems one associates primarily with an urban 
environment, such as homelessness and drugs. But, Oak Park is not
“urban” in the normally-used physical sense of that word, in that it is
not particularly dense, not commercial or industrial, and not a place
where there is an abundance of street life. Perhaps that is what this
building’s developer and the Village Board would like to see Oak Park
become, but that is not what the culture of the village is by its very 
nature.  If Oak Park does become “urban” it will lose its intrinsic 
charm.  We all came to live here because of Oak Park’s distinctive
“suburban” traditions. What is true of this building is that it will not 
even deliver what the developer promises.  There will be no abundance
of street life created on Harlem or Ontario, even if it were desired. 
The major entrances are vehicular-oriented.  The huge parking garage 
will simply bring in more one-person automobiles to go to his or her 
apartment, Trader Joe’s or the Health club, and then back to where 
he or she came from.  The circulation pattern of the building is not 
designed to encourage pedestrian activity or, in Jane Jacob’s _
expression, “eyes on the street.”  The only eyes on the street will be
from behind the windshield of a car (or a semi truck). Any 
development near downtown should encourage street life.  Filling 
up the site with building and parking garage displaces the pedestrian. 
New Urbanist planner Peter Calthorpe is an enthusiastic promoter 
of “pedestrian pockets” as the core of good planning, and presents 
this aesthetic as having four dimensions: scale, pace, pattern and 
bounds.  An auto-centric environment is the antithesis of all four, 
according to Jane Holtz Kay in her recent book, Asphalt Nation: 
How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take
it Back (Los Angeles, 1997, p. 87). We believe that there should 
be adequate exterior pedestrian space (Calthorpe’s “pockets”) 
adjacent to the retail to support outdoor commercial activity and 
create a sense of activity.  There is virtually none in this scheme. 

The design is badly proportioned. The residential tower is 283 feet
long, nearly a football field.  It is 72 feet wide and 183 feet high to
the top of the parapet. No other building in Oak Park has that bulk.
It will cast a 570 foot long shadow across Ontario Street at 3:00 p.m.
on the winter solstice. It will be twice as long and three times as high 
as the landmark Marshall Field’s Building to  its south.  It will be 
almost three times as long as the apartment building directly south 
of it and four times as tall. Other tall buildings in Oak Park are set 
back significantly from the street so their height is mitigated.  This 
building is only 10 feet from its Harlem Avenue property line and 
15 feet from the Ontario Street property line. Two such buildings 
placed end to end would stretch the entire block from Ontario to 
Lake Street. The Oak Park Historic Preservation Ordinance 
Architectural Review Guidelines stipulates how new buildings 
should be designed to be compatible with adjacent historic buildings: 

1.     A new building in a historic district must be compatible

with the size, scale, set-back, massing, material, and 
character of the buildings which surround it on the same 
and adjacent blocks (the zone of influence for new 
buildings is six blocks -- the block on which the building
is proposed to be built, the two adjacent blocks on the 
same side of the street, and the three opposing blocks 
on the other side of the same street).

2.      A new building shall not change the historic character 

 of the other buildings which surround it on the same 
 and adjacent blocks.

       3.      A new building shall have its front entrance facing the same 

direction as the majority of buildings on the same block, 
unless it can be shown that compatibility with adjacent buildings
can be achieved better through a different orientation.

We believe that protecting the historic and architectural integrity of our Village 
should be primary criteria for judging any planned development.  The Oak Park 
Comprehensive Plan 1990 supports with our judgment when it states prophetically 
on page 23 the following: 

The Village can further protect its architectural heritage by encouraging projects 
that are compatible with, and sensitive to, historic preservation considerations. 
This applies both to public works improvements and to private developments 
where the village controls some or all of the property involved.  Examples include 
potential development at Holly Court….
 

The project as conceived at this time is not sensitive to the historic environment 
in which it exists. 
 
 

Proposed North Elevation 

Proposed West Elevation

Marshall Field’s, 1929 
 

Dreschler Building, 1899

The developer stated that he has no experience in affordable housing, 
therefore, none will be provided.  We find this reasoning to be unproductive. 
Every housing development in Oak Park should have a certain percentage 
of affordable units made available to people who cannot find decent housing 
available elsewhere within the Village. Oak Park’s Comprehensive Plan
states that one of its goals is to “…enhance … residential environment so 
persons of all ages, races, and income levels can continue to live here in
sound, affordable housing.”  The Comprehensive Plan also goes on to say 
on page 24:  “The Village does wish to allow construction of scattered higher
density buildings to help stabilize the population and to create opportunities
for residents of all income  levels, ages, races, and abilities .…” 
 

This project can still become a positive contribution to Oak Park.  It is not
yet built.  Joe Antunovich has the intelligence and capability to make it so. 
The collective will of the community and the developer must be brought 
to bear.  We must insist on it. 

Our Village is that precious.  One of the defenses we have heard recently 
in reference of this project is that eventually we will get used to it.  These 
defenders point to Mills Park Tower and Heritage House as being examples 
of bad architecture that presumably nobody pays any attention to any more. 
We assure you that we are disturbed when we see buildings that are an
intrusion into our Village, no matter how old they are. We imagine how much
better our village would be without them. They do shape us, although we 
may not realize it.  Such a massive development as that being proposed 
will shape us and our descendents well into the future.

                      Sincerely,
 
 

                     The Oak Park Architectural League