Burr Ridge residents | Village of Burr Ridge/Facebook
Burr Ridge residents | Village of Burr Ridge/Facebook
The Burr Ridge Village Board considered a plan during its Jan. 23 meeting to reconfigure the parking arrangement at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab parking lot, eliminating some landscape islands to create more spaces.
During the meeting, which was streamed on YouTube, the council also considered a request to create five spaces on the front lawn, with the SRA hoping to increase the number of spaces from 10 to 30 in an effort to ease parking issues stemming from the cancellation of bus services amid the COVID-19 pandemic that increased the number of people driving to the facility daily and needing parking accommodations.
“By reconfiguring this parking lot, we are giving them some accommodations by allowing landscape islands to be eliminated, trees to be eliminated and pervious surfaces to be eliminated as well, which we have done in the past,” board member Guy Franzese said.
Council heard during the session that the planning commission held three public hearings on the proposed changes, with most members of the public expressing concern about the look of the parking lot as well as increased lights from traffic from the parking lot. The lab, the council learned, will take steps to head off lighting issues, including shrubs. While the commission approved the parking lot alterations, it couldn’t approve the lawn parking.
“Precedent has been set in the past. We've eliminated a landscape island, and we're doing it, allowing it here,” Franzese said during the meeting. “However, it's about well above and beyond our standard. So this parking lot will be more dense than what we normally allow. We have fewer landscape islands than we normally allow. And what we've done this in the past with other businesses, in other big commercial buildings. However, we haven't allowed the parking in the front yard.”
As the council debated the changes, they reached a consensus, noting that more parking was needed at the lab. Members did express concern about storm water runoff, but it was noted that the area has a retention pond.
Council approved the changes to the parking lot but rejected the spaces on the front lawn.
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