Panel Approves Talmadge Apartment Complex; Neighbors Plan Appeal

City planning commissioners, saying it could have been a “much, much less attractive” development, unanimously endorsed a proposed 131-unit Talmadge apartment complex Thursday over the objections of neighborhood residents.

A spokesman said residents intend to appeal to the City Council.

“This represents exactly the goals that were sought” by the 1986 Mid-City Community Plan, Commissioner Paula Oquita said.

Earlier this month Oquita had voiced concern over the height and population density of the Kensington Garden Apartments, which will abut property zoned R-1 (single-family). Oquita called the development by Playwrite Associates “a desirable example” for replacing the housing now at the site.

The apartments are planned for the community of Talmadge between Fairmont Avenue and 44th Street, and between Meade and Monroe streets.

“We’re not terribly surprised” at Thursday’s vote, said Dennis Michel, who lives a block north of the proposed project. “The nature of this group (the Planning Commission) is to respond to the letter of the law. In the discussion, they barely touched on the larger issues.”

Those issues--primarily a radical increase in population density on previously undeveloped land and the creation of a sharp demarcation line in zoning caused by the high density apartment adjacent to single-family housing--are more properly reserved for discussion before the City Council, Michel said.

Thursday’s vote came after the commissioners had made a field trip to the neighborhood where the controversial apartment complex is scheduled to be built. Commissioner Yvonne Larsen, who attended school a block from the site in question, said that trip relieved some of her reservations about the project. “I was startled by it, . . . (but now) I see it in a different perspective,” she said.

Residents who object to the $9.5-million complex say its three-story height and density are not in keeping with the mostly single-story, single-family houses that predominate along this block of 44th.

In an effort to appease the residents, the developers agreed before Thursday to lop off seven units on the third story and to extend the project’s north property line setback by six feet to allow for more landscaping.

Jack Guttman, one of the partners in the project, said they have met all the city Planning Department’s zoning requirements as spelled out in the new Mid-City Community Plan, and should not be penalized because they have done their homework.

“If the (community) plan is busted in every neighborhood, then you have no community plan. You have nothing,” said Guttman. “If everything is a question mark, how are we going to affect growth and growth management?”

In speaking of their appeal, Michel noted that the residents’ complaints were not with Guttman and his partners, Steve and Harry Drogin, but with a quirk in the Mid-City Community Plan.

“Our problem isn’t so much with these guys (the developers),” Michel said. “They are the good guys, compared to other developers and development companies in town. They’re making an effort to comply technically with the zone for that space.” Michel called the offer to cut seven spaces “more than we expected to see” and proof that the developers are willing to work with the community.

But Michel called the developer’s offer a “Band-Aid solution” that failed to deal with the residents’ main concern about radically boosting the density of a parcel that for more than 30 years has been used for either single-family units or left undeveloped.

“It’s ironic that we end up fighting basically a reputable developer,” Michel said. “He (Guttman) says this project is a Cadillac. Maybe we don’t have a parking place big enough to park a Cadillac in. You have to look at the context. Context is everything.”