Speakers urge caution on zoning rewrite and upcoming Alliance/Arco Murray warehouse

Two residents used public forum to press the City Council for closer review of land-use decisions.

James Henry, who identified himself during public comment, urged councilmembers to treat the zoning ordinance rewrite as law rather than a policy memo and asked the council to avoid adopting the rewrite wholesale without careful review. “A zoning ordinance is not a policy memo. It is law,” Henry said, urging piece-by-piece adoption so the city can preserve transparency and traceability while retaining existing law where appropriate. He submitted a written reorganized version of chapter 22 and asked the council to protect the quality of the process.

Mark Detoli, speaking from Ward 7, focused on an upcoming Alliance/Arco Murray warehouse case set for the zoning and planning commission. He said Team Southwest Elmhurst is concerned about the project’s unknown operational intensity, traffic impacts at the Route 83 Bulb Intersection and Butterfield Highlands, outstanding environmental issues including remediation sequencing and water-quality impacts, and that the project has not yet received Illinois EPA approval on its remediation plan. “We do not believe that this application provides the level of certainty, completeness, and enforceable constraint that a decision of this magnitude needs to receive,” Detoli told the council, and said many technical questions have been deferred until after approval.

Neither speaker requested immediate council action; both asked for careful review by the appropriate commissions and for the council to preserve its role in adopting law rather than delegating significant policy choices to the drafting process.