Journal & Topics Media Group

Maureen Pekosh: More Residents Not Answer For Downtown Revitalization


If you’re a “Friend of Downtown Glenview”, you’ve seen the plans for the old Bess Hardware site. The proposal is for a densely populated apartment complex with some parking and very little retail space. Most residents do not agree with the village board that this is the ideal design for this site. Do our village board members ever go downtown?

If more people live downtown, that will not make downtown more vibrant, just more crowded. What our downtown needs is more compelling reasons to hang out downtown, not more time stuck sitting in one’s car trying to traverse the already congested Glenview Road. Residents are questioning whether village board members care about resident quality of life and revitalizing downtown, or if they just want to revitalize their cash reserves. Residents want more retail, restaurants and destinations downtown. Dense housing just brings us more people using Glenview Road to get out of downtown Glenview.

Not being an urban planning expert, I read what experts advise to help a struggling downtown. SEH, engineering, architecture, environmental and planning consultants serving public and private sector clients, suggests the most important feature in turning around a lacking downtown is to create a “sticky” area. When visitors stroll down downtown streets, they want an excuse to stop and enjoy their surroundings, chat with friends and family, notice and enjoy the sights in front of them whether they are vibrant restaurant fronts, enticing retail window displays, or just people watching. They suggest attractive seating opportunities combined with food trucks, live entertainment, or art on a weekend night monthly to accustom people to visiting the downtown area and begin thinking of it as a destination. Clearly our village must do a little work to create a new mindset and perhaps put downtown Glenview on more even footing with The Glen.

A downtown should be friendly to people without cars. There must be ample comfortable indoor and outdoor seating opportunities and green space. There should be a mix of destinations drawing potential visitors and once there, encouraging them to stay for a visit. Ease of walking and biking should be equally important to driving and commuting. Empty storefronts which are a cyclical result of the economy are instead an ongoing eyesore in Glenview. Empty windows combined with inconsistent groupings of storefronts and business types give our downtown no continuity. Getting to the point where there is pleasing consistency will take time. In the approximately 16 years the village has tossed around the term downtown revitalization, it seems individual sites have been improved without any overall uniformity. Coming downtown with a plan and a purpose is possible, but just strolling around downtown on an average evening is far from entertaining.

Our downtown is currently a product of history rather than the result of any successful plan. There is not a plan that links our downtown inhabitants or ensures that a visit downtown holds sufficient interest to visitors to keep them coming. I walk or drive down Glenview Road every day and I cannot even recall what businesses inhabit the north side of the street. The area between Twisted Trunk and Mandarine with Morning Glory in the middle features a bench and outdoor plants. The windows of either flank contain interiors that could spark the interest of passersby, but further on down the block the buildings are nondescript, and their tenants do not contribute to the downtown experience. Crossing the street, there is a wide expanse of the OLPH parking lot, situated next to the parking lot for Heinen’s and the corner stores. Between Jimmy John’s and DDK there is the eternally empty shoe store and the previous Cookies by Design which is now a studio which provides a high degree of visual interest, and the Rock House where sounds might entice strollers during the evening. Downtown we find some art, some music, some interior design, some dining options, but after years of planning it still seems haphazard.

When commuters travel past Glenview daily via Metra, their first impression of our town should not be some towering apartment complex. The village board must be firm and stipulate that this prime spot has the maximum retail and entertainment footprint on its ground floor. There should be ample green space to encourage the pedestrian experience of our downtown of which this building hopes to become a part. We cannot accept any proposal that does not add to our downtown revitalization vision. We do not just want more crowds, we want more thriving businesses. If your proposed building contributes to a budding bustling arts and dining scene, only then can we accept an increase in occupancy. Our town is not a crowded city. It is a suburb and must keep some of that integrity.

Downtown suburbia should be a place with where residents feel ownership. To foster this sense of proprietorship, there must be a sense of pride in the downtown, a center that engages visitors, and nurtures shared social experiences. As more and more retail must compete with online behemoths like Amazon, creative planners should attempt to attract businesses where physical presence is required. Core Power Yoga, a new business on Glenview Road, seems to reliably attract a crowd who then often pop into Glenview Grind for light refreshment. The coming Italian deli next door may also benefit by attracting the sweating masses post-workout depending on their offerings. People can’t eat virtually. A mix of restaurants at varying price ranges with open doors, open windows and outside seating, weather permitting, seems to be a huge contributor to other successful downtown turnarounds.

Successful downtowns look like the backdrop one would want in a picture. Clearly all our unremarkable storefronts and parking lots do not lend themselves to being picturesque. While we have seating and green space in our downtown we also have buildings that are eye sores and storefronts that have long been vacant. For all the talk Glenview has hosted about a downtown plan, when push comes to shove, there never seems to be any master planning involved. A true plan would be based on activities the village wants to bring downtown, not just more big buildings.

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