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Influx of new large homes has eroded Winnetka's traditional look, some
residents say
Some suggest voluntary design guidelines
Inadvertent window peeping can be a hazard of living next to a "McMansion," say
Winnetka residents who recently listed it as a major gripe about new homes in their North
Shore community.
"I can see right into my neighbors' bedroom, and they
don't seem to care," said a resident who lives next to a super-sized new
house.
While conceding that they sound like the town's "good taste
police," the residents gathered at Village Hall to develop a set of voluntary
home-design guidelines for new home builders.
Among their dislikes: Fake
Palladian windows, bulging turrets and oversize stone balusters. Such elements
clash with the character of Winnetka's traditional homes, especially the
beloved, but vanishing, century-old Victorians, sprawling ranches, stately
Georgians and palatial Tudors, the residents said.
The guidelines are a novel approach that neighboring Glencoe and a handful of other suburban towns have taken recently to attempt to
influence what goes up in their back yards without violating anyone's property
rights.Whether it works is debatable.
"I don't think the process has
prevented the mega-mansion from being built next door to the little ranch house,
but if people want to participate, it may result in more compatibility with the
existing neighborhood," Glencoe Village Manager Paul Harlow said.
That's
a big 'if,' said Peter Wall, a North Shore Realtor who runs a Web site called www.teardowns.com, which specializes in
matching potential tear-down properties to developers. As of this month, he had
1,380 Winnetka homes on his list of replaceable homes.
"I'm not even sure
what the voluntary guidelines are," he said. "We look at what we can build on
the property and what we could sell it for, and that dictates what happens to
it."
Under pressure from its residents to have some say-so over what goes
up in their neighborhoods, Winnetka adopted new zoning regulations a few years
ago to put a lid on the sky's-the-limit approach to home building. It didn't do
the trick.
"Instead of tall bad houses, we got short bad houses," said
resident Chris Rintz, who is leading the town's latest effort to develop a
brochure for newcomers that helps explain what Winnetkans like and dislike about
new homes.
There are plenty of examples around town. Since 2000, about 10
percent of Winnetka's approximately 4,000 homes have been razed to make way for
new homes, village officials say.
Developers regularly pay $700,000 for
homes on 175- to 200-by-50-foot lots only to tear them down to make way for much
larger homes, village officials say.
"With property values as high as
they are here, people tend to build every bit as much house as code allows
them," said Brian Norkus, the village's assistant director of Community
Development.
Even the palatial mansions on the Lake Michigan shoreline,
where lots start at a half acre, aren't immune from the
bulldozer.
Perhaps no single tear-down better exemplifies what Winnetka
is losing than the planned demolition of a Walnut Street home built in 1910
built for John L. Hamilton, a partner of famed Prairie School architect Dwight
Perkins.
In addition to the voluntary design review measures, residents
are pushing for creation of a preservation ordinance that could slow the
tear-down trend. The village currently has no such ordinance to protect historic
homes, officials said.
"It's hard to see them go," Rintz
said.
Harder still, some say, is what replaces them: behemoths plopped in
the midst of traditional homes where critics say they stand out like sore
thumbs.
Winnetka's "tree street" houses—so nicknamed by residents because
they sit on streets named after common trees like birch, pine, elm and
chestnut—has been particularly hard hit by the tear-down trend.The results, some
residents say, has been a mish-mash of housing designs that clash with the old
favorites.
"When you mix some Tudor with some Georgian with some ranch
house, and then throw in a little French styling, you're probably not going to
end up with something coherent," said resident Nan Greenough, who has plotted
the tear-downs across town. "But my impression is if it's not massively
overbuilt compared to the houses around it, the style is less
important."
No matter what the longtime residents think, Wall said
there's no shortage of clients who are more than willing to fork over the $1.5
million or more the new homes typically fetch.
Besides an address in a
wealthy community that offers excellent schools, the new homes have amenities
that many of Winnetka's traditional homes don't have, unless they've had major
work. Those amenities include bigger bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms wired
for electronic gadgets.
"People have so much stuff today they all want
more space," Wall said.
Resident Vicki Apatoff, who helped form a
citizens group dedicated to preserving what's best about Winnetka, supports the
current efforts but concedes they won't help residents who are unhappy that a
towering new home next door blocks their sunlight, or those who wish their
neighbors would put some curtains on their bedroom windows.
Meanwhile,
she said, the downturn in the housing market has provided Winnetka some welcome
breathing room.
"Winnetka is not the only community with tear-down
fatigue, but we finally have some time to slow down and look at what we're doing
to our village," Apatoff said.
skuczka@tribune.com
