Wrought iron fence legislation creates controversy

By: Kim Beachum

Editor: Gazette

October 3, 2003

If he had the money, Andrew Heinrich would like to overhaul his ailing West Loop die casting plant and rehire some of the 13 workers he has lost over the last decade - but he doesn’t have the money.

Heinrich’s financial state, and how he would choose to invest in his business if he had the capital, doesn’t seem to matter to City zoning officials, though. In fact, due to a newly enforced landscaping ordinance, the City is imposing a mandatory expense for something Heinrich doesn’t even want: more than $10,000 worth or wrought iron fencing to prettify his parking lot.

“Right now, the economy is in the toilet,” said Heinrich, who opened Henry Die Casting, 1010 W. Lake St., 29 years ago with his father. Tough times, Heinrich noted, have whittled his operation down to 12 workers from the 25 he employed in the early 1990s.

“If I spend money to improve the outside of my building, that means I won’t be able to replace the equipment I need to keep the factory running, and it means I might not be able to pay the people I have,” he said. “Manufacturing jobs are being lost to plants overseas, and my business is barely making it. This ordinance could put us out of business.”

Form over function?

Heinrich’s frustration with the little-known ordinance resonates with many property owners in the Near West Side’s Kinzie Industrial Corridor who are just finding out-by way of court summons for zoning violations-about a citywide landscaping code mandating that all parking lots be trimmed with wrought iron fencing. In addition, property owners must pave their lots, install islands with shrubbery, and move the perimeters back several feet from the sidewalks, all of which mean staggering costs and losing much needed parking spaces.

As part of his sweeping beautification campaign, Mayor Richard M. Daley introduced the ordinance to City Council in 2000, where it passed unanimously. Critics say such aesthetic standards are inappropriate for industrial areas such as the Kinzie Corridor, which remains largely hidden from the general public and undergoes heavy wear and tear by truck traffic.

“Businesses are struggling to make ends meet,” said Randolph/Fulton Market Association (RFMA) executive director Roger Romanelli, who is organizing a citywide coalition of industrial advocacy groups to protest the ordinance. “There’s been an exodus of manufacturing jobs over the past 15 years from Chicago, and it’s important that our businesses compete on a global scale. This ordinance is burdensome for industrial businesses, and unnecessary.”

Paul Arenberg, spokesperson for the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago (ICNC) agrees. “We applaud making the city a more attractive place,” he said, “ and if you have an industrial firm in a heavy traffic area that is both residential and retail, I think that all participants have a responsibility to make their property as attractive as they can. But we think the ordinance is too much of a burden for our industrial businesses in the Kinzie corridor, which doesn’t have any of that kind of traffic.”

Nicole McGreevy, assistant to the owner of the 30-employee Anchor Mortgage Company on Lake Street, said she doesn’t understand why her company is being forced to beautify her property on an industrial street that seems to be a low priority for the City. “We can’t get the homeless people off of our street,” she said. “It took us years-and help from the West Central Association-to get the vaulted sidewalks people were constantly tripping on, fixed. We can’t get garbage cans on the street. I can’t get the standing water from outside of my office. But the City wants us to spend $20,000 to make our parking lot look pretty. So we either have to put in wrought iron fencing and let an employee go, or be cited for code violations.”

Impractical for industry

The initial expense of installing the fencing isn’t the only problem, according to Romanelli. Safety is an issue because the tall chain link fencing with barbed wire that currently protects most lots will be replaced by five-foot-tall wrought iron fencing-hardly a deterrent for the thieves and vandals who have been breaking into area cars and building lately. What’s more, installing taller fences is far more expensive and will require applying for special permits form the City, he explained.

Another issue: semi-trailer trucks maneuvering in and out of parking lots often back into fences, Romanelli noted. That’s not such a problem with chain link fences, which are easily repaired, but replacing damaged wrought iron is expensive, he said.

Information about the ordinance and its enforcement could not be confirmed because no interviews were granted, despite numerous written and telephoned requests for comments from the Mayor’s office, the Zoning Department, and the Department of Planning and Development, which oversees the Zoning Department. So it is open to question how many properties have been cited, what the penalties of non-compliance are, whether properties can ultimately be taken over by the City for non-compliance, and whether the City can offer any assistance to property owners who can’t afford to beautify their lots.

The double standard

Accouding to Romanellil, local businesses and the RFMA have met with zoning officials about relaxing the codes for industrial properties and allowing more time for compliance since they just learned about the ordinance. He said zoning officials told community members at a meeting in September that the City will not stop citing property owners for lack of compliance, because the ordinance was announced when it was passed, and has been “on the books” for three years, giving property owners ample time to modify their lots. In Romanelli’s opinion, though, the City has not adequately publicized the ordinance, and he believes the enforcement in this area is serving as a “test case” to see how much opposition the mandate stirs. Currently, officials are citing violations on properties in the central downtown area, bordered to the west by Ashland Avenue, on the north by North Avenue, and on the south by Cermak Road, he said.

“[RFMA] is a delegate agency for the City and we didn’t even know that this ordinance existed or that [zoning officials] were going to start stringently enforcing this code,” Romanelli said. “It would have been a better route for them to come out and have dialogue with property owners about this issue before ordering court citations for our businesses.”

He asserted that the City of Chicago should not be enforcing the ordinance for private property owners when City, State, and County-owned properties are not compliant. Example: Smith Park in Tri-Taylor West remains trimmed with unsightly chain link fencing. “The onus is first on the City to demonstrate that it’s both necessary and affordable to put wrought iron fencing around every single public property, and then come and talk to the industrial folks.” he said.

A good idea gone bad

Alderman Walter Burnett (27^th Ward), traditionally a friend to his ward’s industrial businesses, admits to voting for the Mayor’s ordinance due to its overwhelming support on the floor.

“In retrospect, seeing how this ordinance has impacted the businesses, and with the economy being bad, I don’t think passing it was such a good idea,” Burnett said. “Right now what I’m trying to do is work with the property owners and the City to try to buy some time for them to comply with the requirements.”

Burnett explained that the ordinance passed in 2000 was inspired by the dramatic effect of landscaping improvements that were made in the area prior to the 1996 Democratic National Convention. “When I circled ‘yes’ for beautification and wrought iron fences, I didn’t think about the industrial areas. I was mostly thinking about beautification of areas like Madison Street, Randolph Street, Washington Street, and places like that, Now I see that these requirements affect everyone.”