In the zone – Chicago Reader

It’s 6 PM on the Monday before Thanksgiving and Nick Zettel is standing at his desk. He sports blue glasses and a fading denim jacket with four Chicago star pins as he welcomes the residents tuning into the monthly, virtual zoning meeting. The chief of staff to Alderperson Daniel La Spata spends the first few minutes of the call describing the First Ward’s zoning process for new attendees. Zettel has overseen the ward’s zoning process since La Spata was first elected in May 2019. He’s an urban planner, a past Chicago United for Equity fellow, and a Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance member who teaches zoning at DePaul University. 

I first met Zettel when I was an urban planning graduate student at the University of Illinois Chicago. Zettel, an alumnus, came to speak to my class. I got to know him more as a constituent and First Ward resident, and when I went to work as a zoning administrator in the 33rd Ward running a similar, albeit slightly different, community zoning process, he was on a very short list of people to call for questions and advice.

Zoning is a key tool that urban planners have at their disposal to administer how land is used. Different categories govern the kind of use (residential, business, commercial, manufacturing) and intensity of the use. “Density” is a measure of that intensity, signifying the number of units in a building. A single-family home is less dense than a three-flat or a West Loop skyscraper with a few hundred apartments. Together, use and density determine what can be built and what kinds of businesses can operate on a given piece of land. Land is treated as a commodity, meaning that how it’s used, what can be built on it, and what surrounds it impact its price. While the urban planning background that La Spata, Zettel, and a number of First Ward staffers possess is helpful, they would argue that it’s not a particular skill set but, rather, a set of values like a commitment to small-d democracy that is important to ward-level zoning processes. They try to advance policy via zoning decisions, educate constituents about what is and is not in their ability to control, incorporate feedback from residents about how to reach more people, and reflect annually (and over the course of an entire term) about the cases they encountered.

Alders enjoy a great deal of power over land use and development in their wards, often called aldermanic privilege or prerogative. You won’t find it in the city’s zoning code or mentioned on a zoning-change application. The Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards decides whether to advance zoning proposals to the full City Council, which has final approval, but generally an alderperson’s opinion has sway over a proposal’s fate (will it be deferred into parliamentary limbo or emerge from the committee with a “pass” or “do not pass” recommendation?). When longtime Alderperson Walter Burnett, recently installed as the committee’s chair and representing the 27th Ward—which often leads in zoning-change requests citywide—was asked about his leadership approach, he responded, “I want the people to have a voice. I don’t know every nook and cranny of every neighborhood. And when I say the people, I mean the alderman.” 

One of the first big storms of Burnett’s tenure has been a test case for recent reforms aimed at eroding prerogative and moving long-deferred developments containing affordable housing units to the full City Council or even administrative approval. Somewhat ironically, the “inclusionary application” in question is a two-building Sterling Bay project near the infamous Lincoln Yards site that includes up to 124 affordable units. Thanks to Burnett’s maneuvering at the December 11 City Council meeting, which followed a Kafkaesque December 9 committee meeting the project remains alive (and may even advance) in spite of local Alderperson Scott Waguespack’s opposition.

Moving west from Lincoln Yards, La Spata’s First Ward includes parts of Logan Square and West Town. Over the past quarter century, swaths of these community areas have seen residential and commercial tenants displaced by rising rents and new developments, historic preservation efforts, demolitions and deconversions, and efforts to deter those displacement-inducing practices. There are also community members (and neighborhood groups), renters, condo associations, and homeowners who felt both listened to and ignored. What’s undeniable is that parts of Logan Square and West Town have been gentrified, many of its previous inhabitants have been displaced, the cost of land is through the roof, and there’s a dearth of affordable housing.

La Spata defeated incumbent alderperson Proco “Joe” Moreno in February 2019 and was inaugurated that May. “No one comes into office in a vacuum,” La Spata tells me. It’s a Friday morning in early October, and the alderperson, Zettel, and I are seated at a long table in the center of their office. “There is always some kind of a zoning process that existed before you got there, so there needs to be a respect for what was there, even as you build around it,” La Spata says. In the first days of his term, developers inundated the office with zoning change requests. Zettel recalls somewhere between 30 and 50 cases on his desk (more than many wards see in a year). A staffer in another ward office told Zettel the development community was “testing” them—burying them in paper and bad proposals. 

Among First Ward residents, there was a genuine desire to rebuild trust given what Zettel describes as an “everything goes” approach to zoning under Moreno. Some neighborhood groups requested La Spata reconsider several zoning changes Moreno had given a green light to, while another group of residents approached La Spata and demanded the office declare a six-month moratorium on zoning changes altogether. La Spata opted against a moratorium given the volume of cases they saw. Instead, Zettel interviewed zoning staff in several offices including the Second, 32nd, and 35th Wards about “tips of the trade” like identifying “demolition upzones,” a type of speculative zoning proposal where an existing multiunit building is replaced with one that has the same or fewer units leased at higher rents or sold as condominiums. 

Zettel realized the ward couldn’t “push the goals of building more affordable housing with a one-size-fits-all community process.” Instead, he began to advocate internally for a process that was more responsive than rigid. The ward adopted step-by-step procedures that most new zoning-change inquiries follow, such as a required intake form, but La Spata reserves the right to handle proposals differently. For example, the office will always recommend proposals for 100 percent income-limited housing.

Before he was an alderperson, La Spata says he often felt that unless someone belonged to an established community group’s development committee “your opinion didn’t matter” or “you only got a peek behind the curtain at the tail end of the zoning process.” That alienating feeling informed the ward’s “First Look” zoning meetings. He wanted First Ward residents to weigh in early on rough drafts of proposals. “We’re bringing you in so your perspective can inform this. It doesn’t matter whether you live next door, a mile away, or if you’re part of a particular zoning group, your opinion on this matters,” La Spata says. He’s fond of meetings where “the developer puts together an A-B test of a zoning change, not just ‘should it be nothing or should it be this?’”

Ahead of meetings, First Ward staff distribute flyers to the 100 closest buildings to the proposed site. At meetings, applicants present their proposals while Zettel moderates and asks questions of the development team that residents have sent to the ward office ahead of time or that virtual attendees put in the chat. Zettel might explain an obscure zoning term an applicant’s attorney used, clarify that ward offices don’t issue demolition or building permits (the Department of Buildings does), or remind attendees that the office can’t express a preference between rental versus condominium units. Zettel also shares a feedback form with two broad questions: “What do you like about this proposal?” and “What would you change about this proposal?” If feedback responses are low, they’ll distribute flyers again. 

Several weeks after the First Look meetings, Zettel forwards the collected comments to one of 13 community groups for evaluation. Zettel then compiles everything and discusses each case with La Spata, who decides whether to hold additional meetings or make a recommendation.

The process has had room to evolve over time, and the pair credit ward residents for innovations like suggesting the distribution of flyers to the impacted area before meetings, keeping zoning meetings virtual, and simulcasting and archiving meetings via Facebook Live. These changes, La Spata says, aim to make the process more democratic and less exclusionary. A Boston University research study of 97 Massachusetts cities and towns found in-person zoning meetings were dominated by older men opposed to new housing. The First Ward meeting I attended in September had roughly ten people on the call, and the video of that meeting has been viewed more than 700 times. The recording of a November 25 meeting had almost 500 views. 

“There’s a certain privilege in being able to be thoughtful and considerate about how zoning is happening, “ La Spata says. “I firmly recognize there are communities across Chicago that would love to have the level of development interest that the First Ward does. I try to keep that in the back of my mind while also recognizing that development and capital are like water, in a way. You can just let it run completely over a community— eroding it entirely—or you can channel it and guide it in productive ways.”

One of the ways they try to guide it is through policy goals, like encouraging the construction of granny flats and coach houses and expanding areas in the ward where they’re permitted, preserving affordable housing, reducing parking, and encouraging development near transit. Zettel also produces an annual State of the Ward report that shares data, case studies, and zoning trends in the ward and citywide. 

You can build a majority of alderpeople with an interest in “community” input on zoning matters. The First Ward’s approach to zoning is just one of a handful used by alders. The level of accessibility, engagement, and community involvement in the process varies from ward to ward. Almost a decade ago, Alderperson Carlos Ramirez-Rosa’s 35th Ward developed the Community-Driven Zoning and Development (CDZD) process, which has received attention from organizations like Local Progress and Democracy Beyond Elections. It’s also in use in Alderperson Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez’s 33rd Ward (where I worked for a year and a half) and has recently been adopted by Alderperson Julia Ramirez’s 12th Ward. In addition to community input, the CDZD approach gives community organizations a substantial role in the process and offers specific guidelines to which both zoning-change applicants and community zoning meetings must adhere—like placing large, detailed zoning notice signs at the property in multiple languages and providing translations at meetings. 

Alderperson Matt Martin’s 47th Ward, which sees some of the highest rates of development and zoning requests in the city, provides applications to neighborhood groups and chambers of commerce for review and requires applicants to contact occupants of adjacent buildings (not just property owners). Applicants must also meet with the 25-person Zoning Advisory Council, composed of ward renters and homeowners who provide nonbinding feedback. 

Some, like Fourth Ward alderperson Lamont Robinson and 21st Ward alderperson Ronnie Mosley, direct an applicant to schedule a meeting with the alder and bring relevant materials required by the city’s zoning-change application form. Far-northwest-side alderperson Jim Gardiner and west-side alderperson Christopher Taliaferro use their websites’ “development” pages to highlight completed developments, not their process for prospective ones. Others, both those with ward websites and those whose web presence consists mostly of social media and newsletters, provide little direction or instruction, making it difficult to discern how potential zoning changes are handled. (If you want to learn more about your alder’s zoning process, your ward office might be the best place to start.)

The barriers to building more housing—particularly affordable housing—in the First Ward, Zettel says, are tied to real estate and finance. Even before construction costs and interest rates skyrocketed over the past few years, the city’s inclusive zoning ordinance and existing federal affordable housing programs weren’t meeting Chicago’s affordable housing needs. Zettel points to a recently approved zoning change at 1342 W. Ohio as an example of what a ward office can do to promote affordability in this environment. The proposal first came to the ward as a single-family home, but through community conversations and a new ordinance to reduce parking and increase density near transit, it evolved into a new spin on the vernacular West Town six-flat, which earlier zoning code overhauls had made illegal. It’s not technically income-limited, he says, but it will be relatively affordable. “Do I think those units will be more affordable than a three-flat condo or a single-family home over time? You better believe it.”

That won’t happen in every case though. Developers frequently decline to add additional units  to or remove parking spaces from their projects, Zettel says. In areas where land costs are high, it can be quite lucrative for a developer (and their financers) to build fewer units or even single-family homes by seeking exceptions to the zoning code or using a lot’s existing zoning. Putting “circuit breakers” in the zoning code, Zettel says—like banning single-family homes near transit—could deter that outcome.

While a growing number of progressive aldermanic offices are building and refining participatory zoning processes, Chicago remains 50 frankensteined limbs with conflicting approaches. These conflicts can be complex, messy, surreal, and personal. They play out on our blocks, lead to fights on Next Door, and concern the fate of shuttered institutions where we learned, laughed, loved, lived, and prayed. It can be difficult to accept that speculative market forces control the future of the places we have been shaped by, feel we own, or once did own. If we can’t control the future of these places, or the market that does, we expect that someone—our leaders and our city—must. 

During his early days in the ward office, Zettel says he’d lose sleep over what a ward office could do in the face of frustrating structural forces like speculation and global capitalism. Over time, he accepted that it’s just not possible to make an impact at that scale. “Regardless of whether you like it, that’s what we’re working with. That’s the regime,” he says. He found peace thinking about where an impact can be made. “We can do the things that ward offices are best set up to do: inform and educate our residents, shape what we can, make sure there’s a seat at the table for everyone, try and figure out who are we missing, and bring this forward in the best possible way.”