Chicagoist: Ruling Endangers City's Landmark Ordinance

Mr Downtown

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:14:44 -0600

The only part of the Landmarks Ordinance that's really threatened is the provision granting automatic approval if the city council doesn't act within a year. That's the only instance in which the authority to designate a landmark is shifted from the city council to the landmarks commission. In Illinois, we give great deference to decisions made by home rule legislative bodies. Had the city council simply downzoned the district in question—reciting a general but meaningless reason—plaintiffs would have found their challenges quickly dismissed. Why should the result be any different when the city council actually has a good reason to protect the integrity of a neighborhood? The appellate court is also surprisingly sloppy in the section of the opinion dealing with vagueness, where it discusses "whether a person of common intelligence may determine" whether his property is affected or not. "Void for vagueness" is a concept usually applied to laws such as vagrancy statutes, where a person can't determine ahead of time whether or not he's breaking the law. In the case of a landmark designation, the property will either have been named a landmark (with plenty of notice and record) or it will not have. Landmarks are not "discovered" after the fact and their owners punished for damaging them; their designation only affects events in the future. Finally, it's interesting to note that even though the appellate court cites the 2008 Napleton case, it doesn't discuss the Napleton case's main holding: that Illinois courts must uphold zoning decisions unless the court finds that it is arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. That's a very heavy burden for a plaintiff to prove. The Napleton case overturned a six-year-old Chicago case with a familiar plaintiff: Hanna v. City of Chicago, 331 Ill.App.3d 295 (1st Dist. 2002).

jimbo

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:40:48 -0600

This really isn't rocket science, there's still an opportunity to appeal. If that fails, common sense dictates that the ordinance will be rewritten.

Kate Gardiner

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:50:25 -0600

Ah, but city law department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle told me that they have no plans to rewrite the ordinance. "The language and intent of the ordinance are clear," Hoyle wrote in an email last week. "They are similar (in some cases, identical) to ordinances used by cities throughout the United States to identify and designate landmarks. We believe we have very strong grounds to appeal so right now, we are planning on filing an appeal rather than amending the ordinance."

hascat

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:31:45 -0600

The historic preservation community is worried? Well as long as they own the properties they want to preserve, they have nothing to worry about.

jimbo

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:29:29 -0600

The key to the case is precedent, it seems. Um no, it seems more likely that you didn't read the opinion that you linked. The key to the case is that the City of Chicago will rewrite the ordinance so that the 7 points aren't clouded with vague terms, and the City Council will properly delegate its authority.