Sidewalks? Not in my front yard!

Sidewalks crack suburb tranquility[/size]
Residents throughout the area are concerned that their lifestyles will change if walks are added to their neighborhoods[/b]

By Courtney Flynn
Tribune staff reporter
Published May 9, 2007 (reg. req'd)

In more than 30 years, Hubert Frank has never regretted that his Northbrook neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks.

If residents in one of the dozen homes on his block want to walk their dogs, they head for the street. To get to school, children board a bus in front of their houses. And if postal carriers need to drop off packages, they just might cut across the quarter-acre lawns lined with tulip beds and flowering trees.

Although sidewalks are fine with many communities, adding them to existing neighborhoods can create a firestorm.

In Western Springs, people have complained about the cost. In Mokena, residents in an older part of town opposed sidewalks because they would ruin the rural feel. And in Northbrook, more than 170 homeowners have signed petitions against having sidewalks poured on their blocks after the town budgeted $6 million to add them in targeted areas across the village.

Some say sidewalks could disturb trees and landscaping, and others fearwho might come sauntering through their neighborhoods.

Sidewalks, it seems, represent some of the things people move to more rural-feeling subdivisions to escape: Foot traffic. Noise. Concrete. Taxes.

"We came here for the green grass, we came here for the suburban environment and for the schools," Frank said. "I think we have a beautiful street, and sidewalks would take away that beauty."

The Northbrook Safety Commission is scheduled to hear residents' concerns at a meeting Wednesday. The commission will make recommendations to the Village Board, which on June 18 could consider their petitions against sidewalks on their blocks.

In many communities, sidewalks are enmeshed in everyday life, and people like them.

In Glenview, residents are so eager to see improvements to the community's system of sidewalks that they packed village-sponsored tours to look at existing sidewalks and help develop ways to become more pedestrian-friendly.

But when officials in Mokena considered adding sidewalks in an older part of town several years ago, residents living along streets with ditches and no curbs objected, said Village Administrator John Downs.

"Most people said, look, we like the rural feel, we've been here for many years, and they weren't in favor of changing the nature of their neighborhood," Downs said.

In Western Springs earlier this year, money was an issue. A group of residents who originally wanted sidewalks installed for safety reasons along part of Grand Avenue ended up petitioning against them after they found out the cost, said Erik Beck, the village's municipal services coordinator. The project died, he said.

The village would have required residents to pay for 70 percent of the installation, roughly $60 a month for five years, Beck said.

"It was like they were hungry and then saw the prices on the menu and backed out," Beck said.

In Northbrook, the residents protesting sidewalks said they could see the benefit of them in some parts of the village -- just not in their front yards.

"The thing that seems to bother most people in my area is that it's unnecessary and unwanted," said Stuart Schwartz, 58, who has lived in his Jeffrey Court home for more than 10 years. "To go digging up all this landscaping for no reason is just kind of silly."

But village officials said the sidewalks are needed for safety and so Northbrook can become more connected.

"You should have sidewalks everywhere in the village," said Village President Eugene Marks. "Sidewalks are a major issue. ... Now that we're finally doing it, people are saying no."

Generally, sidewalks are common in new subdivisions, said John Norquist, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a Chicago-based non-profit group that promotes walkable development. But they still are often left out of golf-course communities or developments with expansive lawns that strive for an "estate" feel, he said. And in some locations, they just might not be necessary at all.

"You obviously need a sidewalk on Michigan Avenue, you need one in Oak Park and in downtown Naperville," Norquist said. "But when you get out to places like McHenry County, it's remote and people are probably going to be driving just about everywhere."

Since the early 1990s, Northbrook has been building sidewalks in areas where there were none, first along major roads and later along residential streets within a half-mile of a school, said Chris Tomich, assistant village engineer. But the program has been dependent on the village's budget, he said.

In August, Northbrook officials earmarked about $6 million to help build sidewalks over three years, enabling the village to work more quickly through its to-do list, Tomich said.

As part of the village's code, people building homes are required to pay the full cost of a sidewalk in front of their house if they're on a main road or within a half-mile of a school, Tomich said. In neighborhoods that never had sidewalks, like many on the to-do list, residents would be asked to pay half the cost, roughly $2,000 for a 130-foot stretch, he said.

Many who signed the petitions said it was not the cost that concerned them, but rather that sidewalks are unnecessary and could harm trees and landscaping. Some of them live on cul-de-sacs or short streets without much traffic. In addition, they said, children take buses to school.

Frank, 68, who organized a petition for Whitehall Drive, said sidewalks could also pose a safety risk by welcoming strangers into the neighborhood.

"There's strange things happening in the world today, so why would we want to open up that possibility?" he said. "We are connected, we all know each other. The concern is, who knows what you'd be encouraging to come through."

Trustee A.C. Buehler said the village would try to avoid large trees if sidewalks were installed and cautioned that plantings close to the curb are likely in the village-owned right of way.

Tomich said the village would relocate shrubs, bushes or flower beds if they were in the way of a new sidewalk. Retaining walls would be restored, and sprinkler systems fixed.

"We're generally very, very accommodating to residents," he said.