By Bob Seidenberg
The Glenview franchisee bidding to bring Popeyes to the corner of Dempster Street and Dodge Avenue submitted a new application — returning to a fast food request — assuring the issue will face a public hearing.
Karim Poonja, a resident of Glenview, had initially proposed operating Popeyes as a Type 2 — a quick-serve or fast food restaurant under the city’s zoning code.
He then planned to resubmit the application as a Type 1 — which applies to sit-down restaurants after running into strong neighborhood criticism.
The Heartwood Center, a health and wellness collective located next door to the space proposed for Popeyes, as well as some local businesses and residents, maintained that city staff failed to follow zoning rules in approving Poonja’s initial application for a fast food restaurant without sending it through a special use process.
New try for franchisee
In his new application, Poonja has requested that the city refer the application through the special use process, requiring approval from the Land Use Commission as well as the City Council.
If the proposal had remained Type 1, the Land Use Commission would have made the final determination, according to Melissa Klotz, the city’s former zoning administrator who is advising Heartwood on the case.
In essence, she said, “two different deciding bodies for the two cases that are for the same business, for the same property.” She couldn’t recall a precedent.
In a phone interview Thursday, Poonja acknowledged, “We did hear some concerns” and “we want to be respectful” of the process.
“Our intention all along was to take a space that was vacant and do something positive with it,” he said, admitting surprise at the negative reaction the proposal has received. “That was always our intention and our goal.”
Opponents wanted LUC review
Opponents of the proposed use argued that the proposal should have gone to the Land Use Commission in the first place because of not meeting standards set forth in the zoning code for allowing purely administrative review.
Those standards include:
• Shall not cause a negative cumulative effect on surrounding properties or the immediate neighborhood;
• Shall not interfere with or diminish the value of property in the area;
• Shall not cause undue traffic, parking congestion or noise.
Also, any administrative review should take into consideration the proposed use’s effect on the community’s surrounding vacancy rate, public health concerns and other nearby uses, under the city’s zoning ordinance.
At a Second Ward community meeting June 17, Poonja estimated the total vacant space at the 1826-30 Dempster St.property ran between 3,500 and 3,600 square feet.
His plan called for taking less than half of that for Popeyes, and leasing out the remaining space to nonfood tenants that “would complement the neighborhood,” he said at that meeting.
Asked Thursday whether he still had tenants in mind for the spaces, he said because of the delay that opportunity had passed and he hadn’t had conversations with anybody else.
‘No special privileges’: Heartwood director says
Early in the process, Heartwood and others in a petition with some 350 signers, had urged that Popeyes’ request for a fast food restaurant on the corner either be denied or brought before the Land Use Commission, opposing approval at the administrative level.
The petition had asserted that the project “is more than a single project — it’s part of a broader trend that is saturating our neighborhoods with corporate fast foods.”
Nancy Floy, Heartwood’s founder and director, announced that the center had made an offer to buy the property at 1826-30 Dempster St. and lease it to Gabi Walker-Aguilar and her partner Byron Glapion of the 4 Suns Juice Bar to open a business at the space, offering healthier food alternatives.
Floy said the issue, now going to Land Use for a hearing, was what Heartwood sought months ago — “to follow the law and not give Popeyes special privileges,” she said.
Heartwood will certainly oppose the Type 2 request, said Klotz, “because it very clearly does not meet the standards for approval for a Type 2 restaurant.
“And if a special use for a Type 2 is approved at that location, that is a signal to the entire city of Evanston that fast food restaurants can and will be approved in every single neighborhood — absolutely everywhere,” she maintained.