Industrial Owners, Zoning Reformers on Same Page

The city already has 25 designated industrial corridors, where 2,100 companies have a work force of 128,000, most of them in higher-paying manufacturing jobs, the city council's committee on zoning was told.

Roger Wolf, owner of FHC, a third-generation family-owned business, admits who is "a poster boy" for the manufacturing zoning supported in the zoning code rewrite, the city's first since 1957. The firm has been forced to move first from the Clybourn Corridor to Bucktown, and most recently to Jefferson Park.

While the Clybourn Corridor has involved from manufacturing uses to a North Side retail center, the Bucktown property was sold for lofts, Wolf tells the zoning committee. Although his firm owns its building at 4711 N. Lamon Ave., Wolf notes a 300,000-sf warehouse across the street has been sold to a residential developer planning 69 town homes and 20 single-family homes.

"If we have to move again, my only options are a suburban manufacturing complex or a place in the city where I'm assured…this won't happen again," Wolf says.

Other industrial owners and organizations also asked the committee to add more predictability to the city's manufacturing zoning to keep out residential and retail uses, which lead to conflicts. For instance, James Dillon's Ogden Avenue Materials at 931 N. Ogden Ave. in the Elston Corridor now is within 100 feet of 100 new condominiums, whose owners bought despite the plant's receiving 25,000 semi-truck loads last year. "We need to create expanded buffer zones," Dillon suggests.

Reaching out to new residents "has been a struggle" for Marilyn Lapkon, president of General Iron Industries, which recycles more than 1,200 tons of scrap iron in the Clybourn and Elston corridors.

"These locations are very important to us," says Lapkon, whose company spent $12 million recently on state-of-the-art equipment. "Some people thought we were silly to invest that much money in that area, but I was committed."

The Neighborhood Capital Budget Group is among those who believe the city should protect manufacturing areas as vigilantly as it has its lakefront. "It is the industrial TIFs that are most productive, when measured by the city's return on its investment," says research director Helene Berlin, whose group's mission includes monitoring tax increment financing in the city.