There’s a new McMansion up at 1806 N. Wood. A hulking pile of concrete-colored blocks towering over neighboring homes to the south and north, it was built after 32nd Ward alderman Ted Matlak ushered a zoning change through the City Council allowing the developer, Prime Property, to construct a wider, taller home than the lot’s previous zoning permitted.
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Most of his zoning changes, like the one at 1806 N. Wood, fall into the category of what planners and preservationists call spot zoning. “Spot zoning is when you cherry-pick a single lot in a consistently zoned area and say, ‘I’m going to wave my magic wand and change the zoning of this one lot,’” says Jonathan Fine, spokesman for Preservation Chicago, an architectural watchdog group. “You have one lot zoned one way in the midst of a whole block zoned as something else. Inevitably that means you wind up with a building that’s completely out of scale with the buildings all around it.”
Fine says that while individual spot-zoning changes may seem relatively minor, they have a cumulative effect as teardowns and buildups spread from one block to the next. Ultimately, he argues, this perverts the purpose of zoning: “The zoning ordinance is created to make sure that buildings be in character with the density and use and scale of neighboring buildings,” he says. “Why have zoning at all if you’re going to break it up with spot zoning?”
Matlak’s opponents Waguespack and Zaryczny say they’re outraged by the overall pattern of development in the ward. They charge that Matlak doesn’t hold enough public hearings, frequently approving zoning changes without input from the locals, as was the case with the Artful Dodger. They each vow to conduct regular public meetings in which zoning requests come before a local zoning committee, whose decision will be binding.
It’s a fair question, and one the voters will eventually answer with their ballots. Will Matlak win? In 2003 he was able to use his overwhelming advantages in money and manpower to roll over challenger Jay Stone, who raised many of the same objections about developers, contributions, and spot zoning the alderman’s current opponents have.
