Lake County Gazette

The Libertyville Village Board recently discussed possible changes to its zoning ordinances.

“The way that we can make some change now going forward is to say that we there are specific versions in the our ordinances and in our code that are specific to height restrictions and density,” Donna Johnson, mayor of Libertyville, said in the Nov. 22 board meeting. “And so maybe what we want to do in order not to miss opportunities and to kind of accelerate the process, we can go take a look at those provisions and see what we can do.”

Multiple residents, who also happened to be business owners in the village, attended the board meeting to speak about recent news of a development in the downtown area. The three residents all spoke on the same subject, urging the board to help get the development started in the area and cut through all the red tape that was reportedly stopping it.

The residents were excited about the prospect of the new development, which would include some commercial space along with apartments for community members to live in. But they were also upset to hear that the developer did not think they could go through with the plans due to the amount of zoning laws and restrictions.

The board discussed some of those comments, noting that the developer's plans were still very preliminary and not set in stone. They also talked about reviewing some of their coding and zoning requirements to see if they could rewrite them or clear them up. The board has given the developer some flexibility with the requirements as they create their plans. Even so, the board intends to become more lenient with some of the zoning discussions in the future.