Open Your Wallets, Wilmette! New Development at the Old Ford Dealership Needs Your Cash

Open your Wallet, Wilmette—the new development at the Old Ford Dealership needs your cash, and a fair amount of it at that. Not only do the devlopers insist on a huge 65-foot high building, the tallest in town, to protect their profit margins, but no, that is not enough for these NIMBY neighbors. You also will also have to pay them to put in subsidized housing. That will cost the residents of our fair village about half-a-million bucks, easy.

Kudos to Plan Commissioner Robert Spriggs who wisely suggested, “If you’re not really making money on this project, maybe you ought to scotch it.” Developer Mitch Miller said one way we can help him is to tax teardowns to protect the cash in his wallet. Smart guy, if he can get us to buy that one. A gold star to Commissioner Ron Feldman, quoted in the Wilmette Life as saying, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

As the kids would put it, “It sucks.” Indeed it does. Let’s hope Wilmette has the good sense to send these developer-pirates packing. And quickly.

In the meantime, if Wilmette's history is any portent of the future, sign me up for one of those units. The kids aren’t getting any younger, and a cheap place subsidized by my neighbors and close to the train for a budding jr. executive-in-training looks mighty good to me.

Note: Need some background on these neighbors from hell? See the previous posts here, here, here, and here.