BELLEVILLE -- City leaders' rezoning efforts and changes to minimum lot sizes have left some property owners feeling they don't have a say in how they use their lots.
Rick Brown, a Belleville resident, landlord and business owner, has complained about the changes to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. He thinks city leaders are taking people's property and trying to push African-American people out of town. City leaders have denied any discrimination or other wrongdoing. HUD and the attorney general's office are investigating, as is routine when they receive complaints.
In Brown's case, he's upset because he needs a variance in order to lease several apartments because of new zoning laws.
Brown had considered in 2001 selling a property that contains three apartments and his business, Mobile Home Supply, at 521 S. Illinois St. He kept the apartments vacant while he decided whether to sell. Brown didn't know multifamily residences had been removed as a permitted use in that area, and because his apartments sat empty for a year, they were no longer allowed to be used automatically as apartments. He would need a variance to lease them.
He says he's lost thousands of dollars in potential rent, but he doesn't want to pay the fee -- $100 per application, plus $10 per abutting property owner so the city can provide notice -- to apply for a variance to use the apartments. He thinks the council would use that opportunity to require him to make improvements to the property that he deems unnecessary.
"It's more the principle than the dollar amount," Brown said. "Why do I have to get a variance to do something I've been able to do for 25 years? ... Zoning is a promise on a piece of property."
City leaders say people don't need variances for their nonconforming properties as long as they don't stay vacant for too long. And even then, the process is fair, city leaders say, because a person can obtain a variance.
Brown disagrees.
"They're using a zoning ordinance like eminent domain," he said. "They're taking property with an ordinance. ... You can't use it. It's a taking."
Amy Meister, a 53-year-old St. Louis resident who grew up in Belleville, in 1997 unsuccessfully opposed the rezoning of her parents' Belleville property at 521 E. A St.
When she was a child, her family lived in one part of the 1962 duplex and leased the other. When her parents grew older, they used it as a single-family home.
Meister worried that when the time came to sell her parents' home, rezoning to single-family use would hurt the resale value because the building was constructed as a two-family home. Meister said her family later was lucky to find a buyer despite the rezoning, but she thinks there might have been more buyers interested and that it might have sold for more if it weren't for the zoning.
She said she sees the benefit of single-family homes, but thinks that in turning neighborhoods into mostly single-family residences, the city might be pricing out renters or lower-income residents that who would make perfectly good neighbors. And she thinks her father should have been allowed to sell his property as he bought it -- a two-family home.
"That little apartment was an income for them," Meister said. "It was part of the American dream."
At least two Belleville businesses sit vacant because the owners were rejected for zoning variances. The businesses were rezoned as residential and sat vacant for too long to automatically continue as businesses.
Michael Lieb and Angela Prosser were rejected twice in their bid last year to turn the abandoned tavern at 400 Mascoutah Ave. into a cafe. Prosser and Lieb needed permission from the city because the old tavern had sat empty for more than a year. Some neighbors, recalling problems with the tavern and other businesses, adamantly opposed the business and city leaders voted it down.
Nasser Hamed, who tried to open a convenience store at the abandoned store at 530 N. Douglas Ave., faced a similar plight. He needed a variance to open the business because, though the building housed a convenience store nearly a decade ago, it has since been rezoned for residential use. Some neighbors opposed the store, citing problems with the previous convenience store and a concern that Hamed would sell liquor. The City Council denied him the variance in June.
Another business owner, Albert B. Crawford Jr., sued the city in 2002 for taking his property by rezoning as residential his three Hecker Street businesses: Gerold Moving and Warehousing Co., Belleville Recycling Inc. and Johnny Ryan Co.
Crawford and Eckert wouldn't comment on the case because it's pending.
Phil Kammann drove by a fire-damaged, boarded-up, four-family 1890s apartment building at 418 E. B St. for years thinking someone should do something with the historic building. When he saw signs saying the city planned to raze it, he decided in 1999 to buy and rehabilitate it.
"I loved historic buildings," he said. "I figured they have so much character."
He "worked on it like crazy," for at least a year, he said, trying maintain some of its historic features, then found out it had lost its multifamily zoning because it had been vacant for several years in an area that had been rezoned for single-family residential land use. When he took it to city leaders at least three times for variance approval, residents said they didn't want apartments in their neighborhood, and city leaders shot his plan down.
He sold the property to someone who planned to use it as a single-family home, but he lost the sweat equity he had put into the place.
He thinks his case shows an "elitist" mentality in some of the city's neighborhoods, especially downtown. He thinks that instead of going after rental property, residents and city leaders should promote good property maintenance.
"They really deflated my desire to fix up property," he said.
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