Wealthy western Chicago suburb lures homeowners into preservation

Property owners in a pocket of Chicagoland featuring some of this year’s priciest residential deals could save on taxes if they simply don’t demolish their homes, and get other real estate-related perks.

Village officials for the wealthy enclave Hinsdale created a village-wide Historic Overlay District that will offer new incentives to owners of “historically significant” residential buildings to improve them, rather than sell them to new owners who plan to demolish and rebuild, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The suburb regularly dominates DuPage County’s list of the priciest sales, and in August topped the area’s market again with a $4 million home first built in 1922, one likely eligible for some of the incentives the new district offers. So far, they’ve spared a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home from the wrecking ball.

“We’ve had meetings with architects and builders. We’ve had countless conversations with our commissions,” Village Planner Bethany Salmon told the outlet. “We’re very proud of what we’ve put together. I think it’s something that, if successful, might be a model for other communities. And we’re hoping that it does get people energized and excited about preservation in this village and not just scared of it.”

A majority of the village is eligible for the new district, and Salmon and her team are compiling a list of homes to include in it.

Perks for qualifying homeowners in the district include fee waivers for building permits and shorter waits for building permits and other zoning approvals; property tax rebates from the village for five years with a minimum investment of $50,000 on certain exterior improvements; matching grants from the village for up to half of the cost of an eligible project.

Plus, the village is also subjecting homes that become a part of the district to alternative bulk zoning regulations, meaning properties will have more flexibility to exceed previous caps on floor area ratios, building heights and setbacks if they want to add on to their home.

That means that older homes with historically significant architecture built with much smaller bedrooms than today’s new homes and other specifications from a time long past can, in some cases, get updated and expanded, by gaining exceptions to local rules that would normally prevent homes from growing to a certain size or nearing too close to a property line.

One of the homes the group plans to include in the new historic overlay is the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Bagley House on County Line Road. The home, which isn’t designated as a landmark or in the Robbins Park Historic District, was threatened with demolition earlier this year. The Historic Preservation Commission plans to help the home’s owners apply to be included in the new district.

“People are going to be clamoring to get on this list,” Salmon told the outlet. “We’re hoping it’s going to encourage them to modernize these homes and preserve them at the same time.”

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— Victoria Pruitt