HomeMy Public PortalAbout2001-11-15 PC minutes Walmart D -6310 STATE OF ILLINOIS ) ) SS: COUNTY OF W I L L ) BEFORE THE PLAINFIELD PLAN COMMISSION REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS taken at the hearing of the above -entitled cause before Gale L. B arma, CSR No. 84 -003807, RPR, on November 15, 2001, at 7:00 p.m., at 12450 Van Dyke Road, Plainfield, Illinois. PRESENT: MR. JAMES SOBKOVIAK, Chairman; MS. MARILYN GEHRKE, Commissioner; MR. LARRY A. KACHEL, Commissioner; MR. WALTER O. MANNING, Commiss ioner; MR. ROBERT SCHINDERLE, Commissioner; MR. DAN SEGGEBRUCH, Commissioner; MR. STEPHEN AMANN, Village Engineer; MR. DOUGLAS CARROLL, Village Planner; MR. DALE DRAYNA, Planner; MR. MICHAEL S. GARRIGAN, Planner. PRESENT: (Continued) McKEOWN, FITZG ERALD, ZOLLNER, BUCK, HUTCHINSON & RUTTLE, by MR. JAMES B. HARVEY 2455 Glenwood Avenue Joliet, Illinois 60435 (815) 729 -4800 Appeared on behalf of the Village; DOMMERMUTH, BRESTAL, COBINE & WEST, LTD., By MR. JOHN F. PHILIPCHUCK 123 Water St reet Naperville, Illinois 60566 (630) 355 -5800 Appeared on behalf of Wal -Mart; RATHJE, WOODWARD, DYER & BURT, by
MR. MARK W. DANIEL 300 East Roosevelt Suite 300 Wheaton, Illinois 60187 (630) 668 -8500 Appeared on behalf of Pasquinelli's Her itage Meadows Community Association. ALSO PRESENT: MR. CHRIS DANOS, Wal -Mart MR. DONALD O'HARA, Kenig, Lindgren, O'Hara, Aboona, Inc. MR. TRACY T. RICHARD, Manhard Consulting MS. TASHA M. SETTLES, PBA Architects MR. JACK WEBER, Pulte Home Cor poration - - - CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Thursday, November 15, 2001, special meeting of the Plainfield Planning Commission in session. All rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. (Pledge of Allegiance recited.) CHAIRMA N SOBKOVIAK: Thank you. Mr. Carroll, would you call the roll, please. MR. CARROLL: Kachel. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Here. MR. CARROLL: Seggebruch. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Here. MR. CARROLL: Gehrke. COMMISSIONER GEHRKE: Here. MR. CARROLL: Manning. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Here. MR. CARROLL: Schinderle. COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: Here. MR. CARROLL: Anderson. (No response.) MR. CARROLL: Sobkoviak. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Here. Thank you. Commissioners, from your packets, you have copies of the minutes of our previous meeting, that of October 23rd. Are there any additions or corrections to those minutes? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Hearing none, the minutes will be accepted as presented.
This meeting will follow the protocol that we followed at the very first meeting that we had here at Heritage Grove. The petitioners and the attorneys representing Wal -Mart will present witnesses and spea kers. And the objectors' attorneys will be allowed then to cross -examine these witnesses. Towards the end of the meeting, we will have time set aside for public comment. We have already established that we're probably not going to finish tonight. We have set November 27th and November 28th as additional meeting nights to handle this public hearing. So mark your calendars, November 27th, November 28th, 7:00 o'clock in this location. I might forget to do this later so I'm going to ask ever yone in the audience who thinks they might come up and speak or make a comment tonight to rise and allow me to swear you in. Even if you think there's a remote possibility of you coming up here tonight, please stand up. Raise your right hands. (Witnesses and/or audience members sworn.) CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Thank you. Those witnesses that have been previously sworn in, I need to remind you that you are still under oath. With that, Staff, do you have any comments? (No re sponse.) CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Then I will turn the microphone over to Mr. Philipchuck who represents the petitioner. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Just checking to see if the mike will reach all the way over here. Can the commission members see the bo ard this far away. Would you like on me to pull it closer, twist it in any way. I know not everyone in the audience can see it. If it's over too far I can move it up. Thank you. My name is John Philipchuck. I am the attorney representing Wal -Mar t. On behalf of the petitioners and applicants for the rezoning for this property located at the northeast corner -- excuse me -- northwest corner of 127th Street and Route 59 in Plainfield, we are requesting rezoning from R1 to B3 with special use and a plan unit development. And the proposal is to construct the Wal -Mart store and ancillary uses together with a gasoline dispensing facility. You heard last time from our civil engineer, Mr. Tracy Richard, with regard to various issues on the site plan and as to the site engineering. This evening I'd like to present Mr. Chris Danos. You heard Mr. Danos at the concept meeting, but he'll be giving testimony this evening. He is the Wal -Mart real estate manager. And upon conclusion of his testimony, I would like to present at that time our architect who has been involved in the design of this Wal -Mart facility, Tasha Settles. At this time, I'd like to reintroduce Mr. Chris Danos. MR. DANOS: As John said, my name is Chris Danos. I'm the real estate manager with Wal -Mart. I've been with Wal -Mart for almost 15 years. My responsibilities would include the new store development for right now in Indiana, Michigan, and the Chicago markets, that geographic area there.
I'm going to run through the presentation. And I apologize; it's going to be kind of repetitive of what we did two weeks ago. For the benefit of this meeting and the public, I'll run through that again and then obviously I'll be happy to elaborate and go i nto much more detail if you do so choose. The first thing I'd like to do is at least highlight the proposed site plan and what we're proposing and kind of what I'm showing on there as far as the construction and what the building looks like and the o perations. What we're showing is an approximate 22, 23 -acre parcel. The green space you see on front is actually owned by others. Another development group owns that and will be developing it in conjunction with us. And I believe today, the intend ed use would be on outlot -type uses, whether it be financial institutions, restaurants, fast food, sit down. At this point, I think that's undetermined. But we are working with them to develop in conjunction with the Wal -Mart site, and I can expand on that a little bit later on. We're showing approximately a 149,000 square -foot Wal -Mart store. The appendages that you see on the south side would be the garden center area in the front, what we call a TLE, which is a Tire Lube Express, which woul d encompass service items, basically supporting the items that we sell in the store which would be oil changes, air filter changes, batteries, tires, very limited automobile items, basically to support again the products that they sell in the automotive se ction. They would do that work in a fully enclosed area which is what we call a drive -in pull -through. You pull your car in, they do the work inside, and you drive out the back side. None of it is actually exposed to the outside area. The bac k appendage that you see there is a single truck dock to service what we call the general merchandise side of the store for a typical Wal -Mart store. What you're seeing in kind of the yellow area is a proposed future expansion area. This allows us f or the feature basically to expand the store to what we believe would be the largest -- actually the largest that we could put on this site, given the parking restraints. It has the capability to expand out to right about 209,000 square feet. What we're showing is the expansion to be what we call a 192 Super Center. And that would add the food business on. It would add another entrance in this vicinity (indicating), in a vestibule to the one originally built. It shows an additional truck do ck that would handle the food deliveries. That way the two different types of delivery items come in actually on different dock doors. They're handled completely different. Food, frozen food, produce, that type would come in this door (indicating). You r hard line goods, soft line, things like that would come in the original dock area. The blue area is obviously the detention area. It can fully drain the site as well as the frontage site. We have again worked with the developer of the front and a greed to take and construct a joint detention area and handle all the water flow. We're showing a full -access intersection at the north side of 127th, a right -in and right -out about halfway down in the development, and a full -access intersection lini ng up with the Target development on 127th, as far as access points. The green space that you're seeing virtually surrounding the site is a berm area. And that berm ranges in -- actually in widths from -- I believe it's anywhere in the 40 - to 80 -f oot range in the widths and it ranges anywhere from a four -foot height. I think the
highest it gets is about 12 - to 13 -foot high with a proposed -- some type of a landscaping -type fence at the top of that. And that's what you're seeing virtually constru cted around the perimeter of the site on the north and west boundary areas. A little bit of what I talked about last week, backing up just a little bit is how did we get here, how did we get to the corner of 127th and Route 59. Part of that is -- m ost all of that is my responsibility. I take a look at the market, I take a look at the existing Wal -Mart stores. I get a perceived trade area. In this case, you can virtually take a ring around this area of about four miles and that becomes a spac ing area between our Naperville Wal -Mart, our Joliet store; and it shows an opportunity here with virtually a four -mile radius. It's a little bit lighter on the north side. It extends a little farther on the south side because Joliet is a little further away. But virtually, the site puts us right in the middle of the trade area we like to serve. Part of the way we identify that is we pulled the register sales from Joliet, from Plano, from Naperville, from the surrounding stores, and immediately you can track credit card and check purchases. You can't track cash very well. But the other two you can track. All of a sudden, when you plot that on a map for those stores, Plainfield lights up like a neon light. And that's when we come here and do some of the site investigations and how we've landed on 127th. There is a considerable amount of money that we can already identify that goes to the surrounding stores which would be Joliet, Naperville, Plano, in those markets. It's in the millions of dollars a year at all three of the locations that actually go from Plano to any one of those locations to shop. That really helps us identify where we think we need to put another store. On top of that, Route 59 being the traffic artery, the nor th route, the traffic counts that apparently are there and are rapidly growing, as this community is very rapidly growing, leads us right back to how we chosen this site. I talked a little bit about the outlot developments there. There had been some questions on that. Again, we've reached some agreements with the developer to jointly develop those, provide some shared detention areas, provide some shared access drives. We give access out of our parking lot so you would access the outlots so you wou ldn't have all these cuts coming in off Route 59, not that they would approve all those anyway, but it actually helps make a cleaner development when you take access through the parking lot. We've also agreed to some size restrictions, some height re strictions that would help the visibility of the store and actually help the whole development work together where some -- where he's kind of agreed not to put a four -story hotel in front of the store to block it. He's agreed to certain sizes that would be compatible with the Wal -Mart store. This store, approximately the 150,000 square -foot store, would start off employing somewhere in the 250, 275 range. The split on that would be -- it's typically 40 percent full time, 60 percent part time. T hat tends to run up sometimes higher than that. Sometimes it's a 50/50 split on those 250 to 275 jobs. When it's expanded out at a future time period, the Super Center actually employs between 350 to 400 depending on the volume. And the split is ve ry similar; somewhere between 60/40 and 50/50 depending on the volume and the time that the store is doing its business.
Some things that we've highlighted in the past several weeks in several of the presentations, things that we've done and after me eting with the neighborhood group, part of how we got to the berming and the landscaping and the fence and the sizes of that came directly from the neighborhood meeting as well as the light poles. We've taken the light poles down from a 37 -foot heigh t down to a 27 -foot height and moved those as far off that northern property line that we feel like we can move without actually leaving dark space along the drive areas there to be cognizant of the neighbors on the north side with the light poles and any light pollution that can possibly happen there by moving those down. Just running through some of the topics that came up last time, the truck delivery system again back there (indicating). Initially, the truck dock would receive in the neighborhood of two to three semi trucks a day including -- and in addition, it would receive the local deliveries. That can be anywhere, I imagine, from three or four a day to five or six depending on the day of the week, whether it's a Monday or a Friday, typicall y the heavier days. The Wal -Mart system is primarily what we call a drop system, where a truck would come out of the distribution center, come to the store, drop a trailer, pick up an empty one and leave. Actually, the store would unload it during a typical receiving schedule of hours. Typically, the store would receive freight and unload trucks probably between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning and usually ending by noon or 1:00 o'clock in the afternoon. That's a typical receiving time period for a Wa l -Mart truck. At the same time, the local deliveries also deliver. Typically, those are on the same route as all the grocery stores on the market. They virtually hit the Jewel, the Dominick's, the Meijer's, the Sam's Clubs, all on the same route. It's the timing of their route, and it is a morning route. What I mean by that is the people like the Frito -Lay, Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser -Busch, Little Debbie, a lot of the panel vans would virtually come up to what we call a ground level door versus the doc k doors with the full semi truck. The main point of that whole -- or part of that presentation is it is virtually handled all through the back of the store. The days of deliveries to the front of the store and panel vans parked in front of grocery stores have pretty much gone away. It's all handled in the back in the rear dock doors. The receiving system is set hourly, scheduled where they have set appointments to be in there. So you don't have four or five trucks backed up waiting. They have th em virtually scheduled out at periodic time periods being half hour to hour intervals depending on what's needed to unload them. We discussed a little bit on some of the concerns of how the trash is handled in this location. It's virtually handled t hrough an interior system where you take a dumpster compactor. It's virtually attached to the outside of the building in the rear and it has an access point which is just basically a hole in a block wall with a door on it. Virtually all the trash is han dled in the inside, goes in through that hole. It has a compactor system. Then when it's filled, a service comes in and actually picks that thing up and delivers it and puts down a new one. It cannot even be accessed from the outside of the store. If you pull around to the back of the building, you cannot even -- you can't throw anything in it. You would have to come in the building to do it and go through that door system, throw it in, and then compact it in there.
It's a very clean operat ing system. People cannot come into the back of the store on the weekend and put in an old couch or something like that that you typically see when you have an open dumpster, people pulling up and disposing of things. We talked a little bit or in de tail about the security. Wal -Mart operates its own loss prevention group, and that can be as extensive as the store needs. Typically, in the different districts that we have, they would maintain a certain amount of loss prevention people that would be wh at we call in -store loss prevention for the primary purpose to deter shoplifting, any type of theft. They investigate all thefts, whether it be internal or external. With any retailer, you have almost an equal amount of each. There is sometimes as much internal theft -- that's a possibility -- as well as external from someone coming in and shoplifting. We also have in certain areas put in a parking lot security system where they actually maintain it through an electric vehicle such as a golf cart where they maintain the lot at different hours. Some of them are 24 hours. It's really done on an as -needed basis. In an area such as Plainfield, what I would consider a suburb -type area, we have not had a need for it. We have some more inner cities, more densely populated areas where we have had a need and we do operate those every day. The ones that come to mind that I know we operate are in Forest Park and Bedford Park with full electric cart securities systems in the parking lot to make it a lit tle more secure area. Backing up to the site plan, I didn't mention that in the area right above the detention pond is a proposed leased space area. That is a gas station. Wal -Mart does not operate the gas station. We actually use a company. In t his area, it is Murphy Oil in this area of the country. We operate as a lease space. We provide them the space, the facility. We provide all the utilities to the store, to the site, and then they construct the building. But with us having the owne rship of the land and control of that, we control at least the quality of it, making sure the pricing is competitive in the market and we give our customers a competitive price and they manage it virtually. I think we look at that as we're better at mana ging merchandising than we are gas stations. So we have somebody better at gas stations managing that for us. We have developed a very unique -- what I consider a very unique and attractive elevation for the city of Plainfield. It's gone through se veral changes in preliminary meetings with the township. The architect group that's here can go into more detail on that. It's not your typical facade you would see on another Wal -Mart. And I compare it to the closest one being Naperville. I believe it 's a blue, gray combination with the red striping with the Wal -Mart logo. This is a four -sided Quik Brik -type concrete facade and almost a dark red brick appearance. I think it's a very unique looking building and a very much upgraded facility compa red to some of the other facilities we built in the past. And I think it does fit in very well with the community here. Again, we've brought some samples of that that were requested at the review two weeks ago of some of those materials to highlight in more detail. Without being too repetitive, that's in a nutshell what we are proposing to do here tonight. That's leading up for some of the previous meetings how we have got to where we are today, some of the changes that have taken place based on the discussions with the neighbors as well as the township.
The folks are here tonight that worked with me being the architectural group, the civil engineers, to virtually expand on any details that you might like, as well as me of any operations of Wal -Mart that I think you might have questions on. I make myself available again for any other questions. The professionals are here to help you address those. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Any commissioners have any questions at this time? MR. KACHE L: Just one quick one. In relationship to the other Wal -Marts, properties they have built on, acreage on a Super Store, what is pretty much a norm, Bolingbrook, Naperville, Joliet, how many acres are on those? MR. DANOS: None of those are Super Cen ters. MR. KACHEL: Of the Super Stores you're building today, what is an average required acreage? MR. DANOS: We look for anywhere from 20 to 24 acres depending on how much water retention we need to provide. And the site typically stipulates that, how well it drains. So anywhere in the 20 - to 24 -acre range. MR. KACHEL: And the ones that weren't Super Stores, Naperville, Bolingbrook, Joliet, how many acres were those built on? MR. DANOS: Those will typically fit anywhere from 10 to 14 acres. MR. KACHEL: It looks like more. MR. DANOS: In fact, I think Naperville's on -- the Sam's and the Wal -Mart both are on 21 acres. So it's roughly nine to ten apiece. MR. MANNING: Mr. Danos, did I understand you correctly that Wal -Mart employs their own security forces? MR. DANOS: We do. MR. MANNING: They're Wal -Mart employees? MR. DANOS: They are our employees. MR. MANNING: Are they armed? MR. DANOS: They are not armed. I will expand on that . There have been some stores where we have had a need for more security, and we have hired a certified police person to work there. And he would be actually -- in some cases, he is armed and uniformed and does stand in front of the store. I've seen th at in several locations. But it is not a security force, it is a professional policeman that is actually hired to work after hours for an overtime need. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: You gentlemen have any questions? MR. DANIEL: Yes, please. Good evening. Again, for the record, my name is Mark Daniel, Rathje and Woodward is the name of the law firm, 300 East Roosevelt Road, Suite 300 in Wheaton, Illinois. Mr. Danos, a couple questions for you. I think to follow up on the security issues, in this particular store, do you plan on having any kind of certified or sworn officer who is off duty working for Wal -Mart? MR. DANOS: Initially, we do not have a plan to do that. We would hire our own in -store loss prevention and then upgrade that as a needed basis, on a basis as needed. MR. DANIEL: With respect to other stores in the area, let's take a look at the Bolingbrook store for example, have you provided any less security there than what you've committed to here tonight?
MR. DAN OS: I am not completely familiar with in total what their security, what they're provided over there. I know they would have an in -store loss prevention to some degree, and I'm not familiar exactly with what they have hired. A lot of it is done through the individual store managers and the district managers on an as -needed basis again. It can virtually vary from store to store. They very well may have. If they have had an issue with something, they will hire and spend more money on some more security. MR. DANIEL: At the minimum, would you expect the Bolingbrook store though to comply with the standards that you discussed tonight for the Plainfield store? MR. DANOS: The standards as far as the security, sure. We're prepared to do whatever i s needed again at this location we're in. If we need one person, two people, a parking lot person, we do what's needed. MR. DANIEL: In relationship to your other stores, I believe there were some questions about the acreage of the parcel itself that the store sits on. What about the acreage surrounding the parcel as a sort of buffer between, let's say, the store and the single family residential use. So what I would include in what we're talking about is a buffer in this situation would include mul ti -family condominiums, a park or playground or a school of some sort? MR. DANOS: I am not sure -- what was the question? MR. DANIEL: Taking a look at the surroundings of this particular store, do you see how the subdivision from Heritage Mead ows to the west is platted out for single -family homes? MR. DANOS: I do. MR. DANIEL: And to the north, you're familiar with Heritage Meadows to the north, the single -family homes as well? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DANIEL: Then you see a l arge detention outlot right here (indicating) for storm water management, correct? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DANIEL: Then as you look down to the south of the 127th Street, you see where the proposed Target store is? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DA NIEL: Taking a look to the west of there, you see some vacant land that's not platted, correct? Multi -family condominiums, a park or playground or a school of some sort? MR. DANOS: I am not sure -- what was the question? MR. DANIEL: Taki ng a look at the surroundings of this particular store, do you see how the subdivision from Heritage Meadows to the west is platted out for single -family homes? MR. DANOS: I do. MR. DANIEL: And to the north, you're familiar with Heritage Meadow s to the north, the single -family homes as well? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DANIEL: Then you see a large detention outlot right here (indicating) for storm water management, correct? MR. DANOS: Yes.
MR. DANIEL: Then as you look down to the south of the 127th Street, you see where the proposed Target store is? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DANIEL: Taking a look to the west of there, you see some vacant land that's not platted, correct? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DANIEL: And then furth er west, you see some land that is platted for single -family homes that you know to be Kensington Club, correct? MR. DANOS: I see that on the plan. I don't know that that's -- for sure that it is platted that way, but for sure it does show. MR. DANIEL: What I am talking about in the way of a buffer in relation to the question that I'll again rephrase for you, is the area between the Wal -Mart store and the nearest single -family homes that are going to be impacted by the store in one way or anoth er. Do you understand what I mean by buffer now? MR. DANOS: I do. MR. DANIEL: Now, taking a look at this store, how does it compare in your view with other stores Wal -Mart has platted, for example, the Wal -Mart that you mentioned up north tha t's next to the Sam's Club? MR. DANOS: It virtually is all over the board. I have some where the single -family homes back right up to it. I have some with apartments behind it. Some have green space behind them. Some have office buildings. It vi rtually is all over the board. You can virtually drive just in the Chicago market alone and see an example of all of those on any given day. I'm trying to think of some right offhand. The project we're working in Algonquin has residential -- in fa ct, the site plan looks almost identical with the buffering, landscaping, a berming, very similar to this plan that's being submitted up there with that project. MR. DANIEL: Let me ask you about the Algonquin project while we are on that. Was the Al gonquin project platted on vacant land like this project appears to be initially? MR. DANOS: It was. I believe it was actually platted for K -Mart at one time and K -Mart didn't move forward and we chose to do that. So I believe they took it for plat ting. I can't comment because I wasn't through the platting on that one. We picked it up after it had been done through the K -Mart Corporation. MR. DANIEL: Do you know if the homes near the Algonquin store previously occupied are of the same age an d type that you see up to the north in Heritage Meadows? MR. DANOS: I do not know the age of the structures or anything like that, no, I don't. Nor do I know the similarities of the size or anything like that. MR. DANIEL: Are you familiar with any of the surroundings from a real estate perspective to the Bolingbrook store, whether there is any buffering there, let's say, vacant land, a park, some kind of other less dense use than commercial or higher density residential? MR. DANOS: I am t rying to remember. It has been about a year since I've been to that store. But I believe there's apartments at least adjacent to one side. I do not recall what's behind it. I think that's on the south side that there is an apartment complex. I don't r ecall. It's been a while. I know there is some residential. Whether it's apartments or duplexes, I don't recall.
MR. DANIEL: In that particular Bolingbrook instance, if we were to present evidence that a crime occurs at the Bolingbrook store nearl y every other day, would you have any input as to how, let's say, that situation would transplant itself to the Plainfield store, one crime or another taking place every other day requiring a police call with these single -family homes so close to this sto re and no buffering? MR. DANOS: I'm not familiar again with whether -- the frequency of whatever being committed in Bolingbrook. I don't know that at all. I think that they're very two distinct markets, this being a much more suburb market, n ot that Bolingbrook is not. The area there is an older market definitely than this area being a much newer development market. I don't think there's any -- there's not a similarity in the markets to me. They're very distinctly different. Will the re be a policeman called to the store for something, yeah. There will be something that happens, there will be accidents in the parking lot, there be a shoplifting incident. There will be things that we call the police for. That will happen in every Wal -Mart store in the country. MR. DANIEL: In relationship to this particular parcel again, I asked you about the Algonquin project. You said it was previously platted for K -Mart which is a pretty large use in comparison to what you had platted here be fore, right ? MR. DANOS: I don't think there was anything platted on this site prior. I think it was shown as commercial in the front ten acres and residential in the back prior to us applying for this. That's my understanding. MR. DANIEL: Di d you have any input into any decision making at Wal -Mart related to this parcel at a time when the entire area was platted for 79 or so -- 70 or 79 single -family residential homes with the continuation of Bob White Lane kind of meandering down to an inte rsection with 127th Street? MR. DANOS: I did. As soon as we looked at the site, we worked with the developer on the front piece to work together on the development. We worked with the engineers on a civil plan that would actually put the building what we felt like was far away. And to buffer the building appropriately, I think that even the initial submittals to the City showed buffering and everything initially on it. And we are fully prepared to have to screen that from the neighborhoods. MR. DANIEL: With respect to the market area that you described, you mentioned that you looked at the receipts and used some computer program to identify where the need for a Wal -Mart store was. And you said that Plainfield came out as just a bright red l ight that basically said, you know what, Wal -Mart has got to get to Plainfield, correct; is that accurate? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DANIEL: In this particular situation, what is your market area in size as far as consumer population is concerned? MR. DANOS: I'd have to refer back. I've got some notes. I don't recall the number. But I'm almost thinking in that three - to four -mile radius, it had somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 35,000 people and the housing permits to support extended gr owth even further beyond than that and rapidly beyond that. Q. It's correct, isn't it, that this store, in fact, is intended to serve a market area larger than the population of Plainfield itself?
A. Not necessarily. To me it fills a hole fo r us between Naperville and the Joliet market. Is there some people that will come over from that west side of Bolingbrook. Probably so. Taken the way the east/west roads are set up, yeah, they'll come over. Will they come from Oswego and some of the o uterlying areas, it's very possible. But it's primarily to service Plainfield. But they do come from some of the surrounding markets. MR. DANIEL: Did Wal -Mart look at any location north along Route 59 so it could locate closer to the Naperville mar ket? MR. DANOS: Yeah. We virtually looked at all intersections from 111th, which I believe that is in the Naperville city limits, at least the north side of it is, all the way down to 135th. And we kind of narrowed in on the Route 59 corridor betwe en those two points and we narrowed it down to the intersection. We feel like our business does well when it's either a north/south and an east/west intersection. MR. DANIEL: Can you identify just for the record what the other locations were that Wa l -Mart was looking at. MR. DANOS: We virtually looked at sites at all four of those intersections. MR. DANIEL: Could you just identify them for the record. MR. DANOS: I'm trying to recall exactly. I know it was the northwest corner at 11 1th. I believe it's the northwest and southwest corner at 135th. I don't recall the directional on 119th, but we had done site plans at one of the intersections at 119th. I'm not sure if it was the northeast or northwest. It was northeast on 119th. Virtually, we had done site plan layouts and investigative work on all four -- on a site at all four of those corners. MR. DANIEL: From your view of the site plan work at those other sites, did any of those plans as proposed, as general as they m ay have been, contemplate cutting off two streets within the subdivisions that were intended to carry traffic away from the center of the subdivision? MR. DANOS: I don't recall specifically. We didn't get into that much detail on it. We sized it ju st to see how it would fit on the parcel, and in some cases, the land wasn't available; and that's as far as we -- we can spend a lot more engineering money on it. MR. DANIEL: Is there any similar effect at any -- of those other three or four parce ls that we talked about just now, is there any similar effect to what's going to take place at Pasquinelli Drive and 59 where you're going to have a more difficult time turning out onto Route 59, let's say, if you want to head northbound? MR. DANOS: We did not go into a lot more detail on the site investigations. Either we passed on a landowner or a site not being available. I don't recall the exact relationship on every drive that were around those sites. Not offhand. MR. DANIEL: In your ana lysis and reviewing all those receipts for this parcel now, how did the Meijer store come into play? MR. DANOS: Well, Meijer actually took out one corner. Meijer actually, I believe, at that time had closed on a parcel at 135th; at least to my knowl edge they have. I think Menards has also purchased a site down that way. We were aware of the Target site. Part of that, we want to be right in the middle. We don't want to be too far left, too far right, too far north or south. So we are right i n the middle of the retail corridor and that's what we felt was going to become that -- somewhere in between 119th and 135th would be the middle. That's how we ended up pretty much narrowing it down to this, as well as land opportunities are also not ava ilable at some locations any longer.
MR. DANIEL: And it's true, correct, that Meijer is one of Wal -Mart's chief competitors in the marketplace? MR. DANOS: Sure. Target, Meijer, K -Mart. They're all a very similar discount store, super center o peration. They are all competitive with us. MR. DANIEL: And from your perspective, you testified earlier that this store is intended to draw people from beyond the Village of Plainfield, even though it's going to focus primarily on Plainfield. How is it that the Target store, the Meijer store are going to be impacted by it if they're all trying to serve the same market area? MR. DANOS: A lot of that will be competing. It's a very competitive business. In that instance, I think the people of this community win. It equals lower prices for everybody. MR. DANIEL: And is it true that Wal -Mart generally does undersell it's competition as far as pricing is concerned? MR. DANOS: I don't know that it undersells. MR. DANIEL: Bad word ing, bad way of wording. Go ahead and rephrase it however you want. MR. DANOS: I think we pride ourselves on being the most competitive and offering the best value of service or product at the best price for our customers. I think our customers hav e come to trust that and expect that from us. MR. DANIEL: And you're probably not going to go on record that you don't offer better prices than Meijer. You do offer better prices than a Meijer, at least you feel you do, right? MR. DANOS: I lik e to think we do. Can I go on record with 100,000 items Meijer's has and someone finds one cheaper, it can happen. We like to be the price leader. MR. DANIEL: From your perspective, are you familiar with the retail offered by this particular Wal -Ma rt before the food store, before the expansion out takes place? MR. DANOS: In reference to the selection or what, the what's going to be in there? MR. DANIEL: Sporting goods, what have you. MR. DANOS: It's a very similar layout to all the generalized products as you see in the Naperville store. Actually, some of those departments would be expanded. I talked about some of the automotive stuff that would be in there, the garden centers. It would include full men's clothing, women's clothi ng, children's clothing, toys, sporting goods, crafts. It carries -- it would initially carry what we call a limited dry food selection which are cookies, crackers, candy -type items. I know I'm missing some things. Domestic -type items, pillows, sh eets, cleaning -- household cleaning products, virtually everything that you see at the Naperville store again. It is a larger footprint and we actually expand out some of those departments. You get a bigger and better craft department in this layo ut. It's a bigger and better soft line layout with the clothing selections. It expands out the selections. I don't think there is any actually new departments that come overall with it that you haven't seen at Naperville, to my knowledge. MR. DANIE L: Is it accurate to say at least before the bump out of the food center, there's going to be no alcohol sold at this particular Wal -Mart? MR. DANOS: Again, that goes back to the City permitting process. We do sell typically a case of 12 -pack beer, wines, depending on whatever the City allows for. And
virtually, there, it depends on limits, whether it's all warm, can be cold, different things like that. It really depends on the City permitting process. We do try to sell at least the beer and some of -- along with the wine items. MR. DANIEL: So from your perspective, Wal -Mart is going to sell what alcohol is allowed by the Village of Plainfield, correct? MR. DANOS: We would like to be permitted for whatever is allowed here, yes. M R. DANIEL: What about in the sporting goods section, is there going to be hunting gear? And the follow -up question to that is going to relate to weapons. MR. DANOS: The sporting goods department would be a full line hunting, fishing department. Th e department carries the appropriate ammunition and hunting rifles. No handguns. I think it does carry some of the toy paint ball guns and BB guns and that type of thing, but none of the -- we don't sell handguns. It's basically a hunting department. MR. DANIEL: What about anything like cross bows or any other kind of weapon? MR. DANOS: They do sell bows, arrows, and some of that stuff as hunting -type items. MR. DANIEL: And in your experience with relationship to this site, the purpose for Wal -Mart picking this site is because you want to be in the midst of the competition for this market area, correct? MR. DANOS: Yes. MR. DANIEL: And as real estate manager, you are also familiar with Wal -Mart's efforts to purchase or at lea st control these two outlots, the two green outlots on the east side of the property? MR. DANOS: When we originally looked at the land, obviously, that was already purchased by another developer. We approached that developer to work together with th em to do a joint -- what we call a joint development. Combined efforts, we actually share in the cost. I would pay a per rata share of building that retention pond. We would do all the work. We put in the roadways, and we share in the costs and it act ually lowers our cost for both of us. MR. DANIEL: Following along that theory, if you're taking a look at the boundary from Route 59 to the north side of the parcel west to where you see the single -family homes and then along the south line at 127th Street, what you're trying to do is create some kind of integral development where height restrictions are going to protect Wal -Mart's visibility, for example, correct? MR. DANOS: Sure. MR. DANIEL: And this development here is also going to be playing some kind of symbiotic relationship from one lot to the next as far as traffic flow, as far as parking, as far as density; is that correct ? MR. DANOS: Yeah. At least initially we planned it to have full access to the Wal -Mart parking lot so that it can take access and -- basically so that our customers and their customers can go back and forth. MR. DANIEL: And the reason they're -- why you plan for compensatory or shared storm water in this area to the south end of the Wal -Mart parce l is because there's no storm water detention on the two outlots on the east side of the Wal -Mart store? MR. DANOS: Right. We planned it that way intentionally, again, jointly working with that developer. It makes more sense to do it together. Oth erwise, if you try to subdivide that frontage, every single user would be required to provide their own storm
water detention. You'd have little ponds virtually up and down there depending on how many users they so choose to put there. So it made more se nse to do one joint pond that we can maintain and to save some money on it together. MR. DANIEL: Are there any other controls other than the two that you mentioned which is -- well, height is one that I recall? I am not sure what the other control that you mentioned was that Wal -Mart has over the development of these two parcels. MR. DANOS: I don't recall. I don't have the agreement here. Again, it's a proposed agreement. I don't know if we actually highlighted it. We're actually trying -- or actually purchasing a strip of ground shown from the developer. The back piece here, I think it's 60 -some -odd feet that we're proposing to purchase to help with the buffering in the back to get more room and the buffering in the back. We have a con tract purchase as well to do all this work together with them. And in turn, they have proposed the agreement and I do not recall the exact agreement, nor is it obviously finalized. It's a contract purchaser party to that. MR. DANIEL: Do any of the contracts between Wal -Mart and anybody else include a first right or any kind of option to purchase the two outlots to the east of the Wal -Mart parcel? MR. DANOS: No. Wal -Mart has no -- to my knowledge, we have no right of first refusal on the outl ots. It's again -- it's controlled by another party, and it's developing on their own. MR. DANIEL: In your experience as a real estate manager now, I'm going to ask you to look down towards the south where the Target store is. And I'm going to ask you if you see developments where you've got a large volume of retail or a high density of retail space planned with a buffer surrounding it before you hit single -family residential use? MR. DANOS: Are you asking me if I've seen it before? MR. DANIEL: (Nodding.) MR. DANOS: Sure, yeah. MR. DANIEL: And in communities such as Plainfield where you have a lot of undeveloped land, isn't it more uncommon than not to see this type of development with this kind of a buffer than it is to see this type of development you're proposing for the Wal -Mart store? MR. DANOS: I think you can drive up and down three or four miles in each direction and you'll see a variety of it. You can drive south and see a Jewel with houses in the back. You dr ive to others and see retaining walls built along Route 59 and the different screening and buffering that's done. It's all over the board. I've seen them with green space behind them such as the Target and, again, with houses in the back. You can find e xamples of all of them within a couple miles of the site. MR. DANIEL: Let's take a look at the Jewel and Dominick's. You really don't compete with Jewel and Dominick's because your competition for Jewel and Dominick's is about a fifth of what you're planning to put here, right? MR. DANOS: Again, that's -- it's a future expansion. We're not proposing to build that at this time. We're reserving that and showing a site plan that has the capability to do that in the future. I think your questio n was -- the grocery obviously helps us compete in the grocery arena if we have it in there, yes. MR. DANIEL: You would agree though that Wal -Mart as a whole in this location isn't really similar to your Jewel or Dominick's?
MR. DANOS: In the type of merchandise and site, no. From general merchandise to food is the difference. MR. DANIEL: How about from size? You've got here 149,551 square feet. MR. DANOS: That's correct. If I'm -- I'm going to guess, but I'm guessing Jewel and Dominick's are anywhere from 50 to 75,000 square feet in their buildings. Our building is, like you said, 149. Would be larger in that respect. MR. DANIEL: And your competition -- or if you build this out, if you build this food service area o ut, compete with the Jewel and Dominick's, you're planning for about 60,000 square feet, right, just shy of that? MR. DANOS: It builds out to 209. That's roughly 60,000. You're correct. MR. DANIEL: That would allow for a lot of buffering, rig ht, if you put a food store in there, one of the Wal -Mart food stores? MR. DANOS: I am not sure what you're referring to. MR. DANIEL: Let's say you just went with the food store here. That would allow for more buffering because you don't have the same parking restrictions, you don't have the same storm water restrictions, correct? MR. DANOS: I guess you're referring do we have a test product out there with what we call a neighborhood market. We're referring to -- we're in no way ruling that out as a national program. It's strictly limited to the Wal -Mart stores to be super center stores. At some point in the future, there may be an opportunity somewhere else in the country. But today they're in a test program for us and actually, we a re happy with them. And they may continue to expand with them. We're not proposing that at all for this market. MR. DANIEL: Would it be your responsibility to communicate with surrounding governments regarding the development and operation of this site at this point in the game? MR. DANOS: To communicate with what type of government agencies? MR. DANIEL: The school district, the Village of Plainfield, any fire protection districts that might have overlapping jurisdiction. MR. DANOS: Yeah. As we got through, further into the permitting stages applying for all the building permits, some of that stuff, the IDOT permits, the signal permits, yeah, I supervised that through civil engineers, architecture, all the different professionals t hat help me do that. Yeah, I am responsible for it. MR. DANIEL: Has any government official, fire or public safety official, commented on the impact on the insurance ratings for any of these homes to the north and the west of the Wal -Mart store as a result of the development and enclosure of these streets and the enhanced traffic in the area of these subdivisions? MR. DANOS: Not to my knowledge. MR. DANIEL: Has Wal -Mart communicated with the school districts about bus routes and how kids are going to get to the schools? MR. DANOS: I have not, no. MR. DANIEL: With respect to your loading operations in the docks, you mentioned you have drop -down docks for semi tractor trailers that are dropped off and the cab of the trailer leave s as those are unloaded; is that correct? MR. DANOS: That is primarily how we do it with the Wal -Mart DC. That's not to say that we do take a delivery from somebody else that backs in and waits. Primarily it's
a drop and the trailer leaves. We do handle most of our freight ourselves but not 100 percent of it. MR. DANIEL: Of the trucks that are left behind, how long are they usually left at the dock? MR. DANOS: They're typically left there and picked up the next day and they're left in t he dock space in that drop -down area. MR. DANIEL: And with this particular drop down area, are there going to be refrigeration trucks ? MR. DANOS: There are not. That's just a general merchandise food area. We have no cold food. There is ver y limited cold food. We have milk coolers and a few things like that in Wal -Mart, but there's not any refrigerated food as such. MR. DANIEL: Once the store -- the food store's developed, can I ask you the same question about the refrigeration truck s. MR. DANOS: Those are not handled through a primary drop system. They would dock, they would bring their deliveries, they unload it, and they leave to the next route. It's typically not a full truck system, although it can be, depending on the vo lume of the store. It may service several stores up and down the market, drop five or six pallets at each one, or it can be fully unloaded at one store. It depends on what they need at the time. MR. DANIEL: Does your office or another office within Wal -Mart whether it's a manager's office at the Bolingbrook store or up in the Naperville area keep track of the number of truck deliveries coming in and out during a given week and in addition to that, any parking, traffic, or accident counts that may oc cur at the parking lots? MR. DANOS: We have a delivery log where -- first of all, we have an appointment system where they have to call ahead and get an appointment to be unloaded. They sign in when they get there, the time of arrival, so there's a log of that, yes. As far as a log of incidents in the parking lot, if it's -- if it is something that's reported to the store and it is reported as an incident, there would be a record of that and some type of log, yes. The truck delivery system i s a much more organized system, and there's very good logs on that from day -to -day. MR. DANIEL: Wal -Mart has a number of professionals here. I would assume at some point someone has asked you about comparable traffic patterns or traffic counts from your store. So if you hired a traffic consultant or traffic engineer, they've got some hard numbers from other Wal -Mart stores that are going to be planted here so you can give estimates to the Village. Do you have any of those available? MR. DANOS: I'm going to check with the folks who have traffic studies complete. MR. RICHARD: My name is Tracy Richard from Manhard Consulting. The traffic report study has been complete, submitted to the Village. It was completed last week. MR. DANIEL: Does it include any counts from other Wal -Marts? MR. RICHARD: The traffic study was specific to this site, not involving other Wal -Marts. And Don O'Hara of KLOA is here tonight to offer testimony on behalf of that. MR. DANOS: He'll be able to get very detailed how they do the traffic study and what the exact numbers are based on and, again, the report has upgraded buffer areas virtually spent to make the site neat and tailored towards Plainfield. MR. DANIEL: With respect to the brick a nd the landscaping though, aren't those things that Wal -Mart usually does today in its development from one community to the
next? Let's take Algonquin, for example. You're still going to have a brick facade that's attractive to that community and probab ly not much less attractive than it is intended to be for Plainfield, right? MR. DANOS: It's a different elevation. I don't recall the extent of the brick on it. But it is -- it's different than what you see in Naperville. We took -- they're try ing to put some more elevations into the buildings to make them more attractive in the communities. I know we know that is kind of a hot one and we want to put in what's right for the communities in that respect. But in any of the agreements in some of the other cities, I have trouble commenting on if nothing is finalized or done nor is it here. It's proposed as well as some of these other markets that we have proposals. MR. DANIEL: You mentioned the employment effects on the community. You s aid roughly 40 to 50 percent will be full -time employees. Are they salaried or are they hourly, what kind of benefits do they receive, and where does Wal -Mart anticipate they're going to live given the housing stock in Plainfield ? MR. DANOS: It's a mixture. Typically, the store will have -- I'm trying to guess the amount on salaried folks. It will be anywhere from probably four to six or seven salaried managers depending, again, on the volume of the store and that can change over time. It could open with one amount of managers and in two to three years from now, it can have two or three more. The rest would be hourly positions at all different levels, from a supervisor to a cashier to a night stocker to someone who works the parking lot br inging the carts in and out. Primarily hourly associates in the full time and part time. MR. DANIEL: So just to clarify for the Commission, when you mentioned full -time employees, you're not talking about salaried necessarily, there is a much smalle r number of salaried employees than there are full -time employees; most of the full -time employees are going to work 40 -hour or longer weeks, right? MR. DANOS: That's correct. Anywhere from four to seven management, and then the rest would be hourly associates at the same breakdown of full time and part time. MR. DANIEL: What does the manager -- let's say you start out with one manager. What's that manager's going to be paid at this particular store, your best estimate? MR. DANOS: It's a combination -- I can't comment on what their salaries are. It's based on a base salary and a bonus system that we have where they have some responsibility and accountability for their own store and they're awarded for it according on their store. It's a combination of several things. MR. DANIEL: Would you expect the number of 40 hours a week or salaried people to buy homes or have to look for apartment rentals? MR. DANOS: I think it will be all over the board. I think there's a lot of them that live here now. I know they've got a lot of requests with our Naperville store manager to actually transfer here if this goes to open that live in Plainfield now. For me to comment on where they live or where they will live, I don't know. MR. D ANIEL: Let me take a quick look at the notes here real quick. That's all I have. Thank you. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: If I might, Mr. Chairman, I just had a couple of questions for Mr. Danos.
I know that the site plan that we have here this ev ening does not show the balance of the Kensington Club development beyond what is shown here. But, Mr. Danos, are you familiar with the fact that there is an additional area of commercial south of the Target store of wherein there is, in fact, residentia l single -family homes in the upper 200,000s that will back up to it and there's only about a four -foot high berm there; have you seen any of those plans? MR. DANOS: I have not personally seen the plans. I know there have been a lot of topics and dis cussions on the commercial that was going to take place there. But I am not privy to exactly what has been approved through the City and the planners on some of those other projects. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: I assume you don't know that this open space area is part of a park system that Pulte was required to put in as part of their Kensington Club residential package? MR. DANOS: I am not. I was not aware of that, no. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: I have no further questions. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: I earli er had a conversation with the petitioners' attorneys and the attorneys representing the citizens who are objecting. And we agreed that we would set aside time this evening for the general public to make comments. We ran a little longer than we expected to tonight, but I have to remind everyone that at 9:00 o'clock I have to shut it off because at 9:30 we've got to be out of here. So at this time, I'm going to open up the meeting for public comment. You're welcome to form a line behind the podium. When you step up to the podium, please start out with your name and address and spell it for our court reporter. MS. KORECKI: Barbara Korecki -- CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Please be brief. As you can see, the line is already started. A lot of pe ople want to speak tonight. And remember, at 9:00 o'clock I will come up and I will have to adjourn the meeting. Now, we are scheduled for another meeting on the 27th and the 28th in this building at 7:00 o'clock. At both of those meetings, we an ticipate additional time for people to make comments because we probably won't get through everybody tonight. MS. KORECKI: My name is Barbara Korecki. I live at 101 Shawn Drive in Morris, Illinois. I live behind the old Wal -Mart in Morris. CH AIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Speak into the microphone. MS. KORECKI: I live behind the old Wal -Mart in Morris, and we've been having a lot of problems with people going behind the building sleeping. There are semi trucks parked back there, and drivers are sle eping back there. And my neighbor across the street had a -- I don't know -- it was, like, a dynamite stick thrown in her lawn, a big six -foot hole in her lawn. There's graffiti painted all over the back of the wall. And I called the manager four or f ive times and nothing was ever done about it, and I ended up calling the City Hall and that was the only time anything got done was when I called City Hall because the manager does not do anything about it. So if you go back there and look at the Wal -Mart now -- this building has been abandoned since the new Super Center opened up which is what that is probably going to be. There is people going back there drinking. There's kids going back their drinking and they're spray -painting with paint all ov er the building, and it's eyesore.
And we can't do anything about it and the value of the homes is going down. People are trying to sell condos there, and there's four condos that they can't sell because of the way that building looks. And the Super Center is right across the street from this. And they say that they have those cameras all around the building. Well, there's accidents there all the time. And those -- if we knew -- if those cameras were working, they would see who was hitting the -- you know, the customers' cars. But there's a lot of things going on there, and I don't think -- I think you should, you know, go by these people who are taxpayers here. And I sure wouldn't want to live behind a store like there. I live be hind the one they built first and it's terrible, it's just terrible. I've got petitions here. Well, I have about 12 of them, if I could read this. That's a copy but that's not signed. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: This will be entered into the public record. I'll give this to our staff and they will ensure that this becomes part of the public record. MS. KORECKI: We have this petition going around for Grundy County and it's residents and taxpayers of Grundy County. We would like the City of Morris to take action to do something about the old Wal -Mart which has been abandoned for about three years. When you get off the interstate and see the welcome to Wal -Mart sign -- I mean, welcome to Morris sign , the first thing that hits your v iew is the old Wal -Mart. This building is an eyesore. There have been hitchhikers sleeping on the property, semi trucks with people sleeping in them in the parking lot and graffiti paintings all over the back of the building. We understand Wal -Mart has leased the old store until 2014 so no one can move there and compete with their business. For the safety of the residents, especially children, we would like to encourage Wal -Mart to address this issue. Thank you. MS. FRANKEN: Hi. My name is Julie Franken, F -r -a -n -k -e -n. I live at 12340 Bob White Lane. I'd like to present the Board with our petition. Our neighborhood has gotten together. We went around to surrounding neighborhoods, and we have gotten 650 signatures. L ess than 40 percent come from the Heritage Meadows, come from the subdivision, just letting you know this is not just a Heritage Meadows issue. It is a community issue and the community is concerned about it. We will continue to educate the communit y about this, and we will continue with our petition. Thank you. MR. BYRNE: Good evening. My name is Jim Byrne, B -y -r -n -e. I live at 12453 Falcon Drive here in Heritage Meadows. I have questions for Mr. Danos, which have not been fully add ressed. The Algonquin store that you're proposing, is that on commercially -zoned property or residentially -zone property? MR. DANOS: I believe it's been rezoned by -- on a previous setting. K -Mart rezoned it at their time and -- when they ba cked out of the deal.
MR. BYRNE: You say you filed a traffic study. I live at Lot 65 immediately adjacent to the first full lot as you enter southbound from 59 to run to Wal -Mart on the east/west access. There's 41 feet of space between your d rive and my backyard. There is a four -foot berm, not a 13 -foot berm in your drawings. My question is what the decibel level is as a truck shifts from first gear to second gear and curves along our lot lines, according to your traffic study. MR. DANO S: I have no idea what the decibel level would be. We have done some noise studies that we will be turning in, but I have no idea what the decibel level would be on the truck whatever the distance it would be. MR. BYRNE: Corresponding, how many car s or trucks will enter through there? MR. DANOS: On the north side? MR. BYRNE: Currently none do. So what do you anticipate? MR. DANOS: I'm guessing -- anything outside of taking a guess, I don't know. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Don't guess . If you don't know, don't guess. MR. BYRNE: Given the downturn in the economy -- Wal -Mart representatives announced its financial analysis somewhere in the neighborhood of 350,000 in tax revenue generated by this site. Given the downturn in the e conomy, what downward revision are you going to make to that estimate in terms of tax revenue at this site? MR. DANOS: I have no downward estimate. I think our business will be similar to the estimates that we provided. I think it's a fair range to day as it was when we submitted it. Our business has been running just fine. MR. BYRNE: Today you discussed the Meijer to the south; there's a 24 -hour K -Mart to the north. Do you believe a current village of 13,000 and, as you noted, an expanded po pulation in the near future of 50,000 in this area, can that support three 24 -hour discount stores? MR. DANOS: Sure. MR. BYRNE: You've proposed purchasing 60 feet to the west of the yellow -- or green zoned commercial property which doesn't ha ve an abutment to any residence. Why haven't you purchased from the developer 60 feet of the northbound property to allow your entrance to move away from the residential property and allow proper buffering the entire length of the property? MR. DANOS: I believe that entrance is being dictated by IDOT. That's why you see it -- it kind of curves a little bit. I think -- MR. BYRNE: Let me ask it specifically. You're looking at purchasing property here (indicating). Why don't you purchas e property here (indicating) to allow the driveway to come closer here and move away from the property lines? MR. DANOS: I think the curb cut is dictated by IDOT. We have no control over it. That's why it actually jogs the way it does. They have a certain distance from the signal that they'll allow a curb cut, and I think it basically complies with IDOT. MR. BYRNE: I have just two more questions. The Algonquin, you said, was originally purchased and platted by K -Mart. Menards has delayed th eir development at Route 34 to at least 2004 -- or at 135th Street to at least 2004. When was the last time you approached the owners of that property about selling it to Wal -Mart? MR. DANOS: Which parcel, from Menards or Meijer?
MR. BYRNE : The 135th and Route 59 routes. MR. DANOS: We discussed with Meijer's. It's probably been eight, nine months at this point doing something together there, and there wasn't sufficient land to do that at the time. To my knowledge, they have no t offered that for sale basically saying they're not going to come to the market. So I don't know that that property is on the market to anybody at this time except for Menards. MR. BYRNE: Finally, I have a series of three very direct questions. Wh en did Wal -Mart approach the Village in discussions of the purchase of this property? You can check the records that purport that. MR. DANOS: Again, I don't know the exact date. I'm going to guess, Tracy, it probably started four or five month s ago or was -- is that fair? MR. RICHARD: That's fair. MR. DANOS: Four to five months at least. It was during investigative stages we started meeting and talking with the City. MR. BYRNE: Prior to any open meetings that occurred, has a ny member of the Village staff indicated that they would support rezoning of this property? MR. DANOS: Not to me. I have had no discussion with any of the village board and staff. MR. BYRNE: Did any member of the village staff commit to delive r rezoning or intone rezoning would happen? MR. DANOS: No. They basically told us the rules, how we need to submit and apply. And that's what we've been doing, complying with at this point to exactly how they told us -- the rules to do that. MR. BYRNE: Thank you very much. Mr. TRUPPA: My name is Tony Trupa. I live at 11326 South Marathon Lane, the Champion Creek subdivision. I'd like to make a comment to the Planning Commission members. This rezoning request is inconsistent wit h the smart growth plan to change the zoning from a less intensive use to a more intensive use, which is being proposed here; from R1 to B3 is definitely a detriment to the community. As far as any big box retail operations are concerned, the Wal -Mar t representative mentioned there is a K -Mart planned at 111th and Route 59, Target at 127th Street and Route 59, Meijer at 135th Street and Route 59. Just to the east, less than six miles there's a Meijer in Bolingbrook and a Target across the street. The gentlemen from Wal -Mart mentioned the market effective range was a four -mile radius which is where they'd like to position stores from one another. I think our community can benefit without another big box facility in the area. And, again, I would urge the Plan Commission members to consider the quality of life of the residents in the area and to maintain the continuity with the current plans which has this area zoned for residential. Thanks. MS. NUETZEL: My name is Kim Nuetzel. I live at 12958 Kensington Drive in the Kensington Club subdivision. I am just going to read this here. As I sit and listen to these proceedings, I wonder how and why they've gotten this far.
As residents of Plainfield, we have elected you to make the right decisions for Plainfield and more importantly, for us, the residents, the people who look long and hard to find a place where we could call home, not just a place to live. Rezoning this land from residential to commercial will take that pl ace we call home and, for many of us, turn it into just a place to live. As many of the residents here tonight, I looked long and hard to find just the right balance of small town atmospheres, great schools, scenic views, and safe places to walk with my c hildren. Putting a store like Wal -Mart in the middle of all these family -oriented communities takes all of that away. I hope all of you choose to do the right thing, the right thing for us residents, that is, and no rezoning. I want to mak e one final comment. I would like to know how many of the Wal -Mart people here tonight have their backyard butted up next to a Wal -Mart. MS. GABRYSZEWSKI: Hello. My name is Heather Gabryszewski. It's spelled G -a -b -r -y -s -z -e -w -s -k -i. And I live a t 12425 Heritage Meadow Drive. I am the mother of three children, and I do not want to see this land rezoned from residential to commercial for the following reasons: Not only was I told by the builder that this property was going to be houses and i t was one of the main reasons we decided to move to this subdivision and not another one in Plainfield, we also moved to this part of Plainfield to be away from all the big stores, strip malls and, most of all, away from the traffic. At one of the bo ard meetings we attended, there was a discussion about the garbage from Mary D's Ice Cream Shop ending up in the yards of the surrounding homeowners' yards. What do you think is going to happen when you put a Wal -Mart this close to our houses? What about the traffic for our subdivision? We already have a hard enough time turning out of our subdivision onto Route 59 whether we are turning left or right. Are we going to end up in the same situation as the people who live behind the Jewel who wer e promised eight - to ten -foot trees and got four -foot trees? And in a conversation with the mayor on this exact subject, he stated that the Jewel's -- it was the Jewel's responsibility, not the Village's. Shouldn't it be the responsibility of both the Village and Jewel since the Village allowed the Jewel to come here? In relation to that, going back to the subdivision that I moved to, I could have bought my mom's house which was fully landscaped, fully painted, fully decorated in Golden Meadow sub division on the lake. I did not do it because I did not want to live by commercial property, and that's why I chose to live in this subdivision instead. If the Wal -Mart goes here, will we have to deal with the lights, the traffic, and the delivery t rucks and shoppers 24 hours a day? Because at the meeting with the Wal -Mart representatives, we were told if the Wal -Mart comes here, it had to be 24 hours; that was not an option. Wal -Mart also sells the hunting equipment which includes guns, ammo s, and knives. We were also told that that is not an option to cut that out of the store. And that really concerns me only because -- I know it's not handguns, but it's going to be less than 1,000 feet from this school that you are sitting in. I think -- I'm sorry. I think of Columbine every single time that that is mentioned.
I especially want to point out that if Sam Walton was alive, this probably would not be happening because according to everything that I have read and I have seen, he did not believe in putting a Wal -Mart in residential areas, especially if the public did not want them there. I didn't get his direct quote, but you can find it on the internet and also on a PBS video called Star Wars. My last comment is we are already having problems with drainage as it is. Our drainage facility cannot handle the rain we have now. You're going to stick a Wal -Mart there? What's going to happen to the houses that are already flooding? Are we going to flood some more? That's all I have. And I want to thank you for listening. And I hope you will not consider rezoning this from residential to commercial. MS. TIPTON: Hi. My name is Karen Tipton, and I live at 12410 Falcon Drive in Heritage Meadows. Unlike everybody el se here, I am a former employee of Wal -Mart. I worked for Wal -Mart for nine and a half years. The Wal -Mart that I worked at was a 24 -hour store. And the representatives from Wal -Mart here are stating that, you know, it will be for the Plainfield area. But Bolingbrook, Naperville, Joliet, all those stores are not 24 hours. So that means after they close at 10:00 o'clock or 11:00 o'clock, whatever time it is that that Wal -Mart store closes, they will head down to Plainfield that late at night. I worked, like, a late shift, like, 9:00 at night to 1:00 in the morning so I saw the kind of traffic that came in to Wal -Mart after the stores and the malls closed. And they didn't , in my opinion -- that was one of the reasons why I quit is because they were not supplying enough security in our store, that is. They had one police officer after 11:00 o'clock at night, and they had one security person that roamed the parking lot outside. Now, we had a lot of people coming from the way east side of Ch icago. We had Bedford people coming to our store. We had so many surrounding areas, and we were not a Super Wal -Mart. We were just a regular Wal -Mart store. So the security is a big issue. You cannot have one man trying to run the whole store of securi ty. Plus, we never had enough people that worked in that store at night. Cashiers, we were always short cashiers, and we could never keep them long enough. They would keep quitting and then we'd get more and they'd keep quitting and we'd get more. So there was never enough people at the front end of that store. And we had incidents on top of incidents that kept happening, and that's one of the main reasons why I quit because I did not feel it was safe anymore. So I think we should really con sider the security part of this Wal -Mart store. I'm not opposed to a Wal -Mart in Plainfield. I'm opposed to a Wal -Mart right this close to a neighborhood. If they want to build somewhere else in an area where there is not the homes around it, that would be fine. And I'm sure we have plenty of areas in Plainfield that they could build. But I just feel that they could really look into that security issue because that is a biggie. Thank you. MR. KITULSKI: Hi. My name is Tom Kitulski. I r eside in Kendall Ridge, and I go to church here in this school and -- so I'm very familiar with this area. All I want to speak about tonight is the impact that Wal -Mart will have on our taxes. We hear about these tax reliefs, you know, pretty much it's tax relief, tax relief, tax relief. And I'm all for tax relief but, you know, at what price?
At this time, the Village of Plainfield had the opportunity to have all the revenue from the intersection or the commercial land at 59 and Caton Farm R oad. And all they had to do was run a water line from the Village out to that point to have that and obviously Plainfield chose not to. Now it's crying out for commercial taxes. So what happens from here? The Village considers rezoning residential land, and what message does that send out to the other builders who have land on the major thoroughfares and throughout the Village? You think they're going to jump on the bandwagon as well and ask for rezoning? If not, you should. Because you'll have set forth the precedent if you allow Pulte to rezone a parcel of land because you open that door. Thank you for your time. MR. STURLINI: Hi. My name is Rob Sturlini. I live at 12406 Bob White, Heritage Meadows. I'd like to start out -- I have a question for Mr. Danos regarding the height on the outlot buildings. You said that there was some height restrictions that you wanted imposed on there. Do you know what the height restriction is? MR. DANOS: I don't know the exact number. It's in the 26 - to 28 -foot range so it would not impair the visibility. It's somewhere right under that range. I don't know the exact number. Typically, we don't allow anything over the 30 -foot range because we think that is going to impair the vision to the store. So it's going to be less than that. MR. STURLINI: Okay. The other point I'd like to make tonight, I believe -- Mr. Philipchuck, I believe at one of our prior meetings you stated you had a background in real estate or you had some kn owledge of real estate. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Mr. Chairman, I've given no testimony with regard to this matter. I don't think this question is in line. MR. STURLINI: All I'm stating is that -- MR. PHILIPCHUCK: If you'd like to know, I am a licensed real estate broker in the State of Illinois. MR. STURLINI: That's all I need to know. In one of the other meetings, I believe it was the October 30th meeting, Mr. Philipchuck stated that as owners in a new subdivision and in a communi ty that's growing like Plainfield is, that the biggest competition to the property values of our homes come from the other homes being built in the community, and I would have to agree with him on that. And in saying that I agree with him, I would ha ve to ask though if he had a home -- two homes that were built at approximately the same time and they are very comparable in features and they go on the market at the same time for about the same price, if you're a homeowner looking to buy in the communi ty and you're looking at both of these homes and one is surrounded by other single -family residential homes and one backs to a major retailer, which home do you think you would choose? I think I would choose the one that's surrounded by the other si ngle -family residential homes. If I was to go ahead and make an offer on the house that backed up to the major retailer, I think that the fact that it backs up to the retailer would allow me to ask me for a lower price at closing time. So I think as far as property values go, it does matter what your property backs up to or is adjacent to.
The same theory applies if I were to take my home that I purchased in Plainfield surrounded by other single -family homes and were to move that onto a lakefront lo t, I would probably get a substantial amount more for my home. So as far as property values go, I don't think anybody can deny that property values are impacted by what your home backs up to. That's basically all I'd like to say other than I recentl y read in the paper a statement from Terry Burghard, our village manager. In it he person to lower our property value. How much will my property value be lowered when there are semi trucks parked in their driveway? MR. SCHLEUTER: Good evening. My name is Dick Schleuter, and I live at 25250 Blakely in Walker's Grove. I'm first time here tonight. I just wanted to come by and see what's going on. The reason I stopped by is because I'm concerned because I use Route 59. And I also wor k in the City of Naperville. And Naperville went through this many years ago in their big explosion of people and businesses and so forth, and the result of that was called Ogden Avenue. And I hate to see 59 become like Ogden Avenue where you have a string of stores, stores, more stores and more stores and stores and there's a never ending list of stores. So when I want to drive through Naperville, I get on Naper Boulevard and I want to go 59, it takes me an hour. So my drive time because we h ave all these stores and so forth is tremendous. So if we can limit the number of stores on 59, I'm not looking at the housing value, I'm looking at it for other people that live around in Plainfield that have to use the facilities to get to their ho mes at night. I could see this as a large problem in years to come because this gentleman is going to be competitive so he's going to have a lot of customers. He's going to have more lights. He'll want to put more stoplights in so his customers can come into the store. He'll want to have banners up. He'll want to have this up. He'll want to have special sales. He'll want to have Christmas 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So my problem is that the volume of people on the street -- and if you don't realize it, just look at 59. The State of Illinois is spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to make it a four -lane highway with a dividing median. It's going to really look pretty nice when it gets finished. It will look someth ing like 59 is from south to 75 Street. We don't want it to look like 59 north of 75th Street because that's just stores and stores and stores and stores and stores. So I am against it from the standpoint of view I just can't get to work. Thank you. MS. MUNOS: Lynn Munos, 12415 Falcon Drive in Heritage Meadows development. My concern is that Bob White, which was going to connect down to 127th, is going to be cut off and Falcon Drive is pretty much landlocked. And in order for a fire tru ck or ambulance to get to my home, it has to come all the way in and around. And by cutting off that street, I'm concerned that the time that it would take an emergency vehicle to reach my home, should there be an emergency, would be limited. And I think you really need to take into consideration that on some of those streets that this Wal -Mart will be blocking could affect somebody's life.
MR. KEYS: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Adam Keys, K -e -y -s. I live at 12465 Falcon Drive, famed Lot 61. First thing I just want to say, I have an issue with Wal -Mart or any other business for that matter who would sell weaponry and other ammunitions this close to a middle school, a future elementary school, and the children in the communi ty. I know that this is not the body who would make those legal decisions on where weaponry should be sold in this community. I feel as citizens of Plainfield, you have a duty to consider the citizens and their safety in this neighborhood. Fin ally, my wife and I considered building a house in Plainfield over three years ago. And we lived in Mount Prospect and Plainfield -- or Mount Prospect and Palatine and LaGrange, other areas where it's much more congested and it's always been that way. My wife and I grew up in a farm community, and we looked at Plainfield not being a suburban area but yet a rural community. Since then, we have been in Plainfield and enjoyed some great growth. And I think everybody here should be grateful for that, but it's been a growth of rapid proportions, almost so much growth that we're not able as people of Plainfield to manage it. I think we need to sit back and analyze what our mission is going to be and look at each case at a time and remember who trul y the Village of Plainfield is, and that is the citizens. Thank you for your time. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Do any of the commissioners have any questions of the petitioner or of anyone at this time? MR. MANNING: Counsel, you indicated in you r questioning to Mr. Danos that the Bolingbrook store had a crime every other day that required a call to the police. Do you have any statistics to support that statement? MR. DANIEL: I do have police reports. I didn't have anyone to testify to in terpret those for you but the crimes included -- I'll tender those to the Commission. I'll get a copy of those made and at the next meeting, I'll have them for you. MR. MANNING: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Mr. Philipchuck, I believe at t he last meeting there was some interest in the noise study of vehicular traffic surrounding a typical Wal -Mart, and I believe you agreed that you would be supplying something along this line. We're not asking for it tonight, but it's something that we do want to investigate as one of the speakers tonight mentioned noise levels. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Yes. We have commissioned a sound study expert. And they are currently reviewing that data so we will be submitting that for you. I have with me -- o bviously, we can bring her back if there's extensive questioning, but I do have with me this evening our architect. Now, she is from out of state and she is available if you'd like to hear some of her testimony this evening and then continue it if we can't get through it tonight. We do have some additional time, if that would be the Plan Commission's desire. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Will there be adequate time to cross her? My concern is whether there will be adequate time for the other attorneys to cross -examine her. MR. DANIEL: Is she coming back? MR. PHILIPCHUCK: I don't know how long Mr. Daniel intends to question her. MR. DANIEL: Is she coming back anyway or not?
MR. PHILIPCHUCK: She wouldn't if we can dispose of that testimony tonight, no. We can bring her back. MR. DANIEL: Why don't you start? MR. PHILIPCHUCK: At this time, I'd like to introduce Tasha Settles. Tasha is with the firm of Perry Butcher & Associates, and she's involved in the design and the architecture design input as to this particular building. And as the Plan Commission requested, she has bought along some sample boards as far as some of the architectural components of the building. MS. SETTLES: Good evening, my name is Tasha Settles. I worked with Perry Butcher Architects in Rogers, Arkansas, 301 West Chestnut. I am an architectural intern. I studied at Oklahoma State University, and I do my work under the supervision of a staff architect by the name of Barry McNeal. I've been working with the firm for two and a half years. Two of those years I've spent with the Wal -Mart design program. For the past eight months, I've been supervising regional development. I've been working in the states of Washington and Oregon and just for the past 45 days, I started working with some jobs in the Midwest. So this is a little bit of a new ball game for me. But what my job is to do is once the civil engineers involved in the properties being looked at, we make ours elves available to meet the needs of the community with design development for stores in a community that is not going to be accepting of our very typical facade. If it's accepted, we go further with the facade and we move forward with our production documents. And I manage that job through the permitting phase on to the grand opening date. So I basically track these projects from inception to end. At any given time, I manage about 40 stores. So I get to see a good cross section of what is o ut there in the field. This particular proposal is trying to meet the needs and recommendations of the Village of Plainfield. When we did our first proposal, of course we brought in all the very typical Wal -Mart elevations in and they said that 's just not going to meet with our community standards. So we went back to the drawing board and brought a presentation forth that we feel met the recommendations of the Village. In doing that, instead of presenting a typical store with a smooth and split -face CMU facade, we are proposing the use of a product that is called Quik Brik. And it's applied masonry brick that actually goes onto the face of the CMU shear walls. This is very low. I'll try to put it up here. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: T asha, why don't you tell us what CMU is. MS. SETTLES: I'm sorry. CMU is a concrete cinder block. So once the shear walls are built, we actually apply this other masonry unit to the wall. The Lawson blend -- and I had tried to make this s o you could see a little bit of variegation. So when we do a pin elevation, it makes the building look very, very solid. You don't get a variegation of the colors. So I tried to get a representation of the fact that the brick is a variegated brick.
This comes in a twelve -by -six module. So when you're looking at commercial buildings as opposed to a standard masonry unit, it's more of scale to the building facade. That's why we don't use a typical brick. Beyond that, the Lawson Blend would be the color chosen for the bulk of the facade. And then the accent of the pilasters, the elements on the building to break the facade that are actually built out from it would be in -- the center color would be this Promenade blend. It's a little bit dar ker and a little bit deeper so it casts a better shadow and gives you more relief on the building. Also, on the facade, to break it up and to break the mass of the building, we have done a change in parapet heights across the four inside walls of the building. Typically, we don't do treatments to the sides of the building. So this package includes treatment on all four sides of the building that typically isn't shown. In doing this, we've raised the parapet heights to enclose all the RTUs that we screened from the site, RTUs, rooftop units, air -conditioning cooling units. In this particular instance, the parapets are even higher than we typically use based on requests from the Village. Typically, we can let those step down because the bu ilding from front to rear, the steel actually does decrease in size to the back of the building. So we have drainage on the roof and typically these walls will reduce, also. But we are left with the facade all the way around the building so even fro m the rear of the building -- so site lines from the backside of the building to the front, if you're in these areas back here (indicating), you would not see these higher units at the front of the building because the parapet height of the back has -- i t's equalized all the way around the store. So no matter where you're looking at the building from a site line, you're not going to see those highest units. The center stripe in the building will be a split -face CMU. It's a split -face CMU that we p aint. There is a sample of that on there. And then the vestibule treatment is Eifs, which is an insulated finished system that you'll see on most commercial buildings now. They can simulate any kind of material with this product. We used it on thi s vestibule because as we expand the store, that vestibule is removed. The two that replace it have what we call a cowl wall which it's a glass -- it's a glass vestibule that sits in this area right here (indicating) to bring light into the building and it just kind of opens it up more. The reason we double that here is because we are intending to expand on the cowl walls so on the additional building, we use the Eifs products there. There is a sample here. On the garden center, on the canopy area, we use two products. Because of code issues, we try to be sensitive to those, and we switched from 100 percent poly hardwood structure to one that fits within all of the major wall codes, and we used two -thirds McElroy Mega Rib product, which is th is item on the board here (indicating). And then for the light transmitting portion, we use a product called Resolite, and it's a fiber glass product. These two items are in white because of the light transmitting qualities and the fact that we need light in that space. So that -- these two products would be in this portion of the building here (indicating). And they also have on the sides of the building what they call are a retractable sidewall. And it opens up for sales during the day whe n the weather allows it. So
basically on the entire side, this is open for the customers to walk in and out into the fenced area of the garden center for seasonal sales. This rendering was done from this view on the lot right here (indicating). Las t time we were asked, we said, well, this rendering, yeah, it shows you what the facade is going to look like but it doesn't give you much of a pedestrian feel to the space. So we had a second rendering put together to show more of a pedestrian feel of the space from the retention pond. And the fact that the building does recede into the trees, and I am sure once the full growth of the trees has been met, it will really recede into the site because there is a very, very nice landscaping area in this portion of the building and all the way around. We also have rendered -- this was another rendering we had done to scale to indicate the berm at its highest point which I realize and recognize it's not its full height all the way around. But at its full height, from a second -story window based on typical residential standards, this is the roof of our building. There is a person there to show you what kind of scale it's going to look like. If you look out, you're not even probably going to see the Wal -Mart because you also have to consider there is going to be some kind of screening fence here (indicating). So I -- we just wanted to put that together so you would have some indication if the berm is not that high -- CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Do you intend to leave that drawing? MS. SETTLES: Sure. Even if the berm is not at its full height, if it's planted properly, you will get a very good visual screen all the way around the building. AUDIENCE MEMBER: How tall are those tree s? If that is to scale, those trees look like they're at least 20 feet. MS. SETTLES: Yes. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Please. We can't have any questions from you right now. MS. SETTLES: Where was I? So what I want to do is communicate to you that this is a very different store than what we typically propose. And it has been designed to meet the needs and recommendations and the adjacencies to fit into this community and not be something that looks like Wal -Mart was insistent and just came in and said we're going to put a store here and this is what you're going to get, because we do try and work with the community. Wal -Mart approves our designs. We work hand and hand with them throughout that process and through this preliminary process to meet the needs of the community and make sure that we have addressed all of those desires. I had with me last time a typical proto Wal -Mart, and I wanted to show you truly what the differences are and I don't have that drawing with me tonight. I t looks as though I may be back at the next meeting. If I am, I would really like to bring that along so we can indicate just how distinctly different this store is. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Mr. Daniels, do you have any questions? MR. DANIEL: I do . It may take longer than two minutes. I don't know if we can go till 10:00 maybe. MR. DANIEL: Taking a look at the trees, I did hear a question about the height. You did say they were 20 feet in height, is that correct?
MS. SETTLES: To be really honest with you, I can't answer the question because the renderer did not put the scale of this document on it. So I have to go by my regular human as typically drawn at six feet. And if I assume that's he's six feet, then we have about an 19 - to 20 -foot tree. MR. DANIEL: And with respect to the nature of the tree, you anticipate that the top, say, 40 percent of the buffer is going to be gone during the fall and winter months, correct? MS. SETTLES: I cannot answer that question because I am not picking out the landscape items and trees. Some of them, I am sure, will be evergreens; some will be deciduous. But I don't make those decisions. MR. DANOS: We do have a landscape plan. It shows a mixture of trees between evergreens and some that will lose their leaves. It is a varied mixture so a little bit of each. MR. DANIEL: When you speak of breaking up the Wal -Mart store to make it look like it's not one mass of a building, is there anything you've done within the overall pro perty lines which include the two outlots on the first plan to make the Wal -Mart look more like the buildings that are going to appear on these two lots? I know that they're in development right now. But are there any plans to make them consistent among all three lots? MS. SETTLES: Mr. Danos is going to have to answer that question because I am not familiar with any of those buildings. MR. DANOS: We don't have any control at all over the property up front. I mean, they will be coming into th is ward for a very similar review process in the future, as they have attended for those. But we have no control over at all what they do aesthetically on their buildings. MR. DANIEL: With respect to the architectural aspects of what's proposed now, there's been some discussion tonight about tax incentives. Is there anything from an architectural perspective that you think requires extra contribution from the Village of Plainfield in the way of tax rebates? MS. SETTLES: Once again, I am n ot able to answer that question. Mr. Danos will. MR. DANOS: When you upgrade our typical prototype Wal -Mart to this, I'm going to guess at a price. That represents between somewhere in the 250 and $300,000 range. Just in the elevations that you se e there, we're actually putting the Quik Brik on top of the split -face block. The additional monies on top of that, again, the 250 to 300,000, I'm going to guess, on the elevation alone and then I'm going to probably guess we've got anywhere from 50 to $100,000 in landscaping throughout the whole lot on that. That's what I'm basing the fact on the proposal on the incentives. The incentives with the City put all the money back in combination with the building facade tailored to Plainfield as well as the landscaping, and even that would either meet or in most cases completely exceed the codes in the city. MR. DANIEL: Could you explain your licensing for the commission, please. I know you're working under an architect as a staff architect. I pre sume that your stamp -- or do you have an architect stamp? MS. SETTLES: Not at this time.
MR. DANIEL: And in relationship to this particular project, what's the name of the architect who is in charge that will have a stamp that is planted on th e plans once they're finalized? MS. SETTLES: That would probably -- I say probably because we have got a number of staff on that are licensed in multiple states, some of them overlap. At any given time, I am not certain exactly who the signing arch itect on the project is going to be. That happens in our permitting stage. But the supervising architect of myself is Barry McNeal. MR. DANIEL: And you mentioned that you've been with Wal -Mart for two years. In the last two years, how many Wal -Mar t developments have you seen that has some of the changes from the basic prototype that Wal -Mart first brought to what you present tonight? MS. SETTLES: First of all, I'd like to make a correction. I work for Perry Builder, not for Wal -Mart. MR . DANIEL: Sorry. MS. SETTLES: That's fine. In my two -year history, I've seen a number of facades that require special elevations. My firm just happens to be the one that works most closely with Wal -Mart projects. So the number that I see is above the average that the other firms working architecturally for Wal -Mart would see because that's what we do for them. So actually, I see this, I would say, probably seven out of ten times that we do a special development. MR. DANOS: I just want to highlight that. Once we get into a situation where we are going to upgrade the facility, that's when we go outside and hire an outside firm. They would see the excess of elevations more often because if it's not, it's handled by an inside archite ct within Wal -Mart where we already have full drawings, full plans already ready to be submitted. It's only when we have to go and actually reproduce and do something from the ground up that we actually hire an outside firm to better handle that. So they would virtually handle all the special elevations with an outside architect firm. MR. DANIEL: Mr. Chairman, I would yield to the audience. I know they may have more concerns about appearance that I haven't asked about. I know it's 9:04. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: How many people are proposing to ask questions? We are going to have to hold the questions -- well, we have got five minutes. Go ahead with what you can do in five minutes and then we have to vacate. MR. BYRNE: My quest ion is very quick with regards to the drawing with the trees and the house. The next time that you appear, will you please bring one that revolves around this property. The Wal -Mart property is below grade compared to the residential properties. My base ment line is six feet above the Wal -Mart property. It is not level. That drawing is not accurate so bring one with you. MS. SETTLES: This drawing was done as a standard because we did not have the grading plan at the time so that we could get speci fic spots. This was just a generalized representation of what a standard house would look like in comparison to the elevation of the Wal -Mart. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Next person want to step up quick. We're running over. If there's another person, pl ease come up and get in line.
MS. KAMINSKI: Hi. Kim Kaminski, again. You had mentioned earlier something about the entrance being made a certain way because you're going to be changing it to a Super Wal -Mart. MS. SETTLES: Yes. MS. KAMIN SKI: Is that done on all stores? MS. SETTLES: Yes. MS. KAMINSKI: And how soon -- do you have the plans for the Super Wal -Mart drawn up like this? MS. SETTLES: No. Plans for expansions are not made until the expansion's actually been or dered which could be anywhere from 12 months to five years down the road. But this particular building footprint is designed to expand. And in that design standard, we do have things built in the building that makes the expansion easier so the store can stay in operation and there's not a lot of construction zones for customers to walk through. This particular prototype was designed just for that. MR. DANOS: Just to elaborate, at any given time we would come back to apply to expand it, it woul d be the exact same elevation on the new part of the building. It would match completely, color, everything, so it would look the same. MS. KAMINSKI: Do we have a picture of the landscape plan from our perspective versus 127th Street? MS. SETT LES: No, ma'am. MS. KAMINSKI: Because I can't see how it would matter when you're driving down 127th to see how the store looks. MS. SETTLES: Your perspective is where? MS. KAMINSKI: From Heritage Meadows. MS. SETTLES: Here (indica ting.) MS. KAMINSKI: Straight north. MS. SETTLES: Looking south? MS. KAMINSKI: Correct. MS. SETTLES: We have not prepared looking at that location but we can. MS. KAMINSKI: I absolutely would really appreciate it. Again , going back, when will these trees be put in; how tall will the trees be? You keep going back to evergreen trees. Evergreen trees don't get that tall. They lose their needles, they're unattractive, and cheap. MS. SETTLES: The landscape architect would have to address all the foliage that will be installed. MR. DANOS: What I believe is proposed is a mixture of different types of trees so you do carry over through the seasons. You have some evergreen for the wintertime periods and then you ha ve some of the other types of trees that would be fuller. Tracy, do you want to expand on that? CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: We're going to get into the berms. We can concentrate on this berm in the future. What I'm trying to do is get the questions f or this architect out of the way because she's from out of state, and we would prefer that she wouldn't have to make an extra trip back. MS. KAMINSKI: American Airlines could use the business right now. This is very important to us. We own our homes here and our property value immediately is going to drop considerably.
CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: There will be considerable discussion about the berm in itself. MS. KAMINSKI: But we need to discuss everything, and we can't be rushed through th is. This is not a rushed process on our end. We want as much time as we need. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Mr. Chairman, if she wants -- CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: The berm is not part of the architects area of expertise. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: We're happy to bring her back. MR. DANOS: We can bring the architect back at the next meeting. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: But the berm has nothing to do with the architect. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Right. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Was there anyone else that had a que stion real quick? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: At this time, the Chair would request one of the Commissioners to offer a motion to continue the meeting until November the 27th at 7:00 o'clock. MR. KACHEL: Jim, before you do that, ve ry quickly with the architect, when we come back the next time, we should have elevations for the back of the building and as far as any elevations in relationship, too. The back of the building is very important to all the residents so it should be broug ht fully before us so everybody can take a look at it. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Again, the Chair -- MS. GEHRKE: I'll motion. MR. MANNING: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Motioned by Gehrke, a second by Manning to continue the specia l meeting to November the 27th at 7:00 o'clock in this * * * * STATE OF ILLINOIS ) ) SS. COUNTY OF W I L L ) I, Gale L. Barma, CSR No. 84 -003807, RPR, do hereby certify that I reported in shorthand the proceedings had in the above -entitled c ause; and that the foregoing Report of Proceedings, Pages 1 through 105 inclusive, is a true and correct transcript of my shorthand notes so taken at the time and place aforesaid. This certification applies only to those transcripts, original and copies , produced under my direction and control; and I assume no responsibility for the accuracy of any copies which are not so produced. IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand this 3rd day of December, 2001. Certified Shorthand Reporter