Not Just Any Business

I’ve been stewing lately about an unwelcome development in my neighborhood.

I learned recently that while our good neighbors in Berwyn have been working hard to attract family friendly businesses to the seemingly endless construction zone that is Roosevelt Road, my own town has been nurturing relationships with a cash-for-gold business and a gun shop.

A gun shop. I repeat it because I still can’t believe that it is very likely in the next few weeks that I’ll be able to walk a couple of blocks and pick up, not a bagel, but a rifle. Then, I can walk it back to my house, right past where my daughter went to preschool and where my children attend elementary school.

Roosevelt Road streetscape project rendering.

This is not the walkable, pedestrian-friendly vision I had for the unprecedented multi-town cooperative responsible for streetscaping, reconstructing, landscaping and sidewalk building cutting through Cicero, Berwyn and Oak Park.

My friend Julie put it best when she protested the licensure of this new business at tonight’s Village board meeting:

I’m not here to debate Second Amendment rights. I’m here to ask why, in a Village that has had endless discussions about where beauty supplies can be sold and how and when restaurants can serve liquor, a gun shop was allowed to obtain a business license without any input from the community, as though it were like any other retail business.

As Julie said, this isn’t just any other business. Promises that there will be background checks and waiting periods offer little comfort to those of us who frequent the area and make a point to shop in our neighborhood business district. Now, when I go to Walgreens or Bodhi Thai or Gina’s Italian Ice, I’ll be face-to-face with Windy City Firearms.

This is not the Oak Park with which I identify. It’s nowhere near the charm associated with the quiet, progressive bedroom community and its vast historic district and signature Frank Lloyd Wright homes.

Good schools, beautiful architecture, safe streets. That’s where I want to live and what I expect my tax dollars to support. And it’s what I expect my elected officials and village planners to preserve and develop.

Julie asked trustees to consider zoning laws that would keep business that sell weapons away from schools and residential areas. The Village is looking at regulatory options, including a public health review. She also asked trustees to consider tax incentives to attract businesses more in line with the vision they sold us with the multi-year Roosevelt Road corridor improvement project to foster “a more pedestrian-friendly, landscaped and vibrant commercial corridor.”

In my mind, that meant restaurants, retail outlets and boutiques, places I can walk to with my kids.

Instead, we’re getting a gun shop — turning an area that was a planned destination into an area I, and many families, will plan to avoid.