A hot-blooded neighborhood fight will continue to boil after the City Council’s Zoning Committee voted Tuesday to put off a decision on whether Pilsen’s St. Adalbert Church should gain landmark status.
The four-building church complex was on track to finally gain the status soon after the Commission on Chicago Landmarks recommended the protective designation in June.
But the committee made the rare decision to overrule the supportive local alderman, Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th — who wanted a vote Tuesday — and opted to instead side with the Archdiocese of Chicago and defer acting on the proposal.
The City Council traditionally looks to the preference of local aldermen when casting zoning votes. The decision Tuesday showed Sigcho-Lopez’s Southeast Side ward does not get the same deference in handling its issues, the firebrand progressive alderman said afterward.
“There are certain communities that have not been given the same courtesy, the same self-determination as other communities,” he said.
Sigcho-Lopez is backing the push for landmark status led by former congregants of now-closed St. Adalbert. The landmarking supporters largely view the designation as a way to save their old Polish parish — completed in 1914 and deconsecrated by the archdiocese in 2019 — by making it more difficult to redevelop and sell.
They have shown up to Landmarks Commission meetings for months, clad in the red-and-white colors of Poland’s flag, to make a loud and impassioned case that their treasured church should be protected.
And at many points, they have hurled insults at their opponents: the archdiocese and parishioners of nearby St. Paul Parish.
Archdiocesan leaders say they want to preserve the iconic, but decaying, primary church building of the St. Adalbert parish complex. However, the landmark designation would make that nearly impossible by discouraging private developers from fixing the Renaissance Revival building, they say. Meanwhile, as St. Adalbert sits in limbo, the St. Paul Parish must bear the expensive cost of maintaining the closed church’s buildings.
Robert Lombardo, an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago, pleaded with aldermen at the meeting to defer the vote on landmark status and give the archdiocese more time to find a compromise.
“I don’t see why we don’t take some time and have cooler heads prevail,” he said. “Let’s work together and find a solution.”
Moments later, Lombardo’s prayers were answered. Aldermen broke from Sigcho-Lopez’s will in a 10-to-4 vote.
After the vote, Lombardo stood outside City Hall. A passing woman who had advocated during the meeting for landmark designation chided him.
“Judas,” she shouted.
Lombardo spoke with Sigcho-Lopez after the vote and asked to “push the reset button,” he said.
“I’m hopeful. I believe in the goodness of people,” Lombardo said.
Archdiocese officials estimate stabilizing the church’s bell towers alone could cost $16 million. They hope to keep the option of demolishing the parish complex’s auxiliary buildings open, said Eric Wollan, the archdiocese’s chief capital assets officer.
The Tuesday decision will likely only delay a final vote by the committee on the landmark status. Several of the aldermen who voted to defer the question added that they think the church should ultimately be made a landmark, but wanted to first give the archdiocese more time to find middle ground.
Sigcho-Lopez pinned the vote to defer on interim Zoning Committee chair Ald. Bennett Lawson, 44th. The Pilsen and Little Village alderman was himself Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pick to replace Lawson earlier this year, but his bid for months failed to garner enough votes and ended Friday when Johnson instead selected Ald. Walter Burnett, 27th.
A vote on a proposed large Pilsen tax increment financing expansion backed by Sigcho-Lopez was deferred Monday by the Finance Committee amid more passionate public debate.
The Zoning Committee also voted Tuesday to continue a pilot ordinance through 2029 aimed at preventing gentrification along the Northwest Side’s elevated 606 trail. The ordinance hikes fees for demolishing homes in a expanded area near The 606 from $15,000 to $60,000.
The ordinance also disallows the conversion of some two-, three- and four-flat buildings into single-family homes, gives tenants a right-of-first-refusal when landlords put their rented homes for sale and allows two-flats to be built by-right in included areas zoned for single-family homes.
“It’s all about preserving the character of our community, both the housing stock and the people,” sponsor Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, said. “We want to be able to develop our communities, but develop them in such a way that does not exacerbate displacement.”
The ordinance is expected to come up for a vote by the full City Council Wednesday.
jsheridan@chicagotribune.com
