Plans for senior housing along Busse Highway, at the north end of Park Ridge, and a Hilton hotel along Higgins Road on the south end of the city were approved by the Park Ridge City Council at its June 17 meeting. Council members said the two developments provided public benefits, such as adding affordable units and sponsoring a gateway sign, to get approval from the city.
The 24-unit senior housing development at 819-825 Busse Highway, Park Ridge, will limit renters to those over age 62. The hotel is a four-story, 112-guest-room Tru by Hilton hotel at 1440 Higgins Road, Park Ridge.
“The nature (of the senior home) is that it’s really independent living. It’s seniors, but it’s seniors still living an active lifestyle. There’s really not a lot of on-staff presence,” Drew Awsumb, the city’s director of community preservation and development director, said in reference to comments brought up by aldermen that the development did not have enough parking for staff.
Guido Neri, the development’s architect, said the first floor of the four-story senior housing development will not have any units. It will have 24 internal parking spaces, a communal kitchen, dining room, community room, restroom, exercise room, lobby, vestibule and parcel room. An additional 24 parking spaces will be behind the building facing the alley.
The second through fourth floor will be made up of apartments, with 18 two-bedroom units and 6 three-bedroom units. The units will have modern amenities, including individual heating and cooling and washers and dryers. All of the units are ADA adaptable and have five-foot turning radiuses for wheelchairs, Neri said. If the developer were to sell the building, the building would still need to be for seniors and maintain its affordable units, because straying from doing so would be a zoning violation, Awsumb said.
The Tru by Hilton Hotel at Higgins Road would have 112 guest rooms and be four stories tall and 40 feet in height. The public benefits that the hotel is expected to provide include conceding 10 feet at the Peterson Road property line so that Peterson could be expanded in the future. The hotel’s developer, MDSA, is also donating $25,000 to the city’s gateway signage program for a sign in the Dee Road corridor. The hotel and its guests would not have immediate access to Peterson Road.
Several City Council members were concerned that the property would not have enough parking spaces for both guests and staff, because the parking lot accommodates 110 vehicles. A representative from MDSA said a traffic study showed that when the business gets to peak capacity, only 79 parking spaces would be used. He added that hotel management could also ask neighboring hotels to use their parking spaces.
Tru by Hilton hotels are pet friendly, offer free hot breakfast and have a fitness center, according to fact sheet by the hotel.
