Politics
Chicago’s New Zoning Chair on Top Priorities, Megaprojects: ‘Chicago Is Open for Business’
After months without a permanent leader, a key piece of Chicago’s development pipeline is moving again.
Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward) was recently chosen to lead the City Council’s Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards, putting him at the center of decisions that shape everything from residential housing to billion-dollar developments.
He takes over the role from the zoning vice chair, Ald. Bennett Lawson (44th Ward), who had been acting as the interim leader and was also vying for the permanent position.
At last Wednesday’s Chicago City Council meeting Villegas recognized Lawson, saying the vice chair is “a wealth of knowledge and I look forward to working with him to make sure that we’re putting forward policies that help developers get things built quickly so we can realize the much-needed property tax revenue in order to fund government services.”
The Zoning Committee will meet for the first time in months on May 6 with a backlog of more than 100 proposed zoning changes on the agenda.
“We’ll hear about 85 to 90% of those projects,” Villegas said of the upcoming meeting. “Then on May 19, we’ll have another meeting where we’ll deal with some of those rollover projects as well as some tax amendments on ordinances that need to be moved.”
Villegas’ former leadership posting as chair of the Committee on Economic, Capital and Technological Development goes to Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th Ward). City Council’s Black Caucus backed Villegas’ push to lead the Zoning Committee, in part, because it made way for Curtis — a member of the Black Caucus — to head the economic committee.
“What we didn’t want to do was set precedence around allowing freshmen the ability to have a powerful committee like zoning,” Villegas said, in reference to Lawson. “Here was an opportunity to promote a colleague of mine (Curtis) who’s in his third term as well.”
Developing housing and other multi-use buildings in Chicago is challenging given the city’s strict zoning that limits what can be built and where, and a large share of land is zoned specifically for single-family homes.
Aldermanic prerogative adds another hurdle. The informal political practice grants each City Council member significant control over decisions in their own ward, particularly as it relates to land use and development.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under former President Biden found that aldermanic prerogative fuels segregation in Chicago and violates the civil rights of Black and Latino residents by limiting the creation of affordable housing.
“I see the Zoning Committee as an economic development committee as well,” said Villegas, who supports aldermanic prerogative but emphasized the importance of educating alderpeople on what developments like affordable housing mean for communities. “What’s really causing the affordability issue is supply and demand, and what we need to do is make sure that we’re getting projects done quicker. … My goal is to really focus on cutting the red tape, getting projects completed quicker, allow for predictability and more transparency.”
As for megadevelopments such as The 78, the Southeast Side’s quantum computing campus and Bally’s Casino, Villegas supports those projects and said “Chicago is open for business.”
