Towards the end of an approximately 90-minute presentation at Brookfield Village Hall on June 10 about future home renovations and street scene improvements along the Ogden Avenue corridor, an audience member asked a question that got to the heart of the matter.
“What kind of schedule do you forecast for the majority of this to be completed?” The man asked the panel of three advisors who led the Ogden Avenue study, known as “Energize Ogden.”
There have been other studies of the Ogden Avenue corridor and the village in general in the past, the most recent of which was a new comprehensive plan approved by the village council in 2018, which replaced and also called out the Brookfield Master Plan approved in 2004 to take a closer look at Ogden Avenue and provided examples of redevelopment.
Despite these earlier efforts, with a few exceptions, the streetscape of Ogden Avenue today looks very similar to the streetscape of Ogden Avenue many years ago.
Daniel Grove, a planner for the Kimley-Horn consultancy who led the study on Ogden Avenue, had an open and potentially disappointing answer to the man’s question.
“I don’t think you’ll ever finish,” said Grove. “The goal is to keep making progress and trying to move towards a vision that is supported by the community.”
Anyone who has been in Brookfield long enough can tell you that the ward’s vision for Ogden Avenue is not necessarily uniform and is changing. Much of what is possible also depends on the owners, which could motivate them to improve their properties or either lead redevelopment efforts or sell them so that other properties put together that make redevelopment attractive.
Energize Ogden’s effort, which began earlier this year and is expected to be completed this fall, is not intended as a blueprint for future development. Rather, Grove said, the goal is to provide the village with a “tool kit” that will help them achieve broad goals.
Some of these goals include eliminating some of the challenges that keep developers and visitors from seeing Ogden Avenue as more than a four-lane highway that carries vehicles from point A to point B.
Kimley-Horn created a website for the Energize Ogden study, which can be found at energeogden.wpengine.com.
An earlier public meeting, held practically in March, drew around 20 people and found that the corridor spanned an abundance of automotive and service companies, but that people were most interested in seeing more. In addition, they wanted more attractive building facades and landscaping, as well as improved access to parking spaces.
To better facilitate this, the consultants highlighted some concepts on June 10, including creating more angled parking spaces in the streets immediately north and south of Ogden Avenue, consolidating driveways to allow more strategic access to the properties, and the removal of rolled curbs to make the hallway more pedestrian.
Those attending the June 10 meeting were particularly in favor of eliminating rolled curbs, which allow vehicles to drive on sidewalks and park, as there is no parking on Ogden Avenue itself.
They also advocated the consultants’ concept of widening sidewalks and planting parkway trees, installing decorative street lights where possible, and having the village work with landowners whose buildings are set back from the property line to improve landscaping.
A concept that also generated positive reactions from around 25 participants in the meeting on June 10th was the strategic use of murals, for example at the western end of the Galloping Ghost Hall, to beautify the corridor.
They also preferred that any new development should be mixed-use buildings that included indoor parking spaces that could be shared.
Village chief Timothy Wiberg, who attended the June 10 meeting, said it could take years for some aspects of the final corridor study to materialize and is made more difficult by the fact that the right of way is on Ogden Avenue – including the sidewalks as well as the roadway – is under the jurisdiction of the Illinois Department of Transportation.
“The goal here is for this plan to be developed,” said Wiberg. “As soon as you have a plan, you can buy it from federal and state officials and apply for grants. I think we have a pretty good chance of receiving significant funding once we have a plan and that vision that we want to become a reality. “
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