Are developers ‘climate ready’?

The recently proposed residential project at Chicago and Ridgeland is a welcome reminder that Oak Park remains attractive to real estate developers. The question is: Will these developers, and many others, incorporate Climate Ready Oak Park goals in their blueprints?

As our community’s vintage architecture attests, a building can last for decades or a century. The village urgently needs an updated ordinance requiring that new buildings be all-electric, along with stringent requirements for energy conservation and efficiency to create airtight exterior building envelopes. Resulting structures may cost no more to build, while greater operating efficiency paired with all-electric energy makes them healthier and more comfortable for occupants and better for the planet. Soon, such buildings will also command a market advantage, attracting buyers and renters attuned to the cache of renewable energy, induction cooking, and assurance of healthy indoor air quality, along with on-site EV charging.

Residential energy use from fossil gas makes up two-thirds of Oak Park’s heat-trapping atmospheric emissions. If the village is serious about meeting its own goals for reducing our community’s contribution to climate disruption, it must ensure that our new buildings are future-facing, not investments in the past.

Oak Park Climate Action Network
Oak Park

This was originally posted on the Wednesday Journal on 3/21/2023