Owners at 1309 Belden are back at it again.

Please share with your neighbors and friends to get the word out. More information is needed before the alderman decides on upzoning the parcel again. 

A 56-foot wall is being proposed 4 feet from our neighbors' windows — and no one has measured what it does.

A developer wants to rezone a parcel on W. Belden from RS-1 to RM-5.5 for a four-story building. It would sit 4 feet 4 inches from the property line of the townhomes at 2240–2254 N. Lakewood — homes that have only two exposures, east and west. This takes the west: their afternoon light, their yards, their rooftop skyline views.

Neighbors asked for a light and shadow study. The developer called it "relatively expensive" and too preliminary — then volunteered to fund a Fire Department study at the exact same stage.

Also on the record: the renderings "are not the scale" (their words), the neighboring building is drawn wrong, the heights of adjacent buildings were promised and never delivered, and the zoning request was stated two different ways in the same meeting.

This isn't about taste. Sales data shows identical condos differ by 26% based only on which way the windows face — and units low enough to face a neighboring wall sell for 30% less than identical units high enough to clear it. Here that's $127,000–$294,000 per home, permanently.

We're not asking anyone to block this. We're asking that nobody vote on it blind. A shadow study costs a few thousand dollars on a project selling six condos at $1–2M each.

Sign here to ask Alderman Hopkins to require the study before taking any position. Happy to share the full study if you want to see it.