Court Opinion

ID: 9861339
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:54:27.513939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:13.669013
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE UNVERZAGT, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The trial court having heard the plaintiff’s evidence ruled that the proof failed to overcome the presumption of the validity of the ordinance in question and granted defendant’s motion for a directed verdict. I believe the trial court erred and should have denied the motion, and if the City did not elicit proofs on its side of the case, the trial court should have granted the hospital the relief it sought. This hospital was constructed in 1888 and has grown and developed with the community fulfilling a large measure of its health care needs. Presently it operates a number of combined buildings providing all of the modern health care components and delivery systems. Its licensed capacity is 319 beds of which 265 are active. It employs 950 persons on three shifts. Its medical staff consists of 135 doctors of whom 12 practice in close proximity to the hospital buildings. The hospital presently provides 500 parking spaces. Most of the present parking is limited to the east side of the present building; some is located north on Weston Avenue. Like all modern hospitals, this one has long-range future plans, one of which is to increase to 500 beds within a 10-year period. Presently and for a foreseeable future, there will be a trend to more out-patient services as contrasted to in-patient services. The hospital seeks to attract doctors to its facilities and to provide rental space to them. This permits maximum efficiency for staff doctors and assures the hospital the greatest use of its facilities. Anyone familiar with the costs and maintenance expense of a modern hospital readily will concede the positive good achieved by maximum utilization of these sophisticated and expensive facilities. When the hospital transferred its nursing program to Aurora College in October of 1978, space it owned became available in former nursing student quarters. It was decided to make this space available for rental by practicing physicians for offices. However, patients have to be able to get to their doctors’ offices and most get there by automobile. Ergo, additional parking space had to be available to service these medical offices which are an integral part of the hospital complex. The hospital acquired eight lots located on the west side of Lincoln Avenue, directly across the street from the hospital. These lots were improved with dwellings 50 to 80 years old which are to be removed. The plan is to create a parking lot with 146 to 150 spaces. The plan for the parking lot meets the City’s requirements as to design. The modern techniques for landscape screening with shrubs and ornamental trees and subdued lighting have been provided for by the planner. The president of the hospital testified as to the need for the additional parking. The landscape planner described the improvements to be installed. A real estate appraisal expert testified that the proposed use would have no detrimental effect on property values to the lots across the alley facing La Salle Street. Special use provisions in ordinances have had a long history of acceptability. (Kotrich v. County of Du Page (1960), 19 Ill. 2d 181.) The technique was developed as a means of providing for infrequent types of land use which are necessary and desirable but which are potentially incompatible with uses usually allowed in residential, commercial and industrial zones. One thing is clear, the denial of a special use permit must bear a “ real and substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare.’ ” Lazarus v. Village of Northbrook (1964), 31 Ill. 2d 146, 151-52. In my view, the proofs offered by the hospital showed that the denial of the special use permit was arbitrary and unreasonable. The permit should have been granted. Society of the Divine Word v. County of Cook (1969), 107 Ill. App. 2d 363.