Update: The Batavia City Council/Committee of the Whole voted 7-6 to kill the project, BUT, one alderman, Susan Stark, was missing. She’s a likely YES vote, meaning Mayor Schielke would be the tie-breaker, and he fully supports it. Of course it depends on which aldermen show up for the official Council vote…. Also, it would have to go back through the whole application process, including the Plan Commission that denied approval before.  

The Batavia City Council will take up the proposed changes to the massive, 6-story, Shodeen/1 N Washington apartments project planned for downtown Batavia at Tuesday night’s COW meeting, 7:30pm.

You can read Chris Aiston (the City’s Economic Development Consultant) urge the Council to accept the changes here: https://il-batavia.civicplus.com/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/11409?fileID=7996

He says removing most of the retail space, adding more apartments (total 194), removing more parking spaces (total 335), and the City (i.e., taxpayers) spending 2 million more dollars (total $16 mil) will be a good thing, even better than the original proposal. Do you agree? Will the City Council?

If the City Council doesn’t agree to the changes, the project is dead and the doors will be opened for a new project and new developers at the corner of Wilson and Washington in downtown Batavia.

And as it turns out, Shodeen’s project is nothing unique to Batavia. Look what Oswego just approved, with the same look, the same $16 million city bonds contribution, much more parking, AND the commercial space Aiston and Shodeen say is not economically feasible for Batavia: http://www.dailyherald.com/business/20171124/oswego-shodeen-finalize-deal-on-downtown-project . It’s even on the same street (Washington) in Oswego.

If you can’t make it to the meeting but would like to share your thoughts with the City Council, you can (respectfully) email the Council using the Contact button at right.