July 19, 2022 Village Board Meeting
My name is Mary Munday. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am here to speak as a resident and as a co-founder of Greener Glenview.
Greener Glenview takes no position for or against this development. Our aim is to help the Board of Trustees and the New Development Commission make this development a model of sustainability—for Dermody and its logistics business, and for the Village of Glenview now, and forty years from now.
I’m here tonight to ask one question: why the hurry to lock in plans for the next 8 years. We are in favor of the idea of building phase one and then taking a pause to answer many of the unknowns that face us now.
Development plans are based on projections. Dermody states that they are building for forty years in the future. They state that the logistics industry is dynamic, changing even as we speak. Because of the change they’re seeing now, they are building in cabling for EV charging stations, as well as roofing strength to support solar panels.
The Village of Glenview is also building for the future. The village has signed the Greenest Region Compact, and just hired its first sustainability coordinator. A Climate Action Plan is under discussion. The State of Illinois will be releasing new, more sustainable building codes in 2023.
Amid this change, we’re faced with a development with many projections and unknowns, and an agreement that locks in status quo standards for 8 years.
One major unknown facing Glenview is the nature of the businesses that will occupy the shells to be built. We won’t know until 2024 who the first Phase I tenants are. Dermody says they could be a corporate headquarters, a data center, a food production site, warehouse, or other business.
Both data centers and warehouses require huge energy sources. Warehouses are transitioning to robotics according to an article in the NYT entitled, Robots Aren't Done Reshaping Warehouses. Robotics double or triple the need for electric power. Data centers are notorious energy hogs. Data centers require redundant power sources to assure against power outage. Generators are one such “uninterruptible power source” with their attendant noise and diesel emissions.
If energy needs in Phase I prove to be greater than projected, updated landscaping plans might be needed. Perhaps a woodland will be planned, filled with trees and deep-rooted natives that will help mitigate the carbon emissions and the heat island effect caused by truck traffic and generators at warehouses and data centers on site.
Only after tenants are doing business in the space will we have real data, not just projections, about energy use and traffic in the area. Will it be mostly semi-trailer trucks, entering and leaving 294? Will it be last mile delivery trucks? Or passenger cars? Will traffic be 24/7, or mainly morning/afternoon rush.
What new information will we have after Phase I is in place? What new standards will have been adopted in Glenview and in the State of Illinois? It is entirely feasible that after Phase I, new information will point to a better way to proceed to phases two and three.
Greener Glenview is in favor of making space for this pause, to—as the saying goes--measure twice, and build once.
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