New radon law starts Jan. 1

Radon is about to be a much bigger deal in the world of real estate in Illinois.

Starting January 1, anyone who sells "residential real property" (defined as a housing structure with one to four units) in Illinois must give a prospective buyer two radon-related documents: (1) a disclosure form, in which the seller explains whether he/she is aware of high radon levels in the home and (2) a pamphlet that explains how to test for radon.

That's pretty important stuff -- certainly the most serious new policy I've seen at the statewide level since I became a real estate agent in 2004. Strangely, though, I've found no mention of it in the mainstream press. There was a press release sent out to agents last month by the Illinois Association of Realtors, and I spotted some information about it on a blog of a real estate agent in the Chicagoland area. But that's about it. Even the Google News archive, generally excellent at sniffing out a story, fails to turn up anything. Of course, when even Google can't find a story, you're probably correct in assuming nobody has written one.

So I'll try to fill in the gaps.

Tomorrow our local board of real estate agents, the Lamoine Valley Board of Realtors, is holding its monthly meeting, and the guest speakers will be talking exclusively about radon. I'll report back with what I learn.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a link to an excellent slideshow (http://www.radalink.com/illinois/presentation.htm) that gives an overview of the new radon law. Created by a company that specializes in radon testing, the slideshow even includes audio accompaniment.

Case closed on the missing steel

In an earlier post, I wrote about the construction of a new Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Macomb -- and how the project had been in hiatus because of some missing steel.

That steel obviously must have arrived, because this was the scene at the work site yesterday:


From what I've been told, the construction crews involved with these restaurants can put up new buildings pretty quickly. No word yet on the expected completion date, but my guess is that Macomb may be eating wings before Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Vandalism in Macomb

In one of my first posts, I remarked that certain sections of Macomb could be considered the "front lines" of zoning battles in Macomb. I was referring to the always-ongoing verbal spats (as opposed to literal brawls in the streets) between single-family residents and students/landlords regarding multi-family housing in the city. Lately, however, the tensions have taken a different form.

At around 2:25 a.m. on Sunday, October 7, a group of college students ripped down a chain-link fence in front of a house at 120 W. Adams, owned by Macomb resident Barbara Martin, who lives there with her son. The property sits in the middle of the route from the downtown bars back to campus, so it's not surprising that Martin apparently has been having problems with late-night vandalism for some time.

What the students didn't know was that Martin recently installed security cameras to monitor her grounds. A few days after the incident, the Macomb Journal published this image of the crime, caught by Martin's equipment:


The police have been trying to enhance the image, but so far only have been able to identify clothing, not faces. Despite several articles in the local papers and condemnation by both Macomb Mayor Mick Wisslead and WIU President Al Goldfarb, the crime remains unsolved.

There's a second part to the story. On October 23, members of WIU's Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity and the Macomb Police Department's Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 189 teamed up and rebuilt the fence. The Macomb Eagle, Macomb Journal, and Peoria Journal Star all covered the story.

Nevertheless, the neighborhood vandalism continues. The Macomb Journal ran a front-page story last Friday about a fence that was recently damaged at 541 N. McArthur Street.

But is vandalism actually on the rise in Macomb? Maybe not. From that same Journal article:

Macomb Police Detective Matt Gass said that since the Martin incident, the Police Department has been learning of previously unreported incidents of vandalism.

"Throughout the past few weeks we've had people say, 'Yeah we've had property damage all the time, just never reported it,'" Gass said. "The University Baptist Church has said they've pretty much had their fence destroyed, it's the same thing, that it's happened over a period of time."

One of the challenges with Macomb's town-gown geography is that the boundaries of where students are allowed to live haven't ever been truly defined. Students and local families are all mixed in together, with spotty results. If this were a different sort of college town (e.g., Champaign-Urbana) where the campus was largely separated from the rest of the community, students would vandalize properties belonging to other students (rather than the townies). In Macomb, students simply vandalize their neighbors -- who could be anyone.

The case of the missing steel

Macomb likes its new restaurants. A couple years ago, the city got its first-ever Arby's and -- according to (possibly apocryphal) lore -- set a record for greatest opening-day sales for an Arby's in North America. You don't mess with Macomb when it comes to curly fries.

So locals had a lot of similar enthusiasm when, earlier this year, Buffalo Wild Wings announced that it would build a new restaurant in the highly coveted land right in front of Wal-Mart. Construction crews showed up and began prepping the foundation. And then things just . . . stopped. For the past month or so, the site has looked like this:


The Macomb rumor mill went into overdrive, with some locals speculating that the Macomb City Council had denied the restaurant a liquor license. (Wal-Mart sued the city a few years ago when its liquor request was shot down.) But as Nathan Woodside of the Macomb Eagle reported on October 15, liquor wasn't the problem:

Kim Pierce, Macomb Area Economic Development Corporation executive director, said construction has stopped because a batch of steel needed to be back-ordered before excavation could continue.

"When I talked to them a couple weeks ago, they thought the steel was just a couple weeks away, so that basically brings up to right now," Pierce said. "Hopefully that will get delivered in over the weekend and they can start next week."

No word yet on the missing steel. The restaurant was originally scheduled to open sometime in November, but Pierce is quoted later in the article as saying that date has been pushed back until the end of the year. A hungry Macomb stands ready.

Websites about road projects

A couple weeks ago, the governor's office launched a new website to track the expansion/improvement of U.S. Route 67, which cuts through west-central Illinois, linking the Quad Cities to St. Louis.

http://www.dot.state.il.us/us67/index.html

One thing I learned is that the project will involve building a new four-lane bridge over the Illinois River at Beardstown; I'd figured that construction crews would expand the current bridge or simply whittle down traffic to two lanes for that section.

Anyway, the site gives a decent overview but is a little short on maps. Far more detailed ones can be found on the website for Illinois 336 -- the proposed four-lane linking Macomb to Peoria.

http://www.peoriatomacomb.com

A little recognition for our office

I'm not very interested in self-promotion just for its own sake. There's way too much of that in real estate already, and I think most consumers are sick of it, too. The "look at me, please!" thing gets pretty old.

So I thought quite a bit about whether to post a link to this story -- about an award our office recently won for 2006 sales. Among all of the 89 RE/MAX offices in the St. Louis Region, an area encompassing Missouri and the southern half of Illinois, our office averaged the highest number of transactions per agent: 51. (We also won the award in 2005, when we averaged 55 transactions per agent.)

While an award in itself is a nice thing to have, I think the real point of this one is that it demonstrates just how much we've been helping our clients. I look at it this way: In any industry, the busy people are the ones considered to be knowledgeable and hardworking. If your car breaks down and you need to hire a mechanic, for example, you can guess that the person who's doing it full time probably has the necessary training and has fixed the same problem dozens of times for other people.

My automotive expertise may be lacking (though I did once, as a grad assistant, have a professor give me the assignment of refilling her car's windshield wiper fluid, for which I earned high marks), but I'm happy to be part of a team that knows a lot about real estate. And at a current average of 44 transactions per agent for 2007 sales, we're keeping pretty busy this year, too.

Zoning requests that prevailed

One topic I haven't addressed much on here thus far (other than in a general overview I wrote last spring) is zoning in Macomb. That's not because I consider it irrelevant -- quite the opposite, actually -- but because there's so much occurring with it, often in apparently contradictory fashion, that keeping pace with the newest chapters of the story isn't easy. I could probably make zoning my sole topic of this site and still not prevent things from slipping through the gaps.

Last week, Macomb governing bodies made two somewhat surprising zoning decisions. I call them surprising because both involved changing (or at least bending) the zoning rules concerning multi-family housing -- and in Macomb, that almost never happens.

The first decision occurred last Monday, October 1, when the Macomb City Council agreed to change the zoning from single to multi-family for a piece of land at the corner of North Randolph Street and Hickory Grove Road. The owner of the land, the Macomb Country Club, requested the change in order to build two duplexes that would sit on the edge of the club's golf course.

The country club's request was granted by city aldermen, passing 8-1. The lone voice of dissent was from Alderman Ken Zahnle, who was quoted in a story by the Macomb Journal: "This is spot zoning, pure and simple."

Even if you disagree with Zahnle, it's easy to to understand his point. As this Macomb zoning map shows, there isn't any multi-family housing anywhere near this land; the closest multi-family units are some duplexes located on the east end of the country club, on Bayberry Lane.

The other zoning decision occurred two days later, when the Macomb Zoning Board of Appeals agreed to allow Scott Wisslead to construct twin duplexes on his property at 533 N. Randolph. From the Journal:

Developer Scott Wisslead sought a front yard setback variance of ten feet. The city code requires a setback of 25 feet, and Wisslead asked to be allowed to set it at 15 feet.

Community Development Coordinator Ed Basch said the fact that 533 is a corner lot gave Wisslead, in effect, two front yards. "For a duplex, this would be essentially an unbuildable lot if you required him to have two front entrances," he told the board.

Neighbor Cheryl Douglas, at 529 North Randolph, objected to the duplex design featuring second floor living quarters and garages on the first level. "It's going to look like a parking garage," she said. "This is a historic neighborhood. Four of these homes are in the David Badger architectural sketchbook."

Board chair Kevin Wiehardt expressed concern about a need for landscaping on the property. Board member A.J. Bourn moved to table any action until more detailed architectural drawings could be provided.

"This motion is indicative of the aesthetic concerns we all share about this design," said board member Sally Egler.

"The ranch home design provides the most useable living space," Wisslead responded.

But City Attorney Liz Wilhelm told the zoning board that action could not be postponed due to aesthetic considerations alone. Bourn then withdrew his motion, and board member Ron Runser moved to approve the variance.

The board cast a unanimous vote of approval. Basch assured board members that his office had successfully worked with Wisslead before on landscaping issues and that should not be of further concern.

(Runser, incidentally, is a new member of the zoning board. As a citizen, he appeared before the board a year or two ago on behalf of his employer, Schuyler State Bank, which requested permission to turn on an electronic sign located in front of the bank's new building on East Jackson Street. That request was granted, but only after a lot of back and forth between the bank and the zoning board.)

The zoning fights aren't over. Coming up soon is a request to build doctors' offices in a corn field along East Grant Street. The homeowners in that neighborhood have already spoken out against the project.