Glen Ellyn President Diane McGinley bids goodbye to village

Glen Ellyn Village President Diane McGinley is winding down her final days in office, reflecting on a tenure defined by downtown development.

McGinley will step down at the start of the new year, four months before her term expires, to move to Texas with her family. She announced earlier this year that she wasn’t seeking a second term.

At McGinley’s last board meeting, trustees unanimously approved plans for a five-story, $30 million apartment building on the site of the long-shuttered McChesney and Miller grocery store at the northwest corner of Crescent Boulevard and Glenwood Avenue.

It’s the third major apartment project to move ahead in the downtown core since McGinley was sworn in as village president nearly four years ago. A streetscape redesign that would rebuild roads, reconfigure parking and add to the downtown ambience also is in the pipeline.

“There’s over $100 million in private investment going into our downtown. There’s $60 million in public investment going into the downtown, and that is amazing,” McGinley said. “Our downtown needed a refresher. It needs updated streets and sidewalks and expansion to make it more walkable and accessible for the businesses.”

The unanimous approval of the Glenwood Station apartment complex stands in sharp contrast to other developments that proved contentious.

The Apex mixed-use building under construction at Main Street and Hillside Avenue provoked outcry and an opposition group calling itself Save Main. Tensions carried over to some board meetings, fueling a debate on how to balance density and housing growth with the village’s historic character.

McGinley said she took the helm of village government with the goal of engaging residents earlier in the development process and widely advertising design plans.

“Looking back, I think we made progress,” she said. “I think a lot more progress needs to be made but we were able to make some changes, and I have seen improvements.

“I think the groundwork is there to keep moving forward,” McGinley said.

In place of an architectural review commission that disbanded, the village started an ad hoc, rotating group of three commercial architects to volunteer their feedback on development proposals. Glenwood Station is the first large-scale project that came before the architect group for input. South Bend, Indiana-based Holladay Properties is the developer.

“We’ve tried to take comments and really listen and incorporate it, and I’m feeling like we’ve optimized this thing,” Holladay Vice President T. Drew Mitchell said.