MorningStar Mission faces resistance on plans for YMCA

A plan to put the former Smith Family YMCA on Briggs Street to new use looks like a long shot amid community opposition and an unwelcome reception for social service projects at City Hall.

The Joliet Zoning Board of Appeals already has given a unanimous vote recommending rejection of the plan, questioning the wisdom of a project that would combine services for children with supportive housing for adults.

The MorningStar Mission Ministries proposal will go to the City Council for a vote Feb. 15 in a crippled state.

The zoning board vote was final in killing plans for a day care, after-school care and summer day camp at the old YMCA building at 1350 S. Briggs St., which closed in February 2021.

The board’s 6-0 vote against the supportive living project means a two-thirds majority would be required for City Council approval at a time when Joliet has stopped another plan for supportive living even before a council vote.

Volunteers of America Illinois this week dropped its plan to build 42 apartments to support women recovering from drug addiction after the city manager made clear he didn’t want it and council approval looked doubtful.

“We’re just waiting to see what’s going to happen,” MorningStar Mission Executive Director Sandi Perzee said Friday.

A wait-and-see approach seems unlikely to turn the tide in MorningStar’s favor. City staff has recommended against the plan. And City Manager James Capparelli isn’t returning Perzee’s phone calls, a brush-off to an organization that’s been serving the poor in Joliet for 113 years.

“I have not been able to speak with the city manager,” said Perzee, who began trying to contact Capparelli in August. “I’ve tried to phone and email. He will not return a phone call. He will not return an email.”

Capparelli could not be reached Friday to comment on the MorningStar plan.

But he did comment Thursday about the decision by VOA Illinois to drop its plan for supportive housing after representative of the group met with him this week.

“I believe Joliet does plenty for the homeless and social services. I believe it’s time for other communities to do some of this,” he said.

Capparelli walked out of the meeting with representatives of VOA Illinois, said Nancy Hughes Moyer, president and CEO of the organization.

“He was ranting,” Hughes Moyer said. “He was standing there and wagging his finger and said, ‘Why don’t you go back to your North Side neighborhood with your ladies?’ ”

Hughes Moyer said Capparelli apparently took the trouble to find out that she lives in a neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago.

“He walked out on us and left us in the room with the city attorney,” she said.

The VOA Illinois project did not face an outcry of opposition from neighbors.

But residents did come to last week’s zoning board meeting to speak against the MorningStar plan.

“We are trying on the south side [of Joliet] to bring up our quality of life, to bring economic development. We can’t have this,” Marge Cepon told the board.

Cepon’s comments reflected an attitude shared at least by some at City Hall that social service projects can hamper business development and hurt the community.

Cepon also was upset that MorningStar Mission never said publicly that it planned to put adult housing at the Briggs Street YMCA when it announced plans for the building last year.

“No information was given out publicly about supportive housing,” Cepon said. “We feel that the wool is being pulled over our eyes.”

MorningStar Mission is known for the shelter and housing it provides for the homeless at its facility on Washington Street. But the housing plan for the former YMCA would be a new program aimed at providing housing and services to the working poor until they can make it on their own.

“This isn’t homeless housing,” Perzee said. “It’s not like a shelter at all. That’s why I could not understand the opposition to it.”

“I don’t understand why people don’t understand that part of it,” Perzee said.

MorningStar Mission wants to create 10 housing units at the former YMCA building. Residents would have to have a job to get in. Counseling would be aimed at preparing the residents to move on to a place of their own after developing budgeting skills and other habits for self-sufficiency.

Among the questions Perzee faced at the zoning board meeting was why not put it somewhere other than Joliet.

“We are looking at other towns to expand and not just in Joliet,” Perzee said Friday. “Until that goes through, I’m not going to say which towns.”