Frankly speaking

heitzman? who the heck is heitzman?

Frank Pinc/Wednesday Journal

What¹s old is new: Frank Heitzman works on an architectural model in his Marion Street studio.

Is Frank Heitzman the most opinionated man in Oak Park? In a town as finicky and fussy as ours, that's a debatable point. But there's no denying Heitzman, a local architect, a key member of the St. Edmund Preservation Society and one of the founding fathers of the Oak Park Architectural League (OPAL), is among the village's busiest tastemakers and aesthetes. In the last year, he's found himself at the center-some might say insinuated himself into the center-of the debates over proposed renovations at St. Edmund, and, through OPAL, over the designs of the new Emerson and Julian middle schools. More recently, Heitzman and OPAL entered the fray over Oak Park Hospital's plan to build a new medical office building on its south Oak Park property, urging developers to consider ways to orient the hospital project toward Harlem Avenue.

While OPAL and Heitzman received their public and political baptism a few years back in lobbying for changes in the Taxman Corporation's retail development at Lake and Harlem, their shared vision of Oak Park as an architecturally and historically significant town worth preserving means they'll continue to be butting in whenever somebody plans to erect a new public building or tear down an old one somewhere in Oak Park. With the hospital having last week received the go-ahead from the village council, with the District 97 school board having approved plans to move forward with their middles schools as designed, and with St. Edmund's poised to proceed with renovations to the church's chapel space, Heitzman is looking toward tomorrow's preservation skirmishes. And topping his list, right now, is a tentative plan at Oak Park and River Forest High School to replace the 1920s football stadium with a new, and decidedly less stately, home of Huskie football. But that's down the road a piece.

So just who the heck is Frank Heitzman and wherever is he coming from? And just how did a downstate native, whose grandfather owned the local newspaper and whose dad was the local postmaster, come to be the voice of Oak Park's past and the jostling advocate for it's future?
 
 

An 'ideal' small town

It didn't hurt, either, that Oak Park has long been famous as ground zero for the Prairie School of American architecture. Like other local architects, Heitzman liked the idea of living down the street from Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio and of striding the same streets the great man once strode or down which he once tooled in his "Cherokee red" roadsters.

But what's kept Heitzman and his family in Oak Park is the small town feel of the village and its historic housing stock. And it's this sense of small town America, a place with a "viable downtown" and "sidewalks you can walk on" that currently guides Heitzman's efforts as one of Oak Park's chief preservationists.

"What guides my sense of what Oak Park is is the idea of the traditional small town," Heitzman said. "I think Oak Park is everybody's ideal of what a small town should be."

For one, Andres Duany, the father of architecture's "New Urbanism" school, agrees and has based a number of his designs for ground-up housing and commercial developments on an Oak Park-type model.

As Heitzman and his fellow OPAL members are fond of saying, "This is Oak Park, not Schaumburg." But as communities throughout the nation, including those in the Chicago area, look toward their futures, increasingly they are trying to build what we've already got. 

"Even Schaumburg is trying to be like Oak Park," Heitzman said, of that town's efforts to invent a downtown.

But while so many others are looking toward Oak Park as a model of future development, Heitzman said he sees a serious challenge to Oak Park's architectural legacy in local attitudes that value new over old. In particular, Heitzman singled out the position of the District 97 school board on their plans to build the new Emerson and Julian buildings.

"It's an attitude expressed by [District 97 school board member] Ann Courter at the last board meeting," Heitzman said. "She said, 'We don't want schools that are antiquated,' and I think what she meant by that, and we hear this all the time, is that, 'We don't want old; we want new things.' That's a constant challenge for people who really like old things."

And Heitzman counts himself proudly among those who really like old things. 

"I've spent my career making old buildings usable," he said.
 
 

Old vs. new

  "The old over new argument is pretty prevalent," Heitzman said. "It's the same attitude Father Ruiz has, that [the St. Edmund sanctuary] is just an old church that needs to be fixed up. There's really an non-appreciation for preservation."

  But at least one recipient of Heitzman's criticism and architectural suggestions disagrees. District 97 superintendent John Fagan said he and the district's middle school design committee (both have drawn heat from Heitzman and OPAL) have not been blind to Oak Park's tradition of architectural excellence.

"I think we have been doing a lot of good thinking," Fagan said of the middle school designs. "OPAL worries about the same thing we do: scale. How will these buildings fit in their neighborhoods? We've spent time with the Historical Society and asked would they fit?"

Fagan said he and the rest of the District 97 staff have been attentive to the suggestions offered by OPAL members but received most of the criticisms too far along in the building process to incorporate them all into the new buildings.

"The only drawback," Fagan said about suggestions made by Heitzman and OPAL, "is that they came late in the process, at the later stages in the design."

And if there's another drawback to the criticism, Fagan said, it's in the way some of the comments have been directed toward board members.

"When people have strong opinions about what you're trying to do, sometimes their tone may chase you off at first," he said. "We've tried to stay very positive. I don't think Frank always starts off positive-his first letter to us was pretty critical-but I don't think things have been too bad."

Asked if he thought Heitzman was meddlesome or that he and OPAL were piling on at a time the district is facing criticism from many quarters on the middle school plan, Fagan said, "I don't think we've been treated any more harshly than anybody else; I remember the Taxman deal; it's the same with Oak Park Hospital; it's the same way everybody has been treated."
 
 

No vigilance equals currency exchanges

"Architects usually don't want to ruffle feathers, politically," Bey said. "It can cost them lost commissions. But I like the fact that Frank is willing to jump into the fray. Activism is good and can bring good."

Bey said there is a strong legacy of activism among Chicago-based architects, noting Harry Weese, who designed Oak Park's village hall, made a career of slinging arrows and cajoling for preservation efforts.

"Oak Park's stock in trade is its housing stock," Bey said, "and the moment you stop being vigilant, you get currency exchanges."

Bey, who earlier this year moderated an OPAL forum on the middle school plans, said he thinks Oak Park "is at great risk of losing the things that make it special; we need guys to beat the drum."

Of Heitzman, he said, "We need 12 more like him, if you ask me."

Lest he and OPAL be cast as malcontents or renegade grousers, however, Heitzman said the group is currently planning to create an award they will give out to local builders and architects who have, or plan to, contribute to Oak Park's architectural tapestry. While the details are as yet unfinished, Heitzman said the plan is to have OPAL members travel around town and make nominations for the award-there will be no lobbying from would-be recipients-and then to recognize the efforts of those who've done something positive for the future of architecture in the village.

"I think we've gotten a bad reputation for always criticizing," Heitzman said. "But we're trying to be helpful; we want to show aesthetics are extremely important, that function and beauty should go hand in hand."
 

And another thing ... All right, so Frank Heitzman is opposed to renovations at St. Edmund, has objected to the design of the new Julian and Emerson middle schools, and recently criticized Oak Park Hospital's plans for a new medical office building on their south Oak Park campus. But what does he really think about current events in Oak Park? On a motel for the east parcel of the South Oak Park Post Office property: "I never thought a motel there would be the right use for that site." On the recent move of the so-called Hemingway Interim-House: "The house should have stayed on the [original] site; it's one of the oldest homes in Oak Park." On news that Oak Park will soon welcome at least two more currency exchanges to town: "I'd like to see currency exchanges banned from Oak Park; we have plenty of banks here; people ought to be taught to use banks."