Thursday May 16th,  2013 – 6:30pm, St. Helen School Cafeteria

Officers and UVNA Board Members in attendance:

• President: Paul Matwyshyn
• Vice President: Harriet Siller
• Secretary: Samantha Arnold
• Board Members:  George Matwyshyn

UVNA Officers Election

We were planning to hold elections for UVNA officers but we did not have a quorum of active members in attendance.  We are postponing the elections until the June meeting – please make sure you membership dues are paid up so you can vote, and please attend the next meeting.

Proposed Church Renovation Plan Review

Orest Baranyk of Baranyk Associates, Ltd. an architectural firm in Park Ridge IL, contacted our president the day of the meeting to present initial plans for the renovation of  St John’s Lutheran Church,  913 – 925 N. Hoyne Avenue.  The developer has purchased the property – purchased back in February – and just learned that they need to speak with the neighborhood association as part of the process.   In order to give all members due notice,  we did not take a vote on the proposed changes that they would like to make to the property and will do that at the next membership meting.  Highlights of some of the renovations they would like to make to the property:

• Keep both the church and the school buildings – covert to 9 condos (church), 10 (school)
• parking underneath both buildings
• Said they ‘cannot replace’ the stained glass windows but will replace other windows.
• Completely gut interiors
• Asking for a 12-ft curb cut on Hoyne for entrance/exit to the underground parking structures as  if they enter/exit through the alley they will have to cut into the buildings
• Asking for a zoning change from RT4 to RT5 to allow for 19 units – otherwise they can old build 17 units.

Come to the next meeting to hear the full presentation and/or sent questions/comments ahead of time to info@uvna.org

For reference here are the meeting notes from the presentation by the previous development firm who was interested in the building last year.

Church or Architectural Neigborhhood Walk

We are still working on hosting an architectural tour of our neighborhood this year – mostly likely in the fall, the weekend of September 28th.  We have a few volunteers to assist in the planning of the event and communications to neighborhood churches and institutions, but we need a couple more volunters and an organizer .  The UVNA officers will be working with the committee as well, and the Chicago Architecture Foundation has indicated that they are interested in looking into how we might work together on the event as well.   As always, contact info@uvnal.org if you are interested or have questions.

Community Safety & CAPS Meetings

The next CAPS meeting for our beat is Tuesday June 4th, at St. Helen School on Augusta.  The CAPS facilitators continue to share information with us from the CPD as it becomes available and we try to get that information out to our neighborhood. One of our members has proposed creating a safety committee to consolidate CAPS and other Ukrainian Village neighbor crime and safety information so that we can more keep everyone in our are informed as to current events, including those of our residents who may not use online social media tools like Facebook.