Marengo, IL Planning and Zoning Recap: August 17, 2026

The Marengo Planning and Zoning Commission split evenly Monday night on a request to rezone three parcels at Prospect and Prairie for a 24-unit apartment building, and the tie sends the request to the City Council without a recommendation.

A motion to deny the rezoning and the three variances that go with it failed on a 2-2 vote. That is not a recommendation to deny and it is not a recommendation to approve. The zoning code requires four concurring votes to decide in favor of an applicant, so with four members voting the petition needed every one of them.

That does not mean the council receives nothing. Under the code, when the commission does not recommend that a variation be granted, granting it takes a two-thirds vote of the City Council rather than a simple majority.

Two of the commission's seven members were absent, and one recused because he is one of the applicants. That left four voting.

The commission also voted unanimously to recommend rezoning 605 E. Grant Highway from residential to general business, and adjourned at 9:11 p.m. after a meeting of just over two hours.

Disclosure: Travis Coudal is a Marengo Weekly contributor and a candidate for Ward 4 alderperson. He spoke at both of Monday's hearings.

On the Prospect and Prairie request he did not tell the commission how it should vote, but he argued against two objections, saying that in his view some of the concerns about the railroad tracks were a little unfounded and that the rail-manufacturing argument was a little overblown. He said the HUM Trail runs along those same tracks on the far side of them, so treating the tracks as a safety problem would make the whole trail unsafe too. He said the town has no rail station and that he believed the city would not want one there. The applicants' attorney began her response by saying she agreed about the railroad, without saying who she was agreeing with. Later in the meeting a member described the trail as abutting the property itself rather than the railroad. The objection he answered on rail was about freight access for a small manufacturer, which needs a siding rather than a station.

On 605 E. Grant Highway he told the room the property had served as a business for many years, and asked the commission to confirm the request would bring an existing use into compliance rather than change it, which is the exchange reported below. This recap was written by Marengo Weekly and reviewed and approved by editor Justin Bounds.

What Was Actually Being Asked

The applicants are Amanda Damisch and Nick Conro, who took title to all three parcels on a single deed recorded in 2025. Damisch is a Ward 1 alderperson. Conro sits on the Planning and Zoning Commission.

They want to combine the parcels into a single site of about 1.2 acres and build one three-story building of up to 24 units: six efficiencies, twelve one-bedrooms and six two-bedrooms. The land is zoned M, manufacturing, and the request is to rezone it to R-5, multiple family residential.

Rezoning alone does not get the building built, which is why three variances travel with it. The one that matters most is lot size. R-5 requires 5,000 square feet of lot per dwelling unit, which for 24 units means 120,000 square feet. The site is 52,475. Without the variance the parcel supports about ten units, so the variance is not a detail attached to the proposal. It is the proposal.

The other two concern parking. One would cut the number of required spaces: the published notice and the packet described the request as a cut from 48 spaces to 36, while the site plan and the hearing itself used 38. The other would allow parking in the required rear yard, and is written as reducing a setback from 25 feet to five. The county planner's report flags that wording, noting the code simply bars parking in the required rear yard and that the 25 feet is a building setback rather than the required yard, which by the report's account runs about 80 feet to the rear property line.

Not everything was in front of the commission. Consolidating the three lots into one, and three separate variances from the city's landscaping rules, were set to go directly to the City Council. The city administrator wrote that he had recommended that route, citing the city attorney's opinion and the one related provision in the subdivision ordinance, which he noted speaks to dividing land rather than consolidating it. The applicants' attorney told the commission those items had been peeled off the application by the city's administration, not by her.

The Recusal

Before the item opened, the chair said on the record that he had asked Conro to recuse himself because Conro is one of the applicants. Conro left his seat and sat in the audience for the hearing. The chair welcomed him back to the commission roughly ninety minutes later, after the item closed.

Neither applicant presented the request or gave testimony. Their attorney, Olivia Dirig, was sworn and presented alone, answered the commission's questions, and responded to public comment. When the commission asked whether the petitioners would accept particular conditions, she put those questions to them before answering.

The Case the Applicants Made

Dirig's argument was that the site cannot realistically be used for what it is zoned for. The parcel is long and narrow, bounded by the railroad corridor and public rights of way, and she said those limits apply to whoever owns it and are not anything the applicants created. It has sat vacant a long time under manufacturing zoning, she said, and manufacturing is not coming to it. She argued the city has a documented housing shortage, particularly in smaller units; that multifamily is closer in character to the single-family homes next door than a factory would be; and that the 2025 comprehensive plan supports moving downtown-fringe land toward multifamily.

On parking, she gave a ratio of one space per efficiency, one and a half per one-bedroom and two per two-bedroom, which across the 24 units comes to 36. The site plan lays out 38. She said the architect found that 48 spaces would leave the site with nothing but asphalt, eliminating setbacks, pedestrian paths and open space, and that fewer spaces also means less hard surface for stormwater to run off. Realistic demand across all 24 units, she said, is 27 to 33 vehicles.

Where the Commission Pushed Back

A commissioner asked who would absorb the cost of extending sanitary sewer mains across Prairie Street, which the project needs. The answer was that the owner would absorb the majority of it.

A commissioner disputed the central premise directly, saying the parcel would be well suited to a startup manufacturer or a machine shop, and that they had never seen it properly marketed, only a small for-sale sign on the building. Dirig's reply was that if the parcel were suited to that use, it would already be in it.

A commissioner who had enlarged the comprehensive plan's map in the packet pointed out that the future land use map still shows this parcel as commercial. Dirig agreed that it does, and argued the plan's direction is nonetheless toward residential. The same commissioner noted that rezoning would leave the manufacturing parcel to the west an island, a point a neighbor would make again during public comment.

Another asked whether the building would be subsidized housing. Dirig said that is not the intent, and explained that a landlord cannot refuse a tenant for holding a Section 8 voucher, which is different from a building being built as Section 8 housing.

Asked how a half space works in practice, she said spaces would be assigned and enforced, and that most people in a one-bedroom do not need two. Pressed on guests, she said a prohibition on overnight guests in a lease is not uncommon, and that daytime visitors park on the street in single-family neighborhoods too. One speaker disputed the ratio directly, saying it now commonly takes two incomes to live and that two people in an efficiency is the norm rather than the exception. Another said street parking in the area is already full and drivers are being ticketed.

A member asked about a seven-space discrepancy between drawings. Dirig first answered that the application had been submitted at 36 and the architect later found additional spaces, which is where 38 came from. The member clarified that the question was about a different drawing, one showing seven more spaces west of the driveway. Dirig said that version shows 45, and that going that high would cut substantially into green space. The county planner's report treats those seven spaces as the applicants' own demonstration that they could potentially reduce the request from 48 down to 45, and flags the inconsistency between the application's 36 and the site plan's 38.

Asked whether landscaping could screen the height, Dirig said it is very difficult to plant a tree that covers a three-story building, then redirected the exchange herself because landscaping belongs to the council, and the dais agreed. No height variance was requested.

Public Comment

Nine people spoke to the item. Marengo Weekly does not name residents who speak at public comment.

The owner of the manufacturing property directly west said the rezoning would leave that parcel an island. A lot further west had already gone from manufacturing to residential, that owner said, which changed the setbacks applying to the manufacturing property and left less room to expand. Doing it again here would compound that and devalue what they own. The same speaker asked whether the fire department had reviewed access to the rear parking area with cars in it, asked where stormwater running off the new hard surface would go, and disputed a premise of the application, saying the site has been vacant about a year rather than the long stretch the applicants describe.

Several speakers objected to the height. One said there is effectively one three-story building in Marengo and this one would not fit; another said they had not realized the proposal was three stories.

One speaker argued the parcel should stay in manufacturing because of the rail, saying rail access is hard for a small manufacturer to find and the property had never really been marketed for it. Another asked what the project would mean for the HUM Trail, which runs behind the site.

Residents on the street backing the site raised a collapsing fence between their yard and the parcel, traffic, and strangers in a quiet neighborhood. A speaker who gave an address on Grant Highway described three sewer backups in a basement there and said the city's lines are not built for this.

One speaker described having worked on two other buildings in town, and said about $250,000 was spent at one of them on underground water storage so the parking the city required could be met. The same speaker pointed to a third building, a restaurant put up by someone else, where the owner had to spend $300,000 or $400,000 on infrastructure. The standards exist for a reason, that speaker said, and this project was being given a break that others had to buy. On the parking itself the speaker was direct: there is room for it on the site, it just takes the money to put storage underground. The same speaker warned that with no curb and gutter around that corner, runoff goes into the sewer drains and the street, and rejected the premise that the site would absorb it: there is no green space left on the plan, the speaker said. It is all building.

One of the objections had support in the written record. The county planner's report calls the parking numbers inconsistent and says the two-space minimum, together with the requested variance, does not account for households of more than two people or for guests. The speaker who said the parcel had never really been marketed made the point twice in the same turn, adding that anyone shopping for property in town over the past couple of years would not have seen this one listed.

A letter from residents who could not attend was read into the record by an alderman, who told the room it was not necessarily his own opinion and that he had edited it lightly. He represents the ward and will have a vote on the rezoning when it reaches the council. The letter raised noise, traffic, construction disruption, water and sewer capacity, taxes to pay for any upgrades, and children near the tracks with a crossing guard only at school times. Its writers said they were not opposed to a house or two on the site, or even a couple of duplexes.

The letter and one speaker both raised that one applicant sits on the City Council and the other on this commission. The letter said its writer hoped that would not affect the eventual vote. The speaker called it problematic, and said the city has zoning rules for a reason.

Not everyone was opposed. One longtime resident and business owner said the project did not affect them either way, that the town needs growth and more business, and asked the commission to explain how the parking count worked.

The Conditions That Never Got Attached

For about twenty minutes before the vote, the commission worked on conditions it might attach to a recommendation, and that discussion is the clearest picture of what it was actually worried about. Members raised requiring landscaping to comply with the code, a privacy fence toward the west and the HUM Trail, and a deadline to build, which was negotiated in the open and came back to 48 months for the whole project.

The applicants' side accepted some and refused others. Dirig accepted a landscaping condition once it was reworded so that agreeing to it would not waive the variances still pending before the council. She would not commit to more parking, saying she could not promise it without knowing what stormwater rules would require. She did not accept a six-foot privacy fence, treating it as a landscaping question belonging to the council; a member said later in the discussion that they had asked for a fence and been told no. And when the deadline negotiation turned to also cutting the building's unit count, she gave the only hard no of the night, saying she could not agree to finish in 48 months on a smaller plan because the drawings would take months to redo and re-permit.

A member asked whether the applicants would consider making it 55 and older, saying that would alleviate the concerns speakers had raised about children. Dirig said that is a different business plan, and noted that a 55-and-older building means one resident aged 55 or over rather than a building of retirees.

None of it was attached. The motion that followed was a motion to deny, and it failed.

The Vote

A commissioner moved to deny the rezoning and all three variances, saying the change would corner the last manufacturing lot in that area between three residential zones and create a hardship for its owner, that the parcel had not really been marketed for what it is zoned for, and that cutting the lot size to less than half of the standard was too large a departure.

The motion was seconded, the chair confirmed it was a motion to deny, and the roll was called. Two members voted to deny and two voted against denying. The chair observed that the commission was even, and that it would forward no recommendation to the council.

The council is not bound by a commission recommendation in any case. But the absence of one is not neutral. Under the zoning code, granting the three variances now takes a two-thirds vote of the council rather than a simple majority. When the package reaches that body, one of the two applicants will be sitting on it. At Monday's hearing the chair asked Conro to recuse before the item opened, and he did.

Marengo Weekly does not seek comment for meeting recaps. This account comes from the hearing itself and the meeting packet, and no one named here was asked to respond to it.

The administrator's memo had made that routing conditional on a recommendation from this commission on the rezoning and the zoning variances. None issued, and what that means for those items is now an open question.

605 E. Grant Highway: A Grocery, and Six Variances

The commission voted unanimously to recommend rezoning 605 E. Grant Highway from R-3, one family residential, to B-2, general business, along with six variances. The property sits at the southeast corner of Grant Highway and Maple Street and changed hands in February 2026. The application is in the name of Casas Sicuani LLC. The city administrator's memo names the petitioner as Liset Evans, and county parcel records list the same name as owner of record, with a mailing address in Rockford. The person sworn and speaking at the hearing identified himself as Dan Evans and as part of the ownership.

The city administrator's memo describes the proposed use as a small grocery store and market. At the hearing the petitioner described it instead as a convenience store, and said that even if it did not become one the property would still need to be B-2. He described the building as a former gas station with the tanks removed.

The variances describe conditions that already exist. Four of them concern the building, which the county planner's report says has stood for several decades and pre-dates the current zoning: the front, corner side and side yard setbacks, and the distance from the highway centerline. The other two concern the lot itself, which is 13,199 square feet where B-2 requires 15,000 and is narrower than the code asks. The same report says city records show the lot has been in this configuration since at least the 1970s.

The property's permit history runs back almost fifty years. A special use permit allowing offices in a residential district was granted in 1978, expired in 2003, was reinstated in 2009 after the lapse was discovered, and expired again in 2019. The county planner's report, repeated in the city administrator's memo, says it is unclear how, but the property stayed in non-residential use during that gap. The county planner added that the uses in that history are consistent with B-2, that the parcel could have been considered for rezoning when the second permit lapsed, and that under today's code the use the applicants want would not be suitable for a special use permit, which is why rezoning is the route.

Asked from the floor to confirm the request was about bringing an existing use into compliance rather than changing the use, the dais answered by reciting the permit history. That question came from Marengo Weekly's own Travis Coudal, as noted in the disclosure above, and the framing drew no explicit agreement and no objection. Earlier in the hearing, staff had reminded the room that the request was to rezone the property, and that any use allowed in B-2 could potentially locate in the building.

Two neighbors objected. One, who said they had once had an office in the building and who had described sewer backups during the earlier hearing, told the commission the lot has effectively two usable spaces plus an accessible one, that Grant Highway is narrow enough at that point that dirt spills off the curb into the road, and that the businesses that have occupied it were low-traffic uses like a law office and an alterations shop rather than anything with delivery trucks. That speaker argued the zoning should match what the location can actually carry, and pointed out that the fast-food businesses along that stretch have dedicated turn lanes and wider road, one of them having been required to build a turn lane. Another, who owns the property directly behind, described a semi trailer hanging half into Maple Street while trying to turn around there, and objected on sight lines, saying the building already sits close enough to the road to block the view.

Much of the discussion turned on what the property could be if the zoning did not change. The answer from the dais was that a business could not operate there without a special use permit, though a home occupation would be allowed if it met the code's requirements. Parking and accessibility would both be settled through the building permit.

During the discussion the commission was told that changing the zoning without also approving the variances would create non-conformities, since the variances describe conditions that already exist on the lot and the building. A member later said that denying the variances would create a hardship for the owner because of the lot itself. The motion that followed covered the rezoning and all six variances together.

Conro, who had returned to his seat, seconded the motion and voted on this item. It carried 5-0.

Also From Monday

• Staff told the commission that staff and city representatives will be meeting in the coming weeks to review the zoning code, identify deficiencies in it, and possibly recommend changes.
• The agenda listed minutes from April 20, 2026 for approval. After a correction from the dais, the minutes actually before the commission were from February 17, 2026. The chair noted an error in them, in which a member was listed both as absent and as voting, said the clerk had already made the correction, and they were approved as amended.

Both rezoning requests now go to the City Council. The commission's next regular meeting is Monday, September 21. Agendas and packets are posted at cityofmarengo.com.