In some ways developers brought this down-zoning movement on themselves. There are rehabs in this area that added density and maintained neighborhood character. See 1254 W Winnemac. If all the density looked like this, they wouldn’t have much of an argument and/or neighbors wouldn’t care.
https://www.atproperties.com/1040673...nois-60640-nei
I think it’s a fair point to not want your block to look like one of those cookie-cutter Lakeview blocks with the same 4 flat over and over again. People in the area were upset when 1441 W Carmen got demo’ed and now the basic Lakeview 6 Flat is going up. Unfortunately there is no legal way to get developers to preserve character for properties that aren’t landmark and won’t qualify for landmark status. Osterman down-zoned the area north of Foster, so of course this group is going to try.
It makes sense to want to save classic housing stock. The reaction to want to save some of these buildings is rationale. The anti-density argument is non-sense.