Three months after the La Grange Board of Trustees unanimously approved tearing down the Jackson Square Antique Mall and replacing it with a 39-unit condo building the fallout is still growing — and it's raising hard questions about how the village handles development decisions.

The board voted in January to greenlight the project at 112 E. Burlington Ave., proposed by La Grange businessman Dan Spain. The approval came despite persistent community opposition, according to the Chicago Tribune. Since then, reporting by Patch has revealed that village officials knew about Spain's condo plan more than seven months before residents found out. A follow-up Patch report in late March found the village had overstated how much advance notice it gave the public about the project.

Spain, who purchased the property from longtime owner Therese O'Sullivan, has not commented publicly on the project's timeline. It is unclear when demolition would begin or when construction could start.

What Residents Fought — and Lost

The Jackson Square building, which supporters describe as a century-old art deco landmark, houses roughly 70 vendors and has long been a centerpiece of downtown La Grange's retail character. An online petition titled "Save Jackson Square" collected thousands of signatures urging village leaders to preserve it.

Residents raised concerns about the building's height, potential parking problems in an already crowded downtown, and setback variances that nearby homeowners said would encroach on their properties, the Tribune reported.

"It has been the thrill of my life to operate a little business out of this place," Mandy Levy, who ran Junkie Vintage out of the mall for four years, told ABC 7 Chicago. "We are jumping at an opportunity to tear it down when it should be repurposed, reused, recycled."

O'Sullivan, who sold the building to Spain, said she explored alternatives before the sale. "We wholeheartedly did explore different options with the building," she told ABC7 Chicago, adding that upgrades would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It's tough though to see it happen, but I think it'll be great."

Push to Change the Rules

In the wake of the approval, La Grange resident Jonathon Robinson brought proposals to the Plan Commission to tighten rules on planned unit developments. Robinson pushed to restrict developments next to single-family homes to three stories "unless there was a 40-foot landscape buffer with no building or paving improvements and with a minimum of two rows of trees planted," the Tribune reported. The Plan Commission largely rejected those proposals in January, and Robinson said he would take them to the full Board of Trustees.

The Jackson Square fight is also playing out as La Grange undertakes a full rewrite of its zoning code — an initiative that could reshape how future projects like this are reviewed. The village's request for proposals for that work closed April 6.