Both Brookfield and Riverside are decrying the Building Up Illinois Developments plan proposed by Gov. JB Pritzker, with officials saying the proposal to overhaul zoning laws across the state would have negative consequences at the local level.
Pritzker announced the plan, also known as BUILD, during his State of the State and budget address in February, where he named local zoning as a barrier against building new housing developments that he said will be necessary to meet statewide demand.
“The project for middle class renewal at the University of Illinois issued a report last summer showing that we will need to build 227,000 more homes by 2030 to keep up with demand. In many places, local regulations have made it too difficult and costly to build new housing,” Pritzker said. “The great news is we have developers ready to build homes, and we have Illinoisans who need them. It doesn’t get done because of these regulations.”
But Brookfield and Riverside, alongside other municipalities, have come out against the plan, saying its sweeping changes to zoning laws fail to account for the expertise of municipal staff and officials who have been responsible for creating and enforcing local regulations.
Each town’s village board has passed a resolution supporting the local authority of municipalities to zone their communities and encouraging state leaders to work with local governments rather than going over them.
The June 2025 report, by economist Frank Manzo IV and professor Robert Bruno, found that issues with housing affordability in Illinois have grown since the COVID-19 pandemic while the state faces a shortage of about 142,000 homes today. In order to meet current and future demands, it says the state must build 227,000 units by 2030, a point the governor reiterated.
Pritzker described his plan as “an ambitious slate of reforms designed to eliminate unnecessary barriers and lower costs for housing construction, produce a wider range of family-friendly housing types and streamline construction processes.”
It would do so by enabling the construction of two-, three- and four-family homes on lots now zoned only for single-family housing, eliminating parking requirements based on the number of tenants and permitting property owners to lease out detached accessory units, sometimes known as granny flats.
According to NPR Illinois, proponents see BUILD as a successful plan to address the state’s problem with affordable housing by cutting costs and making it easier to build new developments.
But in Brookfield and Riverside, local officials are opposing the plan’s sweeping changes to local zoning law.
“I think it’s a complete and unnecessary overreach by state government, and I question their motives. I think the stated purpose is to eliminate bureaucratic red tape, but I think that’s a very dangerous characterization of local authority, safety [measures] and other measures that are being removed in this proposed bill,” Brookfield President Michael Garvey said. “Illinois is a very large state, and to provide universal zoning standards and universal criteria doesn’t make sense at all.”
“[BUILD] revolves primarily around the taking away of local control over zoning and land use. We believe that the strength of Riverside and a lot of communities is that our residents, our volunteer elected officials, we know what’s best for our community,” Riverside President Doug Pollock said. “We really don’t believe that an affordable housing policy can be effective without local input. We appreciate that the state is trying to address the affordable housing problem … but an effective solution needs to involve local municipalities.”
Each village’s resolution directed the respective village clerk to forward a copy to the Illinois Municipal League, a statewide association of local leaders that has advocated against BUILD in the name of preserving municipal housing authority. The wording of Brookfield’s resolution seems to have been based on a model resolution drafted by the IML while Riverside’s expressed similar sentiments.
“I’m hoping that the state will modify its approach to affordable housing. As I said, our resolution acknowledges the problem,” Pollock said. “Any solutions need to be collaborative with local government rather than a one-size-fits-all mandate from the state.”
“We’re working with our representatives through the Illinois Municipal League and the West Central Municipal Conference and the lobbyists we have in Springfield to get them to slow down and stop this so we can talk about more reasonable measures,” Garvey said. “The bureaucratic red tape explanation, I don’t think is valid. The state’s the expert on bureaucratic red tape. To say they’re going to teach local government on how to eliminate it doesn’t make sense.”
