Chicago's New Zoning Chair Vows to Clear Backlog Fast

Ald. Gilbert Villegas took the chair of Chicago’s Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards this month, inheriting a backlog of more than 100 proposed zoning changes and vowing to clear the pipeline fast.

The 36th Ward alderman’s appointment ended months without a permanent zoning committee leader, a vacancy that stalled dozens of projects waiting on city approval. Villegas replaced Ald. Bennett Lawson of the 44th Ward, who had been serving as interim leader and was also seeking the permanent post.

The committee’s first meeting under Villegas is set for May 6. He said the session will work through 85 to 90 percent of the backlogged items, with a follow-up meeting on May 19 to handle rollover projects and tax amendments on pending ordinances.

That’s a lot of ground to cover fast.

“We’ll hear about 85 to 90% of those projects,” Villegas told WTTW News. “Then on May 19, we’ll have another meeting where we’ll deal with some of those rollover projects as well as some tax amendments on ordinances that need to be moved.”

Chicago’s zoning code is among the most restrictive of any large American city, with a substantial share of residential land locked into single-family designations. That structure has made it harder to build the density advocates say the city needs, and it has pushed some developers to seek relief through the committee Villegas now controls. The Chicago Department of Planning and Development oversees the broader framework in which the zoning committee operates, but the aldermanic committee holds significant gatekeeping authority over what actually moves to a full council vote.

Villegas was direct about his intentions. He said he wants to help developers “get things built quickly so we can realize the much-needed property tax revenue in order to fund government services.” His framing tied zoning decisions explicitly to the city’s fiscal pressure, a connection that council members on both ends of the ideological spectrum have acknowledged even when they disagree on the remedy.

At last Wednesday’s council meeting, Villegas recognized Lawson by name, calling the vice chair “a wealth of knowledge” and signaling he wants to keep the relationship functional despite the competition for the seat.

The politics behind the appointment were layered. City Council’s Black Caucus backed Villegas in part because his move to zoning freed up his former post, chair of the Committee on Economic, Capital and Technological Development, for Ald. Derrick Curtis of the 18th Ward. Curtis is a Black Caucus member in his third term. The arrangement let the caucus place one of its own at the head of the economic committee without a direct confrontation over the zoning seat itself.

Villegas was candid about how that calculus worked. “What we didn’t want to do was set precedence around allowing freshmen the ability to have a powerful committee like zoning,” he said, referring to Lawson. “Here was an opportunity to promote a colleague of mine who’s in his third term as well.”

Lawson, despite losing the bid, stays on as vice chair. His institutional knowledge of the committee’s backlog gives him a practical role regardless of the title outcome, and Villegas acknowledged that directly.

The broader context matters here. Chicago is competing for large-scale private investment against Sun Belt cities that don’t carry the same zoning constraints, tax burdens, or political complexity. Several megaprojects have been circling the city’s development pipeline for years, waiting on council action. Zoning committee logjams have cost the city real money in delayed property tax receipts, a problem that compounds against the backdrop of a structural budget deficit the Johnson administration has been managing since taking office.

Villegas’ message on taking the chair was blunt. Chicago is open for business, he said, and the committee’s May schedule is meant to prove it rather than just say it.

Getting through 85 to 90 percent of 100-plus backlogged items in a single meeting is an ambitious target for a committee that hasn’t formally convened in months. How many of those items sail through on May 6 and how many get deferred again will be the first real test of whether the new chair’s posture translates into results. The May 19 session is already built into the schedule as a pressure valve, which suggests Villegas and his staff are realistic about the limits of even a long day at 121 N. LaSalle.