‘AMERICA TO ME’
Filmmaker Steve James: Sept. 11.: Ticket info on page 15
JOURNAL W E D N E S D A Y
September 5, 2018 Vol. 39, No. 5 ONE DOLLAR
@oakpark @wednesdayjournal
Follow us Online!
of Oak Park and River Forest
Proposed RF senior facility stirs controversy
Hearing continued after vocal objections from residents By NONA TEPPER Staff Reporter
Following resident outcry over the proposed height, landscaping, impact to property values and more, members of the River Forest Development Review Board extended a public hearing on an application to build a senior home at the intersection of Chicago and Harlem Avenues to Sept. 6, when they will then make their recommendation to the village board. “We have to sort of change some things but be reflective of the character we have. I think the applicant is doing that,” John Houseal, village planner for River Forest, said at a meeting on Aug. 30. “It provides a need within River Forest that isn’t met right now. Residents or family members who need memory care or assisted living can’t find that in the village.” Although village code technically outlaws such facilities from operating anywhere in River Forest, developer Senior Lifestyle and the Kaufman Jacobs investment firm aim to build a four-story, 125-unit senior living home at 800, 814, 818, 822 and 826 N. Harlem Ave. Named The Sheridan at River Forest, it will hold 92 assisted-living and 33 memory care service apartments, mostly one-bedroom See SENIOR FACILITY on page 12
ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer
SPEAKING HER TRUTH: Mary Anne Mohanraj, a notable literary figure and Oak Parker, says she might run for mayor or the Oak Park Board of Trustees.
Author, library board member could run for mayor Mary Anne Mohanraj is well known in literary circles, aims for higher office
By TIMOTHY INKLEBARGER Staff Reporter
The year was 1991 and Mary Anne Mohanraj was a young Sri Lankan American beginning to make a name for herself as a writer – but her writing, which she de-
Wednesday Journal Wednesday Journal
scribed in a recent essay as “smutty and explicit,” came at the protest of her conservative family. In her essay “Breathing Space,” published in August on the online anthology “Unruly Bodies,” Mohanraj describes her mother as “so furious that she alternated between
Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself)
Director of STARZ® Documentary
CONVERSATIONS
“America To Me”
screaming at me and not speaking.” “My father said, ‘You have to take it down. Take it all down, immediately. Take my name off it,’” Mohanraj wrote. “I responded, fighting back frustrated tears, ‘I can’t take it down – it’s not physiSee MOHANRAJ on page 13
Steve James Tuesday, Sept 11 7pm n
Dominican University Performing Arts Center Tickets: $15 • oakpark.com/conversations
$5 Discount for WJ Readers • OakPark.com/conversations • Promo code: WJsub