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Bird advocates say planned Carvana tower is dangerous
A battle is brewing between Carvana and bird advocates who say Carvana's signature transparent glass tower – if built next to Harms Woods in Skokie – will kill thousands of migratory birds.
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A battle is brewing between Carvana and bird advocates who say Carvana's signature transparent glass tower – if built next to Harms Woods in Skokie – will kill thousands of migratory birds.
Nearly 140 feet, almost all glass, and brightly lit, the proposed Carvana tower along the Edens Expressway, across from Old Orchard, has drawn the ire of bird advocates because the site sits right next to Harms Woods, a major thoroughfare for migratory birds.
"It is going to be adjacent to an area that is used by thousands, if not millions of birds every year that both live and fly through during migration – spring and fall," said Annette Prince with Chicago Bird Collision Monitors.
Prince says the proposed tower's combination of transparent glass and bright lights will kill thousands of birds per year, and some Skokie residents have launched an effort to stop it from being built.
"A tower of this sort – all glass, see-through, lighted at night, transparent – it exemplifies all the worst birding threats, and I frankly think it would be an obscenity at this location," said Robert Kusel, a Skokie resident fighting against the proposed tower's construction.
But Carvana has agreed to wrap the bottom third of the tower in a window film that makes the glass visible to birds, agreed to dim portions of the tower's lighting during overnight hours, and argues that the proposed tower is small compared to several other nearby glass buildings.
"We would like to argue that this is going to be the safest building along Harms Woods," Carvana's Bret Sassenberg told the Skokie Plan Commission during a January 6th meeting. "We would be the only protected glass in the neighborhood."
The Skokie Plan Commission has already given Carvana's current proposal the green light for the tower, but the final vote goes to the Skokie Board of Trustees, which is expected to decide the fate of the tower on February 7th.