Brookfield Plan Commission frowns on church for 8 Corners

Overcoming some confusion that led to some short-lived drama inside the Brookfield council chamber Thursday night, the village's Plan Commission voted 5-0 to recommend the village board deny preliminary approval for a proposed Methodist church on Grand Boulevard at Eight Corners.

The recommendation came amid accusations of a fix, shouted by two residents in the audience who also opposed the plan, after the Plan Commission mistakenly voted to recommend approval of the proposal.

During the ensuing drama - punctuated by a chest-to-chest standoff between former Village Manager Jim Mann and resident Frank Clarke and defused by Assistant Village Manager Keith Sbiral - Plan Commission members called for reconsideration of the vote.

Just prior to the initial vote, all five Plan Commission members agreed that the proposal should be denied, so their first vote to recommend approval stunned residents in the audience, who overwhelmingly came out against the church.

Linda Sokol Francis, the Brookfield businesswoman who is the patron for the church project, was nonplussed.

"I don't know what happened," she said Friday morning. "They voted yes, the crowd got rowdy, then they voted no. Either way, I'm happy it's going to the village board and it didn't get kept in committee for months and months."

The village board can vote to accept the Plan Commission's recommendation or disregard it. According to Sbiral, the plan could be up for discussion as early as Oct. 11 for the trustees' committee of the whole meeting that night.