A proposal to build 297 luxury apartments, including 30 affordable units, has repeatedly stalled at the urging of 41st ward Ald. Anthony Napolitano.

The City Council’s zoning committee punted a third time Tuesday on a proposal to amend a Planned Development near the Cumberland Blue Line, holding in place the final regulatory barrier for construction of a 297-unit luxury apartment complex.

The seven-story building would join an existing 12-story Marriott hotel at 8525 W. Higgins Rd., facing the Kennedy Expressway to the south and the border of suburban Park Ridge to the north. Another slice of the property would be reserved for a new office building, once a potential tenant is found.

The plan passed muster with the Chicago Plan Commission in July, but since then 41st Ward Ald. Anthony Napolitano has repeatedly asked his colleagues in the council to hold it from final approval, saying his constituents are opposed to “adding more density to an already dense area.”

Although developer Glenstar O’Hare, LLC, is not proposing to change the underlying zoning for the 22-acre property, the council is required to sign off on any proposal approved by the plan commission. Green-lighting the plan over Napolitano’s objection would buck a longstanding council tradition giving aldermen the final say over proposals in their own wards.

The new apartments raised few objections when they were first proposed last December. They would include studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, with the cheapest starting around $1,200. Complete with an indoor pool and “spa-type facilities,” the building would be designed with an eye toward young professionals working near O’Hare, according to Glenstar O’Hare principal Larry Debb.

The proposal was approved by the Chicago Plan Commission in July, but it needs a green-light from the City Council before the developer can apply for construction permits.

In January, the plan scored the unanimous approval of the 41st Ward Zoning Advisory Committee, whose signal Napolitano vowed to follow while he campaigned for alderman in 2015.

But after a proposal to build a 100-unit mixed-income apartment complex at 5150 N. Northwest Hwy. in Jefferson Park sent ripples of backlash across the Northwest Side this spring, Napolitano changed his tune.

The alderman said in July that “thousands” of his constituents had called to oppose the Higgins proposal, and he added in an announcement last week that the proposal had seen “tremendous feedback.”

But when the plan commission and zoning committee respectively considered the apartments in July and September, no residents signed up to speak against them.

The alderman cited the new building’s potential to exacerbate overcrowding at the nearby Dirksen Elementary School, which is already near 150 percent capacity.

A study commissioned by the developer suggested that the new apartments would have a negligible impact on Dirksen, according to Glenstar O’Hare principal Larry Debb.

But even one new student would be “too many” for a school hosting more than 950 students in a building barely built for 500, Napolitano said in August.

When the proposal first came before the council’s zoning committee in September, the alderman also objected to the inclusion of 30 affordable units in the development.

Glenstar O’Hare had originally agreed to include only seven units on-site and to pay $2.9 million in lieu of putting 23 affordable units on site, as mandated under the city’s 2015 Affordable Requirements Ordinance.

After that meeting, Napolitano told DNAinfo reporter Heather Cherone that the sudden increase in affordable units was “dirty” and designed “to tug on the heartstrings of the [zoning] committee on behalf of affordable housing.”

Monica Dillon, a member of the activist group Neighbors for Affordable Housing in Jefferson Park, was prepared to testify at the September zoning committee meeting before the matter was deferred.

A resident of the 41st ward, Dillon said her daughter, who lives with a disability, has struggled to find an accessible home that she can afford.

“I definitely think there are families like mine who could benefit from having a few units of affordable housing in the 41st ward,” Dillon said. “It’s by design that there‘s hardly been any affordable housing built on the Northwest Side, and we think it’s time to redesign these communities to be more inclusive.”

No affordable units have been built in the ward since the passage of the 2015 ordinance.

Dillon said Neighbors for Affordable Housing in Jefferson Park asked Napolitano for a meeting to discuss the proposal, but his office never responded.

Comprising the entire Higgins property, Planned Development no. 44 was last amended in 2014, when a different developer had planned to build a mixed-use residential and retail development on the site. But last year, Debb entered into a contract with the property owners to put forth his own idea, which strips out the retail and replaces it with more apartments.

Earlier this year, Napolitano moved further to head off the construction of new large-scale housing in his ward by asking the council to amend Planned Development no. 347—now a low-lying office park at Delphia and Bryn Mawr avenues—to prevent housing from being built on the site. The amendment was approved by the full council last week.

Neither Debb nor Napolitano responded to requests for comment Tuesday.