OPINION MODIFIED ON DENIAL OF REHEARING

JUSTICE APPLETON delivered the opinion of the court:

Plaintiffs, Howard and Craig Wakeland, acquired threelots in the 800 block of West Main Street in Urbana, Illinois,intending to tear down the houses on the lots and replace themwith an apartment building. Before the Wakelands carried outthat plan, the city "down-zoned" the lots, restricting them tosingle-family residential use. The Wakelands filed a complaintfor declaratory judgment against the city, asking the trial courtto declare the ordinance unconstitutional as applied to them. Daniel Folk and W. Randall Kangas owned homes near the lots andopposed any further proliferation of apartment buildings in theneighborhood. They filed a petition to intervene, which thetrial court granted. After a bench trial, the trial court upheldthe ordinance. The Wakelands appeal, arguing that the factors inLa Salle National Bank of Chicago v. County of Cook, 12 Ill. 2d40, 46-47, 145 N.E.2d 65, 69 (1957), and Sinclair Pipe Line Co.v. Village of Richton Park, 19 Ill. 2d 370, 378, 167 N.E.2d 406,411 (1960), clearly entitled them to declaratory relief. Wedisagree with the Wakelands and affirm the trial court's judgment.

On July 1, 1985, the city created an enterprise zoneencompassing the 800 block of West Main Street. The city mailedletters and brochures to local businesspeople, including theWakelands, encouraging them to invest in the enterprise zone andoffering incentives to do so, including financial assistance,exemptions from sales tax on building materials, tax investmentcredits, and abatement of real estate taxes.

The Wakelands had already built a six-unit apartmentbuilding at 813 West Main Street. Intrigued by the incentivesthe city offered, they conceived the idea of buying the threelots next to 813 West Main Street, tearing down or moving thesix-unit apartment building, and building a 48-bedroom (12-unit) apartment building on the four lots. Since 1978, they had built26 apartment buildings in Champaign-Urbana. Because the University of Illinois was nearby and its north campus was expanding,apartments were in demand. Howard Wakeland made sure that thethree lots, 807 1/2, 809, and 811 West Main Street, were zoned asR-4 (medium-density, multiple-family residential). In October1986, the Wakelands bought the three lots.

The Wakelands' six-unit apartment building stood at thesoutheast corner of the intersection of Main Street and LincolnAvenue. The three lots were beside it, on the same side of thestreet. Lincoln Avenue, a four-lane arterial highway, extendsnorth and south through the length of the city and intersectswith Interstate Highway 74 to the north. Main Street extendsinto the downtown business district some four blocks east ofLincoln Avenue. The downtown begins at roughly the intersectionof Main Street and McCullough Avenue. Immediately west ofLincoln Avenue, Main Street enters the university's north campus. One block north of Main Street is Clark Street. One block southis Stoughton Street.

Run-down houses, ranging from 70 to 90 years old, stoodon the three lots; former owners had converted them into rentalproperties. The house at 809 West Main Street was a roominghouse. The house at 807 1/2 West Main Street was divided intotwo apartments, and the house at 811 West Main Street, a largeVictorian house, was divided into three apartments. TheWakelands intended to redevelop the lots within three or fouryears after buying them. In the meantime, they continued to rentthe houses to tenants. On May 14, 1995, the house at 811 WestMain Street burned down. Although the Wakelands collected$50,000 in insurance for that house, they never built anything inits place. At the time of trial, tenants occupied the other twohouses. The Wakelands never built the apartment buildings andnever did anything in anticipation of building them, such aspreparing diagrams or blueprints, buying building supplies, orapplying for a building permit.

Howard Wakeland testified:

"[T]he fact that you buy property right nowdoesn't mean that you're necessarily going tobuild on a property. It means that you haveput it in your inventory for the future, fordevelopment, and you're going to pull it outwhen you need it."

On October 17, 1988, the city council passed a resolution directing the Urbana planning commission (Commission) tostudy the "Downtown to Campus Area," a broad tract of 500 acresbetween the university and downtown, and to recommend how toreconcile the diverse uses of land in the area. Urbana Resolution No. 8889-R8 (eff. October 19, 1988). The mayor approved theordinance on October 19, 1988. One of the objectives of thestudy was to "[i]dentify methods for protecting and preservingthe character, scale[,] and appearance of the low[-]densityresidential sections of the [s]tudy [a]rea." Urbana ResolutionNo. 8889-R8