Arlington Market homes plan back on track

A plan to build 54 single-family homes in Arlington Heights is back on track, almost eight years after it won village approval.

Arlington Market, a development near the intersection of Dryden Place and Kensington Road, first was proposed as a multiuse development including condos, homes and retail space.

The plan approved in August 2006 called for two, five-story condominium buildings with 110 units, 53 single-family homes and two commercial buildings, one of which was planned to be a grocery store.

But four years passed and developers never picked up building permits or moved forward with the project.

By 2010, Mariano's Fresh Market had opened nearby, so the village dropped its insistence that a grocery store also be built on the site. At the same time, the village approved a change to allow 66 townhouses instead of the condominium complexes.

Although the townhouse portion of the development moved forward, it has been another four years without progress on the site, until now.

Developer M/I Homes appeared before the Arlington Heights Plan Commission last week and received approval for a scaled back plan featuring 54 single-family homes and a few zoning changes to reflect updates from eight years ago.

The village board still needs to approve the project, which is now much smaller and less controversial than when it was first proposed. In 2006, the Arlington Market project angered residents who appeared at four- and five-hour long board meetings to speak out against the it over concerns of overcrowding and high-density housing.

"The village is excited by the continued progress made at the Arlington Market site, which had remained an abandoned construction site and a neighborhood nuisance for a few years," according to a village staff report. "With the multifamily portion of the development approved in 2011 and constructed shortly thereafter and the current proposal to develop the single family component, the development is coming closer to full realization."

Village officials and representatives from M/I homes did not respond to calls for further comment.

M/I homes, which is not the original developer on the project, has developed homes in the Chicago area as well as in Ohio, Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia.