Mount Prospect expecting year of change in economic landscape

The year ahead could bring about some significant changes to Mount Prospect's economic landscape, especially in the community's downtown and at its primary economic engine, Randhurst Village, according to the village's development director.

In a nearly hourlong presentation to the village board, Mount Prospect Community Development Director Bill Cooney last week outlined what officials and residents can expect in 2015, from the demolition of a downtown eyesore and new ownership at Randhurst, to the renewal of two sites hit by catastrophe in the previous 16 months.

Cooney said the sale of Randhurst Village is imminent. That would require some modification of the development agreement reached between the village and Casto Lifestyle Properties in 2008, which ushered in the shopping center's $200 million makeover.

Under the original 20-year deal, the village agreed to share with the developer some of the sales tax revenue generated by the shopping center. Casto also was to receive revenue from a 6 percent hotel tax, a 25-cent tax on movie tickets, and food and beverage taxes.

Cooney did not elaborate what changes are expected in the development agreement. Randhurst's owners announced in October they were putting the property on the market.

Along with an ownership change, Cooney said Randhurst this year will add a pair of new restaurants: Smokey Bones, moving into the old Billy Goat site, and Truco Taqueria, next to the AMC theaters.

Two commercial sites felled by disaster — the Tri-State Electronics building, which collapsed in late 2013, and the former Sakura restaurant gutted by a 2014 fire — will get new life in 2015, Cooney said.

“The good news is in 2015 I anticipate that all that will be cleaned up, and we will have basically a new retail corridor on that western stretch of Northwest Highway,” Cooney said of the Tri-State site and nearby vacant properties.

Dunkin' Donuts will anchor the west side of a new 12,000-square-foot retail development on the west end of the Tri-State site, he said. Closing on the property should occur in March, with construction beginning in May and opening by the fall.

The downtown Sakura site is on the market and movement could occur by the summer, he added.

Also downtown, the village has received a court order allowing the demolition of Central Plaza, the nearly vacant shopping center at Central and Elmhurst roads.

“It's been a major eyesore in the downtown now for probably 15 years,” Cooney said. “I think a lot of people, when they speak negatively of economic development in town, I think that's the first building they think of. And we are doing everything we can to move that into a very positive scenario.”

Cooney believes there is interest in redeveloping the Central Plaza site, but, before anything moves in that direction, the village must first clear up confusion over who owns it.

“There are several people that want that property,” he said.

Mayor Arlene Juracek mentioned the “elephant in the room” for any downtown discussion, the triangle-shaped property bounded by Main Street (Route 83), Busse Avenue and Northwest Highway. Plans formed long ago for a major redevelopment of the triangle appear for the most part dead, officials say.

“I think it's really obvious that that development will never be built the way it was approved,” Juracek said.

Both Trustee A. John Korn and Trustee Paul Hoefert suggested that since the village does own some of the properties there, it could jump start the development process by putting the parcels on the market. Korn said he would like to see two-story buildings with businesses on the ground floor and either apartments, condos or offices on the second floor.

“It doesn't have to be a massive development like it was before,” Hoefert said.

The biggest challenge the village faces, Cooney said, is the office and industrial markets, which he blames in part on the Cook County tax structure. However, he said, the village still boasts such additions as the CVS Caremark regional distribution facility — one of the two largest in the country — and the 250,000-square-foot United Airlines data center.