Schaumburg plans Heritage Park at historic crossroads

Schaumburg opened a convention center and adjoining hotel during the village's 50th anniversary in 2006, but will mark its 60th next year in more modest fashion with the dedication of a nearly half-acre public park.

Heritage Park, as its name implies, will honor the pre-incorporation history of the area with two curving mural walls containing photographs from its 19th- and early 20th-century rural past.

The park will be at the northwest corner of the area's historic crossroads of Schaumburg and Roselle roads.

Just south of the nearly completed Pleasant Square subdivision along Roselle Road, Heritage Park will seek to match Town Square and Veterans Gateway Park at the southwest corner of the intersection by using many of the same building materials and architectural elements.

An 8-foot, 4-inch by 16-foot, 6-inch wall facing the roads will feature a large mural that motorists will see. The matching wall away from the roads will have smaller murals for pedestrians to see up close.

The village's engineering and public works committee Thursday recommended approval of the park's final design and $106,953 budget.

The project is coming in $17,436 below what was originally budgeted. It will use $49,389 in funds left over from the now expired tax-increment finance district used to help fund other redevelopments in the area, and $57,564 from both general funds and money in the village's 1 Percent for Art fund.

The park's design also counts on $70,000 in remaining improvements to be paid for by M/I Homes, the developer of Pleasant Square.

Todd Wenger, Schaumburg's landscape & design planner, said development of the park must be coordinated with some remaining construction on Pleasant Square as well as Cook County's building of a right-turn lane on southbound Roselle Road.

The park's land is most of what was once a Marathon gas station. The village bought the already vacant property in 2005 in an effort to provide more space for a new commercial development.

Those plans changed when Pleasant Square came along, using most of the land to the north and leaving just the half-acre at the corner that had always proved difficult for vehicle access, Wenger said.