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Apartments headed for neighborhood near Glen Ellyn library?

Glen Ellyn officials once welcomed a plan to turn an industrial site into high-end townhouses.

The existing building, largely filled by a roofing business, looked relatively out of a place in a neighborhood with single-family homes and apartments, where residents could take a short stroll to the Glen Ellyn Public Library. Twenty Victorian-style townhouses seemed more in character, village planners said at the time.

But there was a snag: The year was 2008.

The housing market, of course, was collapsing. And developers, who had secured the village board's approval for the project, walked away before moving forward with a building permit.

Fast forward almost eight years, and a new plan has surfaced to again demolish the industrial building at 350 Duane St., this time to make way for apartments.

Staci Hulseberg, planning and development director, has asked the plan commission to weigh in on the concept at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Civic Center. It's only an informal discussion about what could later be a formal request for several exemptions from village codes for the proposed apartment complex.

Mark Spandikow, the owner of Spandikow & Sons and the property, has been in initial talks with developers, his son said, and the roofing business hasn't firmed up plans to move its Duane Street shop.

"We'll definitely still plan on being in Glen Ellyn for the future," Steve Spandikow said. "We're definitely going to be staying in business."

Chicago-based WP Properties LLC is seeking to redevelop the site, where tenants have come and gone over the years and touched off complaints from some neighbors about noise, trucks and dust.

The building was built by UPS in the 1940s, before many of the homes were, Mark Spandikow told plan commissioners in 2012, according to meeting minutes.

The proposed apartment complex would contain 50 units and an underground structure for parking. As currently designed, the building would stand eight inches taller than the 45-foot cap allowed in village code.

The property is within a tax increment financing district, Hulseberg said, but developers have not approached the village about using such incentives. In a TIF district, as redevelopment boosts property values, the extra tax revenue that otherwise would go to schools and others taxing bodies goes into a special fund that can be used to pay for improvements to the area for up to 23 years.

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