Team of experts to examine Gurnee's East Grand Avenue
Gurnee will receive help from a select team of experts in an effort to devise a plan to revitalize the village's East Grand Avenue corridor.
Economic Development Director Ellen Dean said Urban Land Institute has committed to assisting Gurnee in about two months. Urban Land Institute is an international, nonprofit organization with private-sector experts who assist in creating and sustaining vibrant communities across the world.
Dean said the village will receive much in return for the $15,000 that was set aside last month for the Urban Land Institute. The organization's technical assistance panel for the Chicago area accepts a limited number of cases.
"You're getting practitioners," Dean said during a meeting of Gurnee's advisory economic development committee Thursday night. "You're getting developers who are really building projects. They can look at this (East Grand) from that standpoint."
East Grand Avenue is a mix of empty storefronts, nonstandard sign heights and overhead power lines - a contrast to the busy thoroughfare's more thriving section west of the Tri-State Tollway,
Ideas on how to boost East Grand date to at least 1999, when a village planning consultant recommended burying power lines there. In 2000, the village board approved a three-point improvement plan that never came to fruition.
But aesthetics won't be the focus when the Urban Land Institute's team visits Gurnee for two days to come up with long-range ideas, Dean said. Instead, she said, the meetings with property owners, residents, village officials and others will focus on the kinds of businesses that could be supported as part of viable projects east of Route 41 to Green Bay Road at the Waukegan border.
Economic development committee member Tim Garrity supported the idea of pushing for an ethnic grocery store on East Grand Avenue that would serve Gurnee and nearby Waukegan.
"I think that's ripe for the pickings," Garrity said. "I mean, you can get people that are going to shop in Gurnee and offer them something different."
Urban Land Institute is expected to provide a plan for the East Grand corridor after the two-day session. Gurnee Trustee Thomas Hood said the link with Urban Land Institute will be a proactive move different from previous village initiatives.
"In the past, people came to us - very reactive," Hood said. "Basically, we had more than we could handle by ourselves, so we just didn't have any desire. And the people on the east side, we just said, 'We're so busy on other places, we just don't have the time.'"
While officials are seeking a long-term solution to boost East Grand through Urban Land Institute, Dean said, there are some short-term ideas under consideration. Dean said one possibility is periodically bringing food trucks this summer to a vacant business' parking lot, which would require permission from a property owner.