Schaumburg can almost taste Whole Foods

The long wait is over. Let the next long wait begin.

Nearly 17 months after it was publicly announced, a plan to replace the former John M. Smyth Homemakers building in Schaumburg with a new Whole Foods store finally received formal approval Tuesday night.

But construction of the 65,000-square-foot store at the southwest corner of Woodfield and Martingale roads isn't expected to start for another month and a half. And it won't be completed until spring or summer of 2009, Schaumburg's Community Development Director Christopher Huff said.

Nevertheless, demolition of the Homemakers building -- a longtime goal of Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson for its unattractiveness -- is expected to happen this week, Huff added.

Larson first announced the plan as part of his "State of the Village" address to the Schaumburg Business Association in January 2007. He considered demolition of the building one of his few unmet goals for the village's 50th anniversary in 2006.

But the plans of Palatine-based developer Joseph Freed and Associates took longer than expected to be formally submitted and make their way through the village's approval process.

Though not approved Tuesday, Freed and Associates' long-term plans also call for a second building on the 7-acre site -- a building identified on the developer's Web site as a Crate & Barrel.

Corporate officials for Northbrook-based Crate & Barrel have themselves refused to confirm any involvement with these plans. The company has had a store at Woodfield mall just north of the site since 1979, Crate & Barrel representative Bette Kahn said.

While not speaking specifically about any plans in Schaumburg, Kahn said Crate & Barrel has had a policy for about five years of moving its housewares stores from inside malls when their leases expire to larger separate lots where furniture can be sold as well.

The two-story building Freed and Associates is designing next to the new Whole Foods is 34,000 square feet, according to its Web site.

Plans for this building have not been formally submitted to the village, said Huff, who expects the newly approved Whole Foods to open next to a still vacant lot next year.