Tenants of condemned Schaumburg strip mall feel trapped

Chiropractor Richard Altieri has been serving his patients out of the same Schaumburg office for 34 years.

But now he feels that control over the future of his career has been taken out of his hands.

Altieri's practice is one of five remaining tenants of a strip mall at the northwest corner of Schaumburg and Roselle roads. The village has condemned the building, with the intention to replace it with a larger, more attractive structure closer to the street.

"It's a huge hardship for an imaginary downtown," Altieri said, expressing skepticism for what he calls officials' false belief in the pedestrian-friendliness of his business district.

After being the only chiropractor in Schaumburg for his first 10 years in business, Altieri now feels his practice is being easily dismissed as an inconvenience to Schaumburg's redevelopment plans.

"The landlord doesn't want to sell, and (the village) won't let him redevelop," Altieri said. "I wouldn't mind if they were going to put a new police station here or something."

The village's plans are to forcibly purchase the strip mall, along with a long-vacant lot at the same corner, and tear down both structures to build a 16,719-square-foot commercial building on the combined 1.6 acres. The village plans to sell the property to a developer to build the new structure, which is already designed.

But Altieri and the other tenants feel like their fates are in limbo until the matter is resolved. They don't know what to tell their customers or whether to spend money on improvements to their units or save up for moving expenses.

One of the tenants is a popular Sara Lee outlet store that's been there for 24 years.

"For us, it's business as usual until we hear otherwise," said Mike Cummins, director of corporate communications for Downers Grove-based Sara Lee.

He added that neither the landlord nor village has told the store anything about the legal proceedings.

Representatives of Affiliated Realty, which manages the property, said they couldn't comment on pending litigation.

Another longtime tenant who also feels she's been kept in the dark is Hair Clip salon owner Michelle Bou.

"We hope it doesn't happen because our customers would be very disappointed," Bou said.

Though the village has expressed a willingness to help the current tenants relocate to the new building, they're concerned about the money and customers that would be lost while waiting a year or more.

Other tenants include the employee recruitment firm Accurate Personnel LLC and The Coin Mart/Jewelry Mart.

Altieri said vacancies have been rare during his decades in the mall but that a mattress store did move out because of the uncertain situation.

He feels that in the current economy, the village might end up with a new building that's attractive on the outside but vacant on the inside.

"People were saying the same thing about our convention center," Mayor Al Larson responded, adding that venture ended up strongly exceeding expectations. "Who could've predicted our current economic situation six months ago? You deal with things as you get there."

Schaumburg's Community Development Director Christopher Huff agreed, saying officials have to prepare for an economic turnaround.

"The U.S. economy will turn on a dime," he said. "When the economy turns, it turns now."

While the current building does serve its tenants well from an economic standpoint, it doesn't work for the whole function of the intersection and the business district it lies in, Huff said.

The adjacent lot has been vacant for at least 20 years, and the only proposals offered for it are gas stations and fast food restaurants, neither of which the village wants for that spot, Huff said.

The new building would maximize the potential for the whole area, he added.

So why wait until 2008?

"It takes a while," Larson explained. "We had other things on our plate. We can't do all things at the same time. We've tried to deal with the owner of the shopping center for at least two years."

Also, the area's tax-increment financing district, which helps fund public improvements, will expire around 2013, Larson noted.

He emphasized that while there's interest in trying to work with the tenants on relocation, nothing specific can be discussed until the condemnation case is resolved.