Right tenant hard to find for Buffalo Grove parcel

After a restaurant pulled out of a development on Dundee Road and the village board effectively denied putting a strip mall on the same lot, a land owner is facing a quandary of what to do with his location in Buffalo Grove.

El Pollo Loco restaurant was supposed to build a new store at 1200 Dundee Road, but, like so many others, the franchise decided against a new location in the current economic times.

Rick Heidner has owned the land at the northwest corner of Dundee and Arlington Heights roads since last March after a Mobil gas station there closed. On Monday, he proposed a 4,750-square-foot commercial building with three tenants.

Heidner said he already has a letter of intent from T-Mobile to open a store there and would be looking for uses such as GameStop to fill the other two spots.

However, trustees said the stores would put a strip mall in front of other strip malls already in that area and that they would prefer just one store there. Heidner said he's explored those options, but nobody's been interested.

"There is no more Starbucks that would be a single use," he said.

Heidner said he's built other strip malls in the area that have worked out well; he pointed out one at Roselle and Golf roads in Schaumburg that also contains a GameStop, a U.S. Cellular store and a 7-Eleven.

However, trustees said the location is too small to squeeze in three stores.

Village President Elliott Hartstein said even if the stores that move into that lot have no problems with the tight space, others that move in a few years down the line may not be happy about not having delivery trucks able to pull into the back.

"That's a built-in problem right there," Hartstein said.

Although the board didn't vote on the preliminary plan, trustees made it clear the proposal wasn't to their taste.

"I just don't think it's going to create a nice streetscape," Trustee DeAnn Glover said. "I just don't think it works." Hartstein suggested going back to the drawing board, but Heidner wasn't optimistic.

"No one is interested," he said.