Social Security leaving Prospect Hts. for larger quarters in Mt. Prospect
The Social Security Administration has signed a 15-year lease in Mount Prospect and will be moving out of its Prospect Heights office this fall, the developer said Thursday.
The SSA office will be the only tenant in a 16,000-square-foot building built at least 18 months ago at the southeast corner of Wheeling and Kensington roads, said Nick Papanicholas Jr., vice president of Nicholas & Associates Inc., in Mount Prospect.
"It was built as a retail building, but it is just a shell," said Papanicholas. "We never finished the inside. We will build out the space to suit the SSA."
The Social Security Administration plans to move in the fall, he said. The site is about 11/2 miles from the SSA's current office at 215 S. Elmhurst Road in Prospect Heights.
The present offices, a one-story cinder and glass block building at Euclid Avenue and Route 83 was built almost 15 years ago for the SSA, said Dolly Vole, mayor of Prospect Heights.
City authorities hope to get in touch with the owner, she said, and the business and economic development committee would try to help any business that wants to move to the space.
The building currently is zoned special use for a government agency, said Vole, and would need rezoning for almost any other use.
The SSA is moving because its present building has only 55 parking spaces and is on well water, said Vole.
"If in fact the water is a big issue to federal agencies then the government should work with municipalities to bring in lake water," she said.
The most appropriate use would probably be as medical offices, said the mayor, if the parking is adequate. She said it would not work for a day care center because the only way to build the required outside playground would take up parking.
Papanicholas said his company's building in Mount Prospect has 83 parking spots and no rezoning is required.
In September the Mount Prospect Village Board rezoned property at another location on Kensington from residential to business so the owner could bid for the SSA office.
The ordinance has a sunset provision that the zoning on that property will revert to residential in a year unless a federal agency moves there.