Rolling Meadows secures green strip through Cook program

Rolling Meadows is using a Cook County development program to retain a much-needed green strip for stormwater retention near a shopping mall along Salt Creek.

Cook County's No Cash Bid Program allows municipalities and townships to claim properties that are delinquent two years or more on their property taxes and target them for redevelopment. The county announced today that it was releasing 99 parcels to 13 municipalities, most of them in the blighted south suburbs. Chicago Democratic Commissioner Deborah Sims, chairman of the Cook County Board's tax-delinquent subcommittee, emphasized that program is “working throughout Cook County, not just the south suburbs,” and said it helped create 617 jobs countywide last year.

Rolling Meadows, however, has the luxury of putting it to use to claim and preserve a green strip for much-needed storm runoff and water retention at the Rolling Meadows Shopping Center along Salt Creek.

“It's green space,” said Valerie Dehner, director of community development for Rolling Meadows. “It's for stormwater retention. It's always been for stormwater retention. It continues to be stormwater retention,” adding, “It just lends itself to remaining green space under the ownership of the city.”

Dehner and City Manager Barry Krumstock said the strip originally belonged to the shopping center, but got parceled off and passed around to various ownership groups over the years. They added that the city's claim won't return the property to the tax rolls — the main purpose of the No Cash Bid Program — but it unquestionably serves the community's larger interest, especially as the land couldn't be developed in any case, and a pedway and bike route run through it.

“The important thing is it's not just real-estate taxes,” said John Schneider, deputy director of the county's department of economic development. “It's property that's detrimental to the community, property that's vacant, that's been out there,” he added, and that can be converted to some sort of beneficial use — or, in the case of Rolling Meadows, retained by the village for its original intended purpose.