Economy, slow development tamper big ambitions for Prairie Stone park

A Cabela’s official shook his head last year inside the chain’s Hoffman Estates’ store, nestled inside the village’s Prairie Stone Business Park.

Lured to the town with tax incentives and the promise of surrounding development, Cabela’s was revising its expectations. They downsized the store’s operations, essentially closing the its second floor in what was called an efficiency move.

While most retailers have suffered in recent years, businesses inside the business park were expected to benefit from each other’s presence.

Instead, acres remain barren as ambitious plans for the development never materialized, leaving consumers fewer reasons to visit.

“When is this place going to pop?” the Cabela’s official asked.

Developers nationwide are dealing with the same problems, and Cabela’s isn’t alone in asking that question.

Hoffman Estates officials continue to revise their vision for the 700-acre property near the Jane Addams Tollway and Route 59.

Sears Holdings Corp.’s headquarters continues to be the area’s linchpin. But the company, which arrived in Hoffman Estates in 1991 after moving from the Sears Tower in Chicago, could leave in 2012 when the incentive package that drew it there expires.

The business park was first zoned for 10 million square feet of office space and 30,000 jobs.

“But that didn’t happen,” Hoffman Estates Mayor William McLeod said last week.

Roads were widened, infrastructure improved and access to I-90 was added at a cost of about $100 million, but the pace of development hasn’t occurred at the rate Hoffman Estates officials hoped.

There were plans for parking decks and high-rise buildings, Village Manger James Norris said.

“While that was a good plan, the economy in the real estate market did not support that,” he said.

Sears’ arrival has enabled the construction of a hotel, as well as the Poplar Creek Crossing shopping center featuring Target and the Sports Authority as anchors. The village has had success drawing Northern Illinois University and a variety of Japanese precision tool companies to the area, but a potential departure for Sears would further stymie development, which McLeod doesn’t want to think about.

“I’m not going to speculate on that,” McLeod said.

The land had remained vacant cornfields for years, with the notable exception the venerable Poplar Creek Music Theater. The outdoor concert venue was built in 1980 and became something for which the village was known. When Sears arrived in 1990, they decided to demolish Poplar Creek.

In the mid-80s, developers targeted the property then known as the Beverly Parcel, as an International Exposition Park.

Hoffman Estates’ neighbors, Barrington Hills and South Barrington, fought that plan in court, afraid that any development would lead to crime and tax out existing infrastructure. They also fought officials more than two decades ago over Poplar Creek, worried music venue would bring in a parade of drunks and drug users.

Marilyn Lind’s husband, Bruce Lind, served as a village trustee until he died in 1991. She remembers a marketing video recorded in the 1980s in which her husband talks about the future of the property and the need to find a quality development. Lind said Sears gave some assurances that they’d rebuild Poplar Creek, but they never delivered.

“We used to get top-notch acts,” Lind said, recalling attending the John Denver show which opened the venue in 1980.

The village moved on, and has since built a 11,000-seat arena which opened in 2006. Sears has naming rights to the Sears Centre Arena through 2016, and the venue is sought to be the focal point of a village entertainment district that would give residents of the Northwest suburbs opportunities to see concerts, sporting events or even provide parents an option for a weekend getaway without a long commute.

But as the market for so-called staycations expanded in the weakening economy, so did the willingness of creditors to loan money. Two components of the proposed entertainment district — a water park with hotel and an outdoor music theater — have disappeared.

The water park property is going through foreclosure.

The proposal for the music theater, an offspring of sorts of the demolished Poplar Creek, was made by a group that included Michael Reinsdorf, son of Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf. The younger Reinsdorf has also moved on, named in late 2010 to a new post as the Bulls’ president and chief operating officer.