Northbrook looks to finalize the Grainger situation

Webster's assigns two meanings to the word, disposition.

Used in a sentence, they could go: The disposition in Northbrook may improve should the village achieve the successful disposition of the former Grainger site.

The Northbrook board of trustees turned toward that latter meaning at its Tuesday meeting, as it revisited the next chapter of the 10.3-acre site.

After the industrial supply firm in August 2017 told the village it'd be moving from 1675 Shermer Road to its Lake Forest headquarters, the village purchased the Grainger site using taxable bonds on May 9, 2018.

Bought for an amount initially announced as $8.3 million but according to village documents reduced due to "environmental issues on the site," Northbrook has tried to figure out what to do with the property ever since.

Most recently it's been used for excess commuter parking, and during the COVID pandemic as storage for the Northbrook Public Library and schools and as a vaccination site, Northbrook Village Manager Rich Nahrstadt said Tuesday.

In a committee meeting in January 2020 former Northbrook Development & Planning Services Director Tom Poupard said the site, in the southwest quadrant of the village's downtown, had attracted "lots of interest" by developers to build apartments there due to its downtown location and proximity to the Metra line.

That seems to be where the situation is headed. On Tuesday Nahrstadt outlined three options: the village itself could issue requests for proposal; it could retain a brokerage service to market the site and solicit offers; or it could review and negotiate between two unsolicited offers he said the village had already received.

Nahrstadt could not be reached for further comment on deadline.

At Tuesday's meeting he said the real estate services and investment firm Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE) had already submitted a proposal to market the Grainger site.

Northbrook trustees and Village President Kathryn Ciesla supported the brokerage option, with the exception of trustee Muriel Collison.

"I believe the brokerage commission is somewhere between 5 and 6 percent and that's a huge amount of money," Collison said. "I'm interested in capturing as much money for the village as possible and I think that we should put it out there ourselves and also work with the offers that we currently have."

Trustee Dan Pepoon went further on the brokerage option.

" ... I'd want to have that as a competitive situation as well," he said.

"Trustee Pepoon is suggesting that we not necessarily go with CB Richard Ellis, but there be some kind of process by which we would perhaps negotiate with some other broker and find some other broker to participate," Ciesla said.

Village Attorney Steve Elrod said, if going with a broker, the village should exclude the two existing offers from the brokerage agreement and allow the village to review those itself.

Ciesla agreed in her summary.

"We have a majority of trustees who feel that we want to list it with a broker competitively and carve out the two potential developers that have already reached out," she said. "So by this consensus we're providing direction to the village attorney and staff to solicit proposals for brokers."