Andretti Karting deal is signed, so demolition for Schaumburg's entertainment district begins
Demolition of a single-story office complex began Wednesday to make way for a 23-acre Schaumburg entertainment district - just hours after village trustees approved a development agreement to make Orlando-based Andretti Indoor Karting & Games the anchor of its first phase.
The razing of the 110,000-square-foot Woodfield Green Executive Centre just north of the Schaumburg Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center is expected to take a few weeks.
The cleared site will first be used as a temporary parking lot before it's superseded by a 900-space multilevel garage on the west side of the Renaissance.
The night before demolition began, Schaumburg officials formalized an agreement for Andretti Karting to pay the village $6 million for the site adjacent to the future parking garage.
There the entertainment company plans to build its first Midwest location - an approximately $20 million, 80,000-square-foot building to include a multilevel karting track, an arcade, a two-level laser tag arena, bowling, virtual reality attractions, a full restaurant and bar, and 10,000 square feet of event space.
Along with that building and the parking garage, the 8-acre first phase of the entertainment district would include another entertainment venue and another restaurant.
Representatives of Andretti Karting have projected a million visitors a year at this location, which will employ about 350 people.
Based on a projection of $16 million in annual sales at Andretti Karting alone, the village would receive about $955,000 per year in amusement, sales, and food and beverage taxes.
Even on its own, Andretti Karting is projected to generate $12.5 million in property taxes for public improvements within the area's tax-increment finance district, in which property taxes above a certain point are steered toward development rather than local governments. The estimated $17.9 million parking garage would be one of these public projects.
The entertainment district is later expected to expand northward, where the office complex has been.
The village bought the complex for $6.58 million in 2017 with the entertainment district in mind. Some tenants with especially long-term leases were paid to leave earlier.
The last to go was Bright Horizons Early Childhood & Education Center, which was paid $3.5 million generated by the TIF district to move to Roosevelt University's nearby Schaumburg campus. Bright Horizons held potential lease extensions that could have gone on until 2045.
Preparations for the office complex's demolition began in mid-October, but the disconnection of utilities from the two buildings took longer than anticipated, officials said.