Could homes replace old office complex on South Arlington Heights road?
A plot of land on South Arlington Heights Road — where a 1970s-era office complex recently was demolished — is being primed for potential residential development.
The eight-acre site on the southeast corner of Arlington Heights and Seegers roads in Arlington Heights was cleared of one V-shaped and three U-shaped single-story buildings, with an eye toward achieving a property tax savings and increasing safety, village officials say.
The former 101,000-square-foot Arlington Executive Court was sold by commercial real estate firm Brian Properties, which was headquartered there, to Lexington Homes for $3.3 million on Jan. 13, 2023, Cook County property records show.
While the buildings have been torn down to prepare the highly-visible site for redevelopment, no official plans have been turned in at village hall.
“There’s been some preliminary conversations about some other potential development that would be consistent with the South Arlington Heights Road Corridor Plan, but nothing formal has been submitted,” said Charles Witherington-Perkins, the village’s director of planning and community development. “We expect at some point they will submit plans and start going through that entitlement process.”
The corridor plan, adopted by the village board in 2018, calls for “a more intensive use,” possibly with commercial along Arlington Heights Road and residential to the rear along Tonne Drive. The current zoning is office-transitional, which allows office uses only.
Other key development standards suggested in the plan include buildings of up to four or five stories in height, and utilizing Seegers and Arlington Heights roads as the primary access points to and from a new development.
An earlier proposal for the Arlington Executive Court site failed to materialize.
In January 2021, the village board approved developer Trammell Crow Co. and Allegro Senior Living’s plan for a three-story, 175-bed senior residential facility with a mix of independent living, assisted living and memory care units.
At the time — the height of the pandemic — the office complex had a 40% vacancy rate, and Brian Properties was looking to sell.
But Trammell Crow, which had the property under contract, never closed on the deal after negotiations with village officials over potential tax increment financing assistance for the project fell through. Perkins' staff believed the requested incentive was greater than the need, and the developer withdrew the project.