Schaumburg approves plan to replace 3 single-family home lots with 35 townhouses

Schaumburg officials have approved the redevelopment of three existing single-family home lots into 35 townhouses divided among eight buildings.

The three lots on the 800 block of South Roselle Road lie between Michaels Funeral Home and Christ Community Mennonite Church. Only the northern and southern lots currently have homes on them while the middle one has just a garage at its far western end.

RS Developers LLC of Wood Dale proposed the project, though a similar one by M/I Homes also won village approval last year before the company walked away, Schaumburg Landscape and Design Planner Todd Wenger said.

Because the 4.4-acre site has nonresidential uses around it, the village’s comprehensive land-use plan has been open to its redevelopment. That included the possibility of commercial uses, but larger buildings might not comfortably fit due to a slope that causes a 25-foot change of elevation from east to west, Wenger said.

“This is probably the highest and best use of the land,” he said of the townhouse proposal that received unanimous approval by village trustees Tuesday.

The eight townhouse buildings will be arranged around a curved private drive that ends in a turnaround for emergency and utility vehicles.

A large underground stormwater detention vault will allow space on the surface for a central green area with plantings and seating.

The townhouse buildings have been designed with a contemporary farmhouse style of architecture featuring a combination of horizontal lap and vertical board-and-batten siding with a weight line of brick along the front and sides.

The land originally was part of the farm that provided the neighboring Christ Community Mennonite Church with its distinctive barn, village records show.

In the early 1900s, the farm was purchased by the owner of the Stratford Hotel at the southwest corner of Jackson and Michigan Avenue in Chicago who named his agricultural operation “Stratford Farms.”

The property again changed hands in the 1920s and 1940s before it was bought in 1951 by famous bandleader Wayne King, who converted the then dairy operation into a beef cattle farm.

The three single-family home lots of today were created by a subdivision of the property in the mid-1960s. And 60 years later, the site is poised to begin yet another new chapter.