Elk Grove Village buys former tennis club turned factory for public works storage

Elk Grove Village officials are scheduled to close on a $5.65 million purchase of an old factory and one-time indoor tennis club that will be used to store municipal vehicles and other large equipment.

The 71,000-square-foot brick building on the northwest corner of Busse Road and Howard Street is seen as ideal to fit public works department trucks, ambulances and police vehicles, with its 32-foot clear span height, no columns and four large drive-in doors.

The brick building at 1650 Howard St. will also be used as extra storage space for municipal operations.

“We’re getting more and more equipment,” Mayor Craig Johnson said. “We’ve got so many different items that we use for public events and other things that we really don’t have enough space to store it.”

Built in 1973, the building housed a tennis club until the 1980s, and was the longtime home of Mid America Tile until Louisville Tile took over in 2022.

The village board last June inked a $2.7 million purchase of a smaller building just blocks away at 1201 Busse Road, with the intention of using it for public works storage. But then the old tennis club building — three times the size and with an open floor plan — came on the market.

“This is better than the other building,” Johnson said. “It was ideal, that’s why we jumped all over it.”

The village is now selling the first building and expects to make a profit on the deal, the mayor said.

Elk Grove currently houses most of its municipal fleet at two public works buildings: the James Paul Petri Public Works Facility, opened in 2019 at 450 E. Devon Ave.; and the west side facility at 1635 Biesterfield Road.