Developer acquires vacant Family Square mall site in downtown Lisle

An Indianapolis-based real estate firm has acquired a long-idle strip mall site at the front door to downtown Lisle.

Flaherty & Collins Properties purchased the gateway property at Ogden Avenue and Main Street from Green State Credit Union. The same developer previously proposed demolishing the shuttered Family Square Plaza to make way for an apartment building with ground-floor commercial space as well as a parking garage with some public spots.

“They’re modifying plans rather than starting from scratch. So that’s a big benefit to the village, because we know that’s something that everybody wants to see changed, that nobody wants it to look like an eyesore,” Mayor Mary Jo Mullen said of the corner. “We want it to be part of a thriving downtown.”

The firm’s intent is still to do a mixed-use development on the site, she said.

“The really positive thing about Flaherty & Collins being the successful bidder and purchaser is that … they understand what we’re looking for, and they already have a lot of time, effort and engineering plans invested in the project,” Mullen said.

In a letter to the previous village manager last year, the developer wrote that market “forecasts, underwriting and having separately owned retail space ultimately created a risk profile” beyond “what we are comfortable executing.”

“One of the things that they’re going to talk to us about is how much retail space will meet the village’s needs, and then also still be able to be financed? I think there was a pretty extensive amount of retail in the previous iteration that was part of what made it difficult to finance,” Mullen said.

One of the last major residential developments in downtown Lisle was a transit-oriented apartment complex at Main Street and Burlington Avenue. Marq on Main has “much bigger-sized shops and spaces” on the ground floor.

“So in the new development it’d be great to have some smaller ones also, so that we have a nice diverse mix for small businesses to choose kind of what works for them,” Mullen said.

Flaherty & Collins has, in the past, proposed a half-dozen “live/work apartment/commercial units” in the building. Mullen said she hopes the developer will continue to bring forward “some incubator work within their space.”

“So helping those really small micro-businesses succeed, and then they are ready to move up into bigger space and let the next brand new guy come in, too,” she said.

A Flaherty executive could not be reached for comment Friday.