Long Avenue neighborhood near Schaumburg preparing to say goodbye

The approximately 55-year-old neighborhood on Long Avenue near Schaumburg's southwest corner is experiencing its last spring before bulldozers bring about its fall in late April.

All 19 homes are expected to be demolished about a month from now to make way for a pair of industrial buildings just east of Wintrust Field.

Chicago-based Logistics Property Company will begin construction of the new buildings totaling 436,500 square feet in June or July, according to Ben Fish, vice president of the firm’s Midwest region.

Long Avenue also lies just west of Experior Logistics’ planned trucking headquarters. The unincorporated neighborhood has been the only residential component of the otherwise commercial area around Schaumburg’s Metra station.

Resident Dina Menini told the Daily Herald in September she thought she’d never leave the property were she’s lived for the past 25 years, but Experior changed the peaceful, rural atmosphere that attracted her and her neighbors.

“We had a neighborhood unlike any other,” she said Monday. “We were a family on that street.”

Menini was among the roughly 25% of residents to move out around the closing of the homes’ sales on Jan. 21. Perhaps another 25% remain as the April 21 departure deadline nears, she said.

Experior, meanwhile, has yet to build more than a parking lot on the 55 acres next door it bought from the village for $7.5 million.

The transportation company’s extended deadline to complete the project expires in June and the village has declined a request to extend it again, Schaumburg Economic Development Director Matt Frank said.

The village board annexed Long Avenue into Schaumburg in December along with giving the green light to two tax incentives for Logistics Property Company.

A tax increment financing (TIF) district is projected to increase the equalized assessed value of the 70 acres it covers from today’s $2.8 million to about $53.5 million over its 23 years.

The district sets aside any rise in property taxes for on-site public improvements. A total of $111 million is estimated to be generated for eligible projects.

The 6B incentive Schaumburg recommended for the Cook County Board’s approval essentially cuts a site's property taxes in half for 10 years, after which they gradually increase during the 11th and 12th years before returning to normal.