At NFL Draft-style lottery, potential homebuyers get chance at ‘Elk Grove dream’

It had all the trappings of the NFL Draft: A time clock. Bright lights from cameras. Applause. Hugs and kisses among families. Interviews with media.

Yet you wouldn’t be able to find this broadcast on any national sports cable network.

You can, however, find it on the local public access channel.

Inside a room at the Belvedere banquet hall in Elk Grove Village, 10 families got the chance to pick their new single-family home — priced below market rates and for village residents only — in a perhaps first-of-its-kind municipal housing initiative aimed at helping ease the housing affordability crisis.

“This is harder than picking an offensive tackle,” said Mayor Craig Johnson, who served as de facto commissioner during the Saturday morning proceedings.

When Johnson announced the unconventional public-private partnership with developer Nick Papanicholas Jr. at a village board meeting in late May, the home raffle was branded as a pathway to “the American dream.”

But in a town where many people spend their whole lives, and young people move back to start families of their own, some on Saturday took to calling it the “Elk Grove dream.”

Among those was Avery Cheng, 30, an Elk Grove High School graduate who just returned to the Northwest suburb after working abroad in China after college.

One of his first high school jobs was at the front counter register at Jarosch Bakery, the revered local institution that supplied pastries for the Saturday event. Former owner Kathy Jarosch — now an elected village trustee — was among those in the audience to applaud when Cheng was the fourth name pulled from the raffle bin. “A good employee, good kid,” Jarosch said of him, now, a father of two.

“The funniest part is just being here, back at prom. This is our prom space,” said Cheng, holding his 18-month-old son Nico in the banquet hall room. “Full circle, come back here, own a house. … The Elk Grove dream as they would say.”

Cheng was one of about two dozen village residents who filled out an interest form in recent weeks, and was eligible to participate in the drawing after showing proof of residency and a mortgage preapproval letter.

Fourteen showed up to the lottery, and 10 of them picked homes on Saturday.

Names were drawn one by one. Each potential buyer had five minutes to pick from the available lots.

Then they signed purchase agreements and related forms and gave the developer a $2,500 cashier’s check.

A year from now, they will be the first residents in the Tonne Grove development, where 20 single-family homes will be built on the northwest corner of Tonne Road and Elk Grove Boulevard.

The village bought the 2.5-acre site — the former Elk Grove Presbyterian Church property — for $965,000 in 2023, and recently sold it to the Mount Prospect-based Nicholas Family of Companies for $1 million. That recoups the village’s costs to purchase the site and tear down the church, officials say.

The deal also allows the homes to be “moderately priced,” officials said, at between $466,000 and $508,000.

Papanicholas said he’s operating on a thin margin, but will be able to make a 4% construction fee.

“This is a community-based driver here. It’s a construction project for us. The village set the pricing in the land. So it was advantageous and we didn’t raise the numbers. It was like a true partnership,” Papanicholas said.

The Patel family got first dibs in the drawing, going with the biggest of three floor plans: The Chloe: a two-story, 2,000-square-foot home with four bedrooms, a den and 2.5 bathrooms.

The price, $508,000, is at least $100,000 less than what comparable, yet older homes in the area are going for.

“We love where we live. It’s secure. It’s a nice neighborhood. We didn’t want to leave it,” said Prerana Patel, 32, who with 31-year-old husband Miharsh and other family members have lived in an Elk Grove condominium since 2022. “We’ve been looking at Elk Grove homes and they’re like really old, but really high up the prices. It just didn’t make sense.”

The couple says they’re grateful for what they think will be their forever home.

“Especially now that we have a baby, we need more room,” Miharsh Patel said.

A few people walked away from the drawing without getting the home site they wanted. The 10 remaining properties will go on the open market in the coming days, priced $50,000 higher, Papanicholas said.