Schaumburg OKs car lot, strip mall
In an economy that continues to show few signs of life, Schaumburg remains a good place to find a pulse.
Trustees Tuesday approved both a used car dealership on the former site of Kia Motors on Golf Road, as well as a new strip mall on a previously undeveloped piece of land at Schaumburg Road and Knollwood Drive on the more residential, western side of town.
The approvals come just two months after officials gave the green light to Crate & Barrel to build a 34,000-square-foot store next to the 65,000-square-foot Whole Foods expected to open next year south of Woodfield Mall and west of Streets of Woodfield.
The used car facility approved Tuesday will be owned by Schaumburg Pre Driven LLC, on a portion of the old Kia Motors dealership at 650 W. Golf Road.
Though Schaumburg retains a strong concentration of new vehicle dealerships, this business will be only the second exclusively used vehicle dealership in the village, Community Development Director Christopher Huff said. The other is CarMax.
After the departure of Kia, some doctors approached the village about using the site for a two-story medical office building, Mayor Al Larson said.
After Schaumburg officials expressed concern about losing all retail potential on the site, the doctors agreed to divide the property. But their own building proposal is still in progress, Larson said.
The strip mall at Schaumburg Road and Knollwood Drive will be called, appropriately, Schaumwood. It will be 7,800 square feet on a now vacant acre and divided almost evenly among four tenants, Huff said.
The only tenant already confirmed is a tanning salon to be run by the landowner himself.
Other development ideas at this corner have been turned down over the years, and manufacturing uses have been prohibited from the site.
"The shopping center is something that's been talked about for years," Larson said. "We kept turning them down until they came back with something we could live with."
Trustees: New strip mall, used car dealership coming to Schaumburg