CVS to expand, hire hundreds more in Mount Prospect

The Mount Prospect village board has approved giving the village's largest employer a Cook County tax break so the company can expand into a vacant building next-door.

Currently, CVS/Caremark takes up about 190,000 square feet, or about half of the Kensington Business Center building at 800 Biermann Court. The other half is vacant.

This week, the village board unanimously endorsed the company's application to the Cook County assessor's office for a Class 6b tax incentive, which would lower the building's assessment level from 25 percent of market value to 10 percent for 10 years.

CVS wants to expand into an additional 40,000 square feet and demolish the rest of the vacant building to make room for employee parking, said Bill Cooney, Mount Prospect's director of community development.

The tax break would only apply to improvements made in the new space that CVS would occupy, Cooney said.

"We look at this as a way to maintain our largest employer and make it even larger," he said. "With Randhurst down the street, there are many spin off spending opportunities."

Currently, the CVS in Mount Prospect employees 800 people. The company plans on hiring "several hundred additional staff at this facility" once the expansion is complete, Mount Prospect Village Manager Michael Janonis wrote in a memo to trustees.

"At a time when jobs are scarce, this would be a significant opportunity for the village," Janonis said.

CVS operates a pharmaceutical operations base and provides about 42,000 prescriptions a day at the Mount Prospect site. After the expansion, that number will jump to 50,000, according to a CVS letter to village officials.

The company will spend between $2.5 and $3 million on the project.