Car dealers interested in police station site

Hoffman Estates Village Manager James Norris said reps from at least two car dealerships have inquired about the site of the current police station.

The police station at 1200 Gannon Drive will be turn down after the department moves into its new headquarters at 401 W. Higgins Road, the former site of Sante restaurant. The scheduled move date is August 2010, and village officials last week approved the first exterior design for the new station.

The building on Gannon Drive will be razed and most likely be sold for some kind of commercial development, Norris said.

A car dealership isn't a foregone conclusion, but Norris noted dealerships do generate quite a bit of sales tax money for the village.

Residents living in the single-family homes between Golf and Higgins roads - known as "The Pie" - want whatever gets built to be kid-friendly. One resident addressed the village board Monday saying he didn't want any open space to be taken away.

Developers typically move at a snail's pace, so stay tuned.

OTBs and slots: While I follow baseball (and the first-place White Sox; I see the Cubs are doing well, too), I don't follow the ponies very closely. However with Big Brown running with a chance to win horse racing's first Triple Crown in 30 years, my interest was piqued. Big Brown let us down, coming in last at Belmont.

I also thought about Arlington Park, and how officials have been pleading for slot machines through the years. They argue their business suffered and they need the income from slots to survive, pointing to the shutdown of other tracks around the country. I covered an Arlington Heights' meeting in January when its village board discussed the issue and again quashed the notion.

How does this tie back to Hoffman Estates? Last month, Hoffman Estates village board members sat through a presentation for a proposal to put an off-track betting parlor inside the Poplar Creek Bowl. The parlor would bring back $150,000 to $200,000 a year to the village, said Bob Bilocerowycz, president of Inter-Track Partners.

While horse racing seems more stable of a sport than others - remember the Chicago Hounds hockey team? - how dependable is the revenue stream when horse racing is asking for slot machines to attract people to the track? Perhaps that's naive of me to wonder, but that's a question worth an answer, and it will be interesting to see how OTB proponents respond if the bowling alley proposal progresses.

Do you have any interesting Hoffman Estates story ideas? Send them along to Ashok Selvam at (847) 427-4475 or aselvam@dailyherald.com.