Schaumburg Homemakers building bites the dust

Watching the walls of Schaumburg's former John M. Smyth Homemakers building topple Thursday, Mayor Al Larson felt he was witnessing a victory not just for the village and himself, but for his legendary predecessor Bob Atcher.

"He'd probably say, 'Hip-hip-hooray!'" Larson said of the late "Singing Cowboy" of radio and TV fame who became Schaumburg's second mayor. "He'd probably break into song."

As soon as it was built in the early 1970s, Atcher disliked the warehouse-like aesthetics of the Homemakers building at Woodfield and Martingale roads.

But because it met the minimal zoning requirements of the time, there was little he could do about it.

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The building, vacant now for several years, is being torn down this week to make way for a Whole Foods, and possibly a Crate Barrel, to open in June 2009.

The location of the Homemakers building was inspired by the premier indoor shopping center of Woodfield that had just been approved to the north. But the Homemakers building sprang up much more quickly and cheaply, Larson said.

"Just to tell you how old this building is, it's been here longer than I've been an elected official," said Larson, who became a trustee in 1975 and mayor in 1987.

Since then, Schaumburg's appearance standards for the commercial area around Woodfield have evolved to the point that even the village's big-box stores are much more attractive.

"You do big-box stores a disservice by comparing them to Homemakers," Larson quipped.

Schaumburg Planning Services Manager Julie Summers said the building committed a number of sins by today's standards, but the main one was its use of poor, cheap building materials.

"This is a big building on a very prime piece of real estate next to Woodfield Mall," she said. "It's really not in tune with its surroundings."

The demolition began last week when the interior was gutted so its metal infrastructure could be recycled as scrap.

That allowed the exterior walls to crumble much more easily as the demolition equipment tore, snapped and crunched them to rubble. It also meant much less dust released into the air.

Mike Cassady, development director for developer Joseph Freed and Assocs. of Palatine, said it'd probably be another 10 days before the site is completely cleared.

Replacing the empty Homemakers building has long been a top goal for Larson, but he said the village still insisted on waiting for just the right replacement to come along.

Some developers had exactly the wrong idea by proposing ways to renovate the existing building for a new use, Larson said.

"That would have been like putting lipstick on a pig," he said.

"We were surprised the mayor wasn't interested in preserving the historic value of the building," Cassady joked at the demolition.