Former Rosemont village hall to be torn down for new restaurants near Rivers Casino
A shuttered office building that doubled as Rosemont’s village hall for decades is set to meet the wrecking ball and make way for new restaurants, as part of a campus redevelopment across the street from Rivers Casino in Des Plaines.
Rosemont officials are in talks with developer Jeff Bernstein of Bradford Allen and Braden Real Estate Chairman/CEO Marc Offit, who serves as the village’s commercial real estate broker, over a redevelopment deal that would put as many as three eateries on the site of the eight-story building at 9501 W. Devon Ave.
Fencing has been installed around the 1960s-era office building, which housed Rosemont’s government offices and public safety department from the 1980s until last year. Demolition was to have begun by Memorial Day but has been delayed by ComEd’s utility disconnection process.
With an eye toward a master planned campus and improved traffic flow, Rosemont in recent weeks inked a $5.25 million purchase of the seven-story, 180,000-square-foot office building at 6400 Shafer Court, which is just south of the former village hall.
Mayor Brad Stephens said the plan is to hold onto the building for a short time, then sell it to Bradford Allen, who would be the lead developer in the restaurant project next door.
Rough site plans contemplate three restaurants — maybe sit-down, maybe drive through — that would back up to and share parking and drive aisle access with the Shafer Court site.
“It’s a real estate play for us,” Stephens said of the purchase of the Shafer property, which went into foreclosure after selling for nearly $18 million in 2017.
“We have a couple of plans we are looking at and will make a determination on what we will do there after the office building is demolished and we close on the purchase,” he added.
Bradford Allen — the Chicago-based real estate firm that’s embarked on a town center remaking of Arlington Heights’ south gateway — came into the picture in 2022, when it bought the 11-story, 263,000-square-foot Pointe O’Hare office at 9550 W. Higgins Road. Around the same time, the company acquired the 208-room Hyatt Rosemont Chicago/O’Hare hotel, which is across the parking lot from the old village hall.
That’s where the developer has poured nearly $40 million into a gut rehab and reflag into the Hyatt Centric brand. The renovations that began last November have wrapped up, and final inspections from Hyatt took place last week ahead of its planned June 20 reopening, Bernstein said.
“We’re bringing to O’Hare, basically, a luxury hotel,” Bernstein said at an event in Arlington Heights last week.
The makeover included remodeled guest rooms, 12,000 square feet of modernized meeting space, an improved fitness center and a ballroom with capacity for up to 500 people.
The hotel will also include Cima, a white tablecloth restaurant led by executive chef Sarah Stegner. She is a two-time James Beard award winner and co-owner and chef of Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook.