‘It’s a new day’: Demolition wrapping up on long-idle Lisle strip mall downtown

After years of sitting vacant, a strip mall at the entrance to downtown Lisle is nearly no more.

Demolition crews have all but removed the old Family Square Plaza from the gateway property at the southeast corner of Ogden Avenue and Main Street. It sets the stage for a planned redevelopment that would add a mix of apartments, ground-floor commercial space and more public parking to the downtown.

“It’s a new day for the businesses who are down there in downtown, seeing improvement, seeing change,” said Lisle Mayor Mary Jo Mullen, who was elected in April 2025.

“It's our downtown beginning to really revitalize and become more of a central focus of our community, somewhere that the community can be proud of and enjoy being at rather than driving by and being like, ‘Wow, that looks sad.’”

Flaherty & Collins Properties purchased the site last year. Since then, the developer completed asbestos remediation over the winter, prepping the site for demolition.

The developer has not yet submitted a formal planning and zoning application. There's also pending state legislation that would extend the term of a downtown tax increment financing district to facilitate the redevelopment.

“This is going to be super meaningful to the entire village, to our residents who live here, to the growth of our village, to the sustainability of the village,” Mullen said.

In a TIF district, as redevelopment boosts property values, the extra tax revenue that otherwise would go to taxing bodies such as school and park districts can be used to pay for improvements within its boundaries.

“All of the other taxing bodies are on board as well,” Mullen said. “So that was a big milestone for us, is getting everyone to agree, and now it's in the hands of our state legislature.”

The village hopes lawmakers approve it this legislative session.

“It would add on 12 years to the total duration, which still allows us to close it early if we have it redeveloped, it’s successful, and we meet the cap,” Mullen explained. “We could still shut it down early and then reap the benefit of the improvements earlier, but we just need to give ourselves enough runway to get there.”

If passed, a TIF district joint review board also is expected to review and opine on a major amendment to the district to allow for that 12-year extension, Village Manager Jeff Cook said.

At an economic development commission meeting in November, Flaherty & Collins presented a conceptual proposal that would include approximately 224 apartments and 13,000 square feet of first-floor commercial or retail space.

“We do anticipate that the project has remained the same in terms of its unit count and general composition,” Cook said Thursday.

Flaherty & Collins previously proposed an apartment complex at the corner, but those particular plans did not move forward. In a 2024 letter to Lisle’s previous village manager, the developer wrote that market “forecasts, underwriting and having separately owned retail space ultimately created a risk profile” beyond “what we are comfortable executing.”

One of the last major residential developments in downtown Lisle was before the pandemic: Marq on Main, a luxury apartment complex.

“They're great for commuters, they're great for young families. They're great for empty nesters who want to stay and live in Lisle,” Mullen said. “You've got great access to the trains. It's really an ideal situation to be able to bring people into our community who can start here, maybe as a young family, a young married couple, and then grow into our housing stock.”

· Daily Herald writer Alicia Fabbre contributed to this report