Now that Spring Hill Mall is gone, West Dundee revving up effort to redevelop site

West Dundee is ramping up its efforts to redevelop the site of the former Spring Hill Mall, using a computer model of what it could look like with housing and stores.

But a consultant and village officials, including Village President Chris Nelson, stressed in a presentation Monday night that the interactive model is just a starting point for developers to envision what they would want to build on the site near routes 31 and 72.

“It's really just to service marketing material and to signal that the village is open to development of the site that sort of meets this character and intent,” said Devin Lavigne, co-founder of Houseal Lavigne Associates, a planning and design firm the village hired to come up with the model. “This is to court developers.”

The presentation contained two concepts: “Urban village” and “Mixed-use boulevard.” Drawings of both showed tree-lined, pedestrian-friendly streets and turning the current stormwater pond in to a park amenity.

The urban village concept suggests 778 housing units in buildings up to five stories tall, with 320,000 square feet of retail space.

The mixed-use boulevard suggests 1,326 housing units could be built, and 400,000 square feet of retail space.

A 2024 study commissioned by the village suggested that the 70 acres within the ring road of the former mall and 32 acres adjacent to it could support up to 1,500 housing units and 325,000 square feet of commercial use.

The site could also include a new police department or a fire station. Currently, the police department shares a site with a fire station and fire department headquarters at Public Safety Center 2 on Carrington Drive. Village officials have said Public Safety Center 2, built in 1986, is too small to accommodate both fire and police.

In a few weeks, the village will have a micro-website featuring the model, Monday’s presentation and other information about the mall site.

Nelson said he wants to have town hall meetings about the site.

“Today we are not prescribing all of this,” Nelson said. He also said he expects redevelopment of the site could take as long as 10 years.

The mall opened in 1980 and closed in 2024. West Dundee spent more than $13 million to buy most of the mall from several landowners, demolish it and prepare it for redevelopment.

The model presented Monday night does not include the Carpentersville portion of the former mall site. About 20% of the mall was located in Carpentersville, including a former Kohl’s store. The village of Carpentersville owns the former Kohl’s site.