After debate, warehouse near Schaumburg airport gets OK

A debate over an expanding warehouse development’s proximity to Schaumburg Regional Airport preceded Schaumburg trustees’ approval of the project and a pair of tax incentives.

The 390 O’Hare Logistics Park is incorporating 55 acres that developer Logistics Property Company is buying from Experior Logistics at 1001 W. Irving Park Road, adjacent to 23 acres of unincorporated homes on Long Avenue that LPC bought and demolished earlier this year.

The new second phase in part adds two more warehouse buildings to the two previously approved.

Village trustees Tuesday approved the now $100 million development, an agreement to provide $26 million in eligible funding from the area’s tax increment financing (TIF) district and a recommendation that Cook County grant a 12-year property tax incentive.

But it was the eastward expansion of the project and layout of its buildings that concerned Bryan Sill, chairman of Schaumburg’s pilots technical advisory committee. He believes a rearrangement of the new buildings would be in the airport’s best interest.

Sill argued that while the minimum FAA standards regarding airspace apply to perfectly functioning aircraft, more leeway around an airport may be in order for a plane experiencing mechanical difficulties.

“If an airplane loses an engine on takeoff, with an obstruction like this they’ve got no room to maneuver,” Sill said. “And those are the things we need to be thinking about.”

The maximum 52-foot height of one of the warehouse buildings is two feet below the airspace of the nearby airport, though the part of the building actually beneath the designated flight path is only 48 feet high, Schaumburg Community Development Director Julie Fitzgerald said.

She added the FAA sent a letter saying there was no concern about the building’s maximum height, even when it was a foot taller than its revised design.

Sill also had concerns about the temporary impacts of construction equipment for the project and that a smaller mechanical building’s height was only a foot below the range of a wind sensor for a weather station at the airport.

But Mayor Tom Dailly and Village Manager Brian Townsend said the final design of the project represented the best compromise of all parties’ interests. Dailly added the implied ideal situation of having no buildings around the airport wasn’t realistic.

“I want to make it clear that we are meeting what the requirements are for the FAA and that we are not putting anyone in any kind of position of being in a hazardous situation,” Dailly said.

Village consultants estimated the newly approved project would generate about $44.2 million in property taxes for the TIF district from which the $26 million reimbursement to the developer is conditionally promised.

The agreement requires LPC to start construction by next April and complete the buildings within two years, with industrial tenants employing a minimum of 200 workers there by the end of 2029.

The Class 6B tax incentive recommended to the Cook County Board essentially would cut the site’s property taxes in half for 10 years before gradually returning to normal during the 11th and 12th years.

epeterson@dailyherald.com