Schaumburg buying day-care center for redevelopment project

The addition of a former day-care center to a mixed-use redevelopment at the northwest corner of Schaumburg and Roselle roads in Schaumburg is expected to make the approximately 12-acre project more cohesive, but not necessarily enlarge its scope.

In fact, a plan for the long-delayed Pleasant Square project now being negotiated with developer Ryan Homes is less dense than that of its predecessor, United Land Development.

Though once unwilling to sell out to the village, the Academy of Early Learning at 32 N. Roselle Road made an offer in the early fall and the village ultimately bought the property for $1.1 million.

The purchase price, and the $34,900 for its demolition by Pan-Oceanic Engineering, are covered by funds from the Olde Schaumburg Centre tax-increment finance district which will expire at the end of 2013.

The project, which originally included an unusually dense residential component, was first approved in 2005 and revised in 2010 after being stalled by the sluggish economy.

But Schaumburg Village Manager Ken Fritz said there now seems to be a strong possibility of construction starting next year.

“You measure the economy not just by what you see, but by how many developers are talking to you,” Fritz said. “We’re still getting a lot of deals.”

The newly revised version of Pleasant Square has been made less dense and dispenses with the condominiums initially proposed, Community Development Director Julie Fitzgerald said. It now includes about 80 row houses, 15 townhouse units and 10 single-family homes.

A proposed 14,000-square-foot building on the corner would include approximately 24 apartments on two upper floors and up to 12 commercial units on the ground floor.

The Academy of Early Learning would have stood between the commercial building and the rest of development. Before it agreed to sell to the village, the center planned to simply work around the rest of the development, Fritz said.

The corner previously was occupied by a gas station that was sold to the village after going out of business, and a strip mall that was purchased after a settlement of condemnation proceedings.

The TIF district centered around the intersection of Schaumburg and Roselle roads was established in 1990 to bolster redevelopment of the area. It’s already responsible for Town Square at the southwest corner, which includes the current Schaumburg Township District Library.

A TIF district works by freezing all taxing bodies’ property-tax income at the level of the district’s first year. Taxes collected above those amounts go to a village fund specifically to pay for public improvements within the district.

Though the Olde Schaumburg Centre TIF expires in two years, the funds collected can still be spent after that as long as they’re budgeted by a development project already under contract, Fritz said.