Investor wants extension on Wheeling project

To demonstrate how desperate he was, Tony Licata thought about going before the Wheeling village board dressed only in a barrel on Monday night.

Licata, an investor in the Wheeling Station condominium project, was looking for a one-year extension on the project's planned unit development agreement at Dundee Road and Northgate Parkway. Licata is also asking the village board to extend a promise to give him $2.5 million in tax increment finance funds to fix the site's stormwater retention problem.

"At one point we were going to sell that corner piece, but the bank backed out and since then, we haven't had a single nibble from anyone," Licata said. "I feel like the guy who bought an umbrella on the first day of the drought."

Trustees didn't vote on the request, but most expressed sympathy for Licata, who bought the 7.6 acres with other investors in 2007. The plan is to build three condominium buildings with 180 units and about 12,000 square feet of retail along with a free-standing bank.

The project first was approved in 2008 after it was pitched to former Wheeling economic development Director James Lang by former Illinois tollway Chairman John Mitola.

After the project was approved, Mitola tried to get Lang an executive position at the tollway, according to reports published in the Daily Herald. The Daily Herald also reported that Mitola never disclosed the Wheeling Station deal on the economic interest statements he was required to submit as tollway chairman. Mitola said that was because he was helping friends by managing the deal for no compensation or ownership interest.

Lang's potential hiring at the tollway became the subject of a tollway investigation in January 2009 after the attorney general brought forward "whistle-blower" allegations that Mitola was trying to hire unqualified friends.

Lang was never hired by tollway executives, and Mitola resigned a year ago.

On Monday, Licata said at one time Mitola was the Wheeling Station's development manager, but that Mitola is "no longer active in that role."

Meanwhile, Licata is hoping the next year will lure a developer to the site and that the project - four years in the making - will finally materialize.

"Right now, the banks aren't lending and people aren't building," he said. "There isn't much we can do except to continue to pay taxes on the site."

Wheeling Trustee Dean Argiris said the west side of Wheeling needs Licata's development.

"I believe what you're saying and things will change in two or three years," he said. "We have to have projects that are shovel ready."