Rosemont lining up financing for next big redevelopment
Plans for Rosemont's latest redevelopment effort - a 16-acre campus that will include a hotel, restaurant and office building - are moving along, while village officials put together financing for the project.
The village board will vote next month on establishing the village's eighth tax increment financing district to spur the redevelopment project, to be named The Pearl, south of Balmoral Avenue and west of the Tri-State Tollway.
The TIF district will also include currently vacant land north of Balmoral where a proposed 7,000-seat minor league baseball stadium could open in the summer of 2018.
Once the TIF is established, property taxes paid to local governments by property owners within the area will be frozen at the current level for 23 years. Taxes collected above that level will go into a special fund controlled by the village to pay for public and private improvements.
Mayor Brad Stephens said Wednesday during a public hearing on the proposed TIF that the village has received earnest money deposits from Janko Group, which plans to develop a 5-story, 163-room boutique hotel, and Koch Foods, a chicken processor that plans to move its headquarters from Park Ridge to a 3-story, 45,000-square-foot office building in The Pearl, as the development is being called.
Stephens said Braden Real Estate, which will develop another building on site, is "working on the finer points" of a lease deal to secure an 8,500-square-foot Buddy V's Ristorante, an Italian restaurant and bake shop run by reality TV star Buddy Valastro.
Plans for an office building in the southwest corner of the development have been eliminated because of its location within a Federal Aviation Administration runway protection zone.
There's still room for a 15,000-square-foot building on the east side between Buddy V's and Koch headquarters, Stephens said.
Rosemont plans to give village-owned vacant land to the users, with plans to recover costs from increased tax revenues once the land is developed. The businesses will get their deposits back once the properties are transferred to them and building permits are issued, Stephens said.
The TIF fund budget is estimated at $210 million, which could pay for the business incentives, and public improvements such as roads, utilities and stormwater detention.
The base equalized assessed value will be frozen at $4,895, but the value is estimated to grow to more than $65 million when the TIF expires in 23 years, according to a report from Kane, McKenna, and Associates, the village's TIF consultant.
Rosemont could also receive an extension from the state legislature to make the TIF last a total of 35 years.
Construction crews are expected to break ground on the mixed-use development late spring or early summer, with a grand opening planned for a year later.