Palatine OKs new building with a Wendy's at Famous Dave's site
The Palatine village council gave the green light to a project to demolish the former Famous Dave's restaurant to build a new building that will include a Wendy's fast-food joint.
Famous Dave's closed in 2011 at 1101 E. Dundee Road, in the Park Place Shopping Center.
Developer Hamra Chicago LLC intends to build an approximately 6,600-square-foot building that will have a Wendy's restaurant with a drive-through on its eastern end. The rest of the building will have one or two retail tenants that are yet to be determined, Director of Planning and Zoning Ben Vyverberg said.
Meanwhile, a new traffic light on Dundee Road at the Park Place entrance that leads to Walmart, by Chase Bank and Sonic Drive-In, will be completed by the end of March, village officials said. The village and the Illinois Department of Transportation have been working together on the traffic light project, which the village had eyed for more than a dozen years.
The new building on the Famous Dave's site will have plenty of parking - it require 38 spaces and there are 70 available - and its tenants will be advertised via new 13-foot-tall, non-electronic monument sign, Vyverberg said.
To ease cross-access within the shopping center, particularly in light of the median installed along Dundee Road by the Illinois Department of Transportation, the village has asked for an agreement between Hamra and nearby Einstein Bros. Bagels, 987 E. Dundee Road.
"That is exactly what we are looking for to make access to all those properties still available," Schwantz said, praising the village staff's initiative.
The plan also includes a new ADA-accessible sidewalk to be built on the northwest corner of the property to connect to the existing sidewalk parallel to Dundee Road.
Hamra has purchased the former Famous Dave's property and, once utilities are disconnected, will proceed with demolition "as soon as possible," Mario Valentini of MRV Architects told the village's plan commission last week.
The Park Place Shopping Center totals about 34 acres and was annexed by the village in 1985.
Last year, the village approved plans for a new 80,000 square foot U-Haul storage facility at Park Place. The facility is being built now.