Self-storage facility to replace longtime pet store at Arlington Heights' Golf Road entryway

A gateway site to Arlington Heights that was long home to a pet food shop and shelter care home will make way for a new self-storage facility.

Village officials agreed with developer Holladay Properties that the unusual pie-shaped piece of land at 397 and 401 W. Golf Road isn't ideal for retail, offices or apartments. As such, the village board this week agreed to the developer's request for a land use variation that will allow it to build a three-story, 102,008-square-foot self-storage building containing 725 storage units and a 1,000-square-foot retail area for packing supply sales.

Animal Feed and Needs closed up shop in 2021 after 57 years in business. Later that year, child welfare agency Shelter Inc. got the village board's approval to relocate its independent living skills program for males ages 17 to 21 from the busy commercial corridor to a residential block in the Ivy Hill neighborhood.

Their old landlord is selling the property to Holladay.

"It's a tricky site," said Don Tomei, Holladay's project manager for the redevelopment. "It's considered the gateway to the village of Arlington Heights and was really intended to be a retail district. But this is a 2½ acre lot with only about 115 (feet of) frontage on Golf. So it doesn't make much sense for a retail use. However that does serve to benefit self-storage, where we're able to hide a relatively large building on a small frontage of road."

The developer will demolish three buildings still on site before building the climate-controlled storage building that will stand 37 feet tall and could include solar panels. It will be managed by Store Space with daytime hours seven days a week.

But key to the development proceeding and receiving approvals from the village board is a newly-negotiated easement agreement between Holladay and the neighboring property, Golf Corporate Center. The easement will allow drivers to continue to turn from the intersection of Golf Road and Milbrook Lane into the small office park, then follow a drive aisle east to the self-storage building.

Without it, drivers might be compelled to make U-turns from busy Golf Road to get to the storage facility, said Charles Witherington-Perkins, the village's director of planning and community development.

The old easement wasn't transferable to the new property owner, and village officials made negotiation of a new one a condition of their approval. A final signed easement and financial payment from the developer to the office owner is expected to come at the closing. Then the village would issue a building permit.

Drivers also will be able to utilize a right-in, right-out curb cut on Holladay's Golf Road property frontage.

At the same time of its self-storage project, Holladay has installed fencing and is in for permits for a proposed renovation to the Comfort Inn motel around the block on Arlington Heights Road. The work would include upgrades to the building and rooms, some of which will be converted for extended stay, Perkins said.