Latest plans for Elk Grove Village entryway redevelopment revealed
Calling it "something we haven't had in this village yet," Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson on Thursday unveiled glossy new renderings of the proposed redevelopment at an entryway corner to town.
The latest plans for the southeast corner of Arlington Heights and Higgins roads were revealed Thursday afternoon during the mayor's annual State of the Village address, held during a chamber of commerce luncheon at Belvedere Banquets.
Later Thursday night, residents viewed the sketches on poster boards set up in the banquet hall, and some filled out comment cards with their opinions for village officials and Mount Prospect-based Wingspan Development Group.
The new designs fine-tune the initial pictures provided during a public open house in November, when Wingspan's proposal was one of four on display. The village board chose Wingspan's project in January.
The mixed-use redevelopment of the town's oldest shopping center calls for apartments, townhouses and retail buildings on the 10-acre site the village now owns but plans to sell to the developer.
According to a schematic design released Thursday, popular existing businesses Jarosch Bakery, Tensuke Market and Vini's Pizza would move to a new 26,000-square-foot retail building along Higgins Road. V V Nails, 7-Mile Cycles, Subway and three other retailers would have space in a separate 20,000-square-foot building at the corner of Higgins and Arlington Heights roads.
"Every business there now has a home in the new place," said Johnson, adding that Rose Garden Cafe is moving down the block to the old Sweet Baby Ray's, and BMO Harris Bank is moving across the street. Elk Grove Bowl and the Shell gas station, meanwhile, have already been demolished.
A 5-story, 267-unit apartment building with 9,500 square feet of retail space is proposed along Arlington Heights Road. It would include a community area with a swimming pool, among other amenities. A pedestrian bridge would connect the visitor parking lot with Busse Woods.
"It's nothing like you've seen almost anywhere else," Johnson said. "Most apartments are just square blocks. We told the developer we don't want building block apartments. We want something with class and character."
Providing a buffer between the apartments and long-standing single-family homes to the east would be two 3-story townhouse buildings of 16 units, all of which would be rentals. Each would have a two-car garage and driveway.
"It's a changing world out there, folks. The old-fashioned strip shopping centers, the old ways of doing things, are not surviving," Johnson told the chamber crowd. "This project's important because this is our first venture into this. If it goes anywhere near as well as we expect it to, there will be other corners in this village that are going to be addressed as well."
After approvals by the plan commission and village board, the project could break ground as soon as this fall - first with the retail buildings, then residential.