Mundelein to knock down apartment building for park

Mundelein is moving ahead with plans to demolish an apartment building and other structures on Lake Street to make way for a proposed public park.

Village trustees on Monday voted to hire Delta Demolition to raze the Mundelein Apartments building at 516 S. Lake St. The company will be paid $76,500 for the task.

The Chicago firm already is contracted to knock down four homes and a commercial building on the 600 block of South Lake Street for the same project. That work started Monday.

Unlike the first round of demolition work, which will cost $69,000, the firm was hired this time without a bidding process.

The village didn't seek bids this time because the projects are similar, there's limited access to the site and giving Delta both jobs is "the most effective and cost efficient" course, documents indicate.

The apartment building demolition is tentatively scheduled to begin in March.

At least two of the 16 units in the apartment building remain occupied, Assistant Village Administrator Peter Vadopalas said. Officials expect to get more information about those tenants later this week, he said.

After the building is knocked down, Delta Demolition will remove the parking lot there and top the entire property with dirt and seed, according to documents.

Trustees voted last year to buy the Mundelein Apartments building for nearly $1.6 million. The other buildings cost $775,000. Officials plan to turn the entire 3.3-acre site, which occupies about 260 feet of Diamond Lake's shoreline, into a park.

Aside from a few Mundelein Park District sites, most of the land around the 153-acre lake is privately owned. Opening more of that land to the public is a goal in Mundelein's long-term development plan.

Trustees voted 5-1 to approve the latest demolition contract. Trustee Dawn Abernathy cast the lone "no" vote.

Abernathy has strongly criticized the project, saying creating parkland should be the park district's job, not the village's.