FX series 'Fargo' filming Monday in Elgin

The fourth season of the popular FX television series "Fargo" will be filming Monday and Tuesday in Elgin.

Redhawk Productions IV LLC, in association with MGM, informed residents of the historic Gifford Park neighborhood, adjacent to downtown, that they will be filming scenes there from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday.

Filming will be done outside and will include the Elgin History Museum, College Street between Park and Division streets, and North Street between Hill and College streets.

Film crews are expected to arrive around 4:30 a.m. and leave by 8 p.m., city spokeswoman Molly Gillespie said. Some streets will have "no parking" signs, and only local residents will be allowed in the area east of Dundee Avenue, north of Division Street, west of Hill Avenue and south of Park Street. The production company will mainly stage on Park Street.

Filming on a much smaller scale will take place Tuesday and will affect the area by the intersection of North and Channing streets. Crews expect to clear out by 3 p.m. at the latest, Gillespie said.

The fourth season of "Fargo" is set in 1950 in Kansas City and will feature Chris Rock, Jason Schwartzman, Uzo Aduba, Jessie Buckley, Timothy Olyphant, Salvatore Esposito and Chicago native Andrew Bird. It will follow two dueling crime families, one black and one Italian, according to Newsweek.

Site coordinator Matt Cholewick said filming started last month and is taking place in Chicago and locations "two hours in every direction."

The Elgin neighborhood, with houses dating back to the 1800s, lends itself perfectly for filming the show, he said. "All the houses here are really well-maintaned to preserve their historic relevancy, so it's a really pretty historic place."

Filming will continue for the next few months and the series will be released "sometime in 2020," Cholewick said.

So are people going to catch any sightings of the cast? "I can't really say," he said.

Dan Miller, president of the Gifford Park Association, said he was contacted by the production company for help in spreading the word, so he sent out an email blast Tuesday evening. The company also contacted neighbors by going door to door twice in the last week or so and leaving notices, Miller said.

The Downtown Neighborhood Association sent out its own email blast Wednesday afternoon after it received information from the city. Gillespie said the production company applied for a special events permit and will reimburse the city for police and land management costs.

"Anything that brings some prestige to our neighborhood is good," Miller said. "They are going to bring a couple hundred people here, probably stay at a hotel. That's probably a godsend to Elgin."