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| Metro Commercial Real Estate is seeking tenants to join Potbelly |
With the
demolition of the old PJ’s, the development/redevelopment at Milwaukee Avenue
and Deerfield Road is moving into high gear.
The area that housed PJ’s and a
McDonald’s will be home to a new strip center that, so far, has a Potbelly
Sandwich Shop as a tenant. Granted,
it’s not a flagship that will put Buffalo Grove on the map, but the
redevelopment of the site is at least positive movement.
So too is the pending construction
of the massive Woodman’s grocery store at Deerfield Road and Milwaukee Avenue.
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| The site of the former McDonald's and PJ's Pub |
The announcement that Woodman’s was
coming to the village was, as you might expect, greeted with a variety of
reactions – mostly on social media because it’s a lot easier to comment and
click than come to a Village Board meeting.
That’s just the reality of it.
Convenience being what it is, using
social media is to many people a lot less painful than sitting through a
village meeting. I get it. Unfortunately, a lot of posts on social media
in general are often knee-jerk reactions to an announcement, statement, event,
etc. and may not be steeped in background information.
The Woodman’s announcement is an
example of that. Many posters chided the village for not putting Woodman’s in
the site in Chase Plaza vacated by Dominick’s.
There’s a good reason for that.
Location and size. According to Chris Stilling, community
development director for the Village of Buffalo Grove, Woodman’s will be a
241,000 square store. That’s big. Very big – especially when you consider that
stores like Jewel and Mariano’s are in the 50,000 to 70,000 square foot
range. The bottom line is Woodman’s
would not fit on that site. The Woodman’s
store will also take up 20 to 25 acres.
Some residents have clamored that
Chase Plaza needs to be developed because they want a grocery store near their
house. I can understand the desire for proximity, but economic development is
not neighborhood driven, nor is it anchored solely by retail.
To many people, it seems that retail
is the most visible barometer of economic development. In reality it’s just part of the puzzle. So too are restaurants. Stilling knows that, especially with Buffalo
Grove businesses and organizations employing 20,000 people.
A major part of economic development
is commercial, industrial and office space.
Buffalo Grove ranks high on the amount of nonretail space available in
Lake County -- and it keeps growing.
Stilling estimates that there is nearly 500,000 square feet of
nonresidential construction taking place in the village.
As for Chase Plaza, the Village
Board is scheduled to get an update on the site at Monday’s (Aug. 15) Board
meeting. Breaking news? Probably not.
Word is that movement on Chase Plaza is basically the village constantly
badgering Jewel corporate about selling it. Jewel’s corporate entity owns the
site and appears to be controlling who takes over the vacant Dominick’s store. According to Jewel’s website, the chain “is
owned by AB Acquisition LLC, (which) acquired
Jewel-Osco from SUPERVALU, a transaction that brought all Albertsons stores
under singular ownership again and added ACME Markets, Shaw’s and Star Markets
to the growing food and drug retailer. In 2015, the parent company doubled its
store base when it completed a merger with Safeway. Today, Jewel-Osco operates
185 stores throughout the Chicagoland area, Indiana and Iowa, which is part of
a 2,200+ store operation that employs approximately 265,000 people nationwide.”
No matter what happens at Chase
Plaza, or when, to many residents, the only economic development barometer is
what they see in Chase Plaza or Town Center – which granted isn’t much. The village cannot mandate what business goes
where or what business decides to call Buffalo Grove home.
It has worked out incentive
packages. Woodman’s is a prime
example. The Village worked out some
unique incentives with Woodman’s to reel them in. It’s a tax-sharing plan that is based on tax
revenues generated by the store. The
village, notes Stilling, is not laying out cash for Woodman’s, nor will it take
a cash hit from the incentives.
Pundits on social media expressed
concern about the roadway at Deerfield Road and Milwaukee Avenue.
Included in the Woodman’s deal are
roadway improvements. Costly? Yep.
Village expense? No. Stilling said Woodman’s will cover
improvements to both streets.
Economic development is, as noted, a
puzzle that is difficult to complete.
The village had a proposal for redevelopment of Cambridge Commons at
Dundee and Buffalo Grove roads, but nixed it after incessant delays and the
request for excessive incentives by the developer. And for the record, one
poster on social media decried that the village should “…Put it (Woodman’s) where it's empty on Dundee where the
car places use to be old Rogan’s store empty nobody wants to come to this town”
Rationale be
damned, there’s no way, Woodman’s would not fit there and the “car places” are
on property not owned by the village, not to mention that the property owner is
allegedly asking an excessive amount of money for the land.
As for “nobody wants to come to this
town”.
Woodman’s does.
And look at the reception some
people are giving it.
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