A decision on the Downtown Oak Park Colt Building needs to be made in the context of a larger plan for the area, village trustees said Thursday after rejecting two proposals to renovate or redevelop the site.
“Every decision we make [about downtown] impacts the next one,” Trustee Galen Gockel said. “So a decision with respect to [a proposed garage on North Boulevard] would impact development of that Colt Building parcel.”
Previously in the meeting the board discussed the garage project but asked for more information before moving ahead.
The proposals were responses to the village’s request for proposals (RFP) issued last October. One proposal called for renovating the Colt while the other called for tearing it down and redeveloping the site.
The restoration proposal’s developer asked the village for a $4.3 million discount on the Colt property; for the building next-door to the east, 1121-23 Lake St., for free; and for the village to cough up an additional $10.3 million for the project.
“The responses helped us to determine that the total village contribution to preserve the structure would be in the neighborhood of $15 million,” Village President David Pope said after the meeting. “I think that the general sentiment is that that would be a very difficult proposition for the taxpayers of the community to make that sort of an investment, particularly at this time, given the economic challenges that we face across the community.”
The redevelopment response called for tearing down the Colt Building and the 1121-23 Lake St. building, for opening a one-way southbound street from Lake to Westgate, and for a mixed-use building two stories tall on Lake and 10 stories tall on Westgate with first-floor retail. The project would have built 80 condominiums on the site.
The redevelopment project had estimated costs of $40.3 million; its developers asked for a $4 million write-down, or discount, on the Colt’s purchase price.
The board’s decision brings it full-circle to when it voted 4-3 in November 2005 to not approve a downtown “superblock” steering committee’s recommendation in its entirety. The plan called to demolish the Colt, install a north-south street, build a 500-car parking garage on North Boulevard, and open Westgate and the Marion Street mall to auto traffic.
The board decided to reject both Colt proposals in executive session Thursday, making the announcement later at the end of its special meeting.
Pope defended the board’s decision to hold the discussion behind closed doors by saying that, first, the board has the legal right to do so because the responses involved the sale of property, and because “there may be negative ramifications for the village for telegraphing [its] bargaining position with respect to a particular respondent to an RFP.”
After the meeting, Trustee Ray Johnson said there was “some support” on the board for the idea of creating a new street near the Colt site.
While discussing the North Boulevard garage during the meeting, Gockel said he wasn’t convinced of the village’s need for 500 new parking spaces. In that case, the garage–which consultants recommended be L-shaped and require the demolition of the 1145 Westgate building–could be smaller and preserve at least the front portion of 1145 Westgate, which the village also owns.
The 1145 Westgate building is across the street from the Colt Building, and across a parking lot from the Old Navy/TGI Friday’s building.
Gockel’s proposal, though, would mean the parking garage would not have an entrance off of Westgate, as it would with the larger L-shaped design. That illustrates the need to make a number of decisions downtown simultaneously, rather than sequentially, he said. Without a Westgate garage entrance, there seems to be less of a need for a new north-south street.
“All of these decisions will require us to make some decisions with respect to Lake Street,” Gockel said. He suggested redesigning the corridor to improve traffic flow.
Trustees Robert Milstein and Greg Marsey were also concerned about the cost of the garage project, which could include an income-producing use–such as residential, office or convention space–atop the parking area. First-floor retail is planned for the building’s west face.
Village Manager Tom Barwin said his staff will return to the board with more information on the garage project in late summer or early fall.
The board put off discussion of another downtown proposal, which calls for repositioning North Boulevard between Marion Street and Forest Avenue to create development space near the train station.
