Its future has been uncertain for more than a year, but the controversial Colt Building appears ready to ride off into the sunset.
Repeated studies have shown how costly renovating the downtown building would be, and incoming trustees ran on a platform backing downtown redevelopment plans that call for demolishing the Colt and installing a new street from Lake Street south to a parking garage planned for North Boulevard.
“My hope would be relatively quickly … [to] move these plans to implementation,” said Trustee Ray Johnson, who was re-elected in April.
Now an Oak Park development company has submitted an unsolicited bid to redevelop the Colt site that would feature “Class A” office space, retail and residential.
“There’s nothing substantial [to the proposal] except that we’ve called and said we’d be interested,” said Rob Palley, one of three owners of Granite Realty Partners, now housed in the Colt Building, 1146 Westgate. The building, located just east of Pier 1 Imports, also has Lake Street frontage and addresses.
Granite-which has developed projects large and small-is under contract to buy the 720,000-square-foot Broadview Village Square shopping center at Cermak and 17th Avenue, Palley said.
“Class A” office space-offices’ quality and desirability are graded on a subjective system-would be unique in Downtown Oak Park.
“The only Class A office building in Oak Park from my or the industry’s perspective is the new RUSH Oak Park medical building,” said David King, of David King & Associates, the leasing agent responsible for the Colt and other Oak Park buildings. King said most Downtown Oak Park offices would be rated B.
Palley said the plans for a mixed-use building he showed the village did not include a new street, but that the design could easily be altered to do so. He said he would build over the street with an “architecturally significant” arch, with higher floor plates large enough to handle the office space.
In fact, he said he would be willing to participate in an architecture competition once the basic layout of the building is determined.
The community sent a “very clear” message at a recent meeting on great architecture, Village Manger Tom Barwin said, that projects pursued “should be of very high quality” and that the architectural bar should be raised in Oak Park.
The next steps for implementing plans downtown will need to be worked out by the new board, Johnson said. But he’s most interested in sending a “message of certainty” to investors that plans downtown will be followed “with appropriate review” from the community.
Johnson had not seen Granite’s proposal for the Colt site and would not comment on it, but said that, in general, office space needs to be part of the mix downtown. The daytime foot traffic and business that Shaker Advertising brings has benefited shops and restaurants, he said.
“This all goes into the mix that can bring about a much stronger downtown,” Johnson said.
But not everyone is so sanguine on new office space.
Pat Zubak, executive director of Downtown Oak Park, said her organization’s first concern is retail.
“That particular location has a real opportunity to bring in great retail, being so close to the nationals,” Zubak said.
Adding employees before parking can be added downtown could just increase congestion for shoppers, she said.
King said building new offices is too expensive for the rents that need be charged for a project to make money. “That’s why you haven’t seen any new office construction in recent years in the Village of Oak Park.”
Palley said he has a tenant who has expressed interest in the office space.
But King said the quality of the Colt is clear: “The building is shot.”
Barwin said tearing the Colt down as soon as all of its tenants leave is an option that would save the village upkeep costs. Johnson suggested the space could be used as a parking lot during reconstruction of Marion Street.
Ten tenants are left in the building, four of whom have signed leases elsewhere, and “three or four” more are in the final stages of negotiating leases, King said. All are staying in Oak Park.
CONTACT: dcarter@wjinc.com
