It’s been more than a year since Oak Park Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb rolled out his vision for the commercial corner of Oak Park Avenue and Madison Street.
Abu-Taleb, during a walking tour of the area in April 2015, said the village-owned parking lot at the northeast corner of that intersection would be sold to a developer and that the village could potentially alter the street to make room for a large mixed-use development.
Abu-Taleb said at that time that the village was negotiating with an unnamed developer, who could possibly purchase adjoining properties to the east. The mayor later revealed, at a public meeting in June of this year, that a developer was already working to control various adjacent and nearby properties in anticipation of the new development. Those sites include two buildings often referred to as the Foley-Rice buildings, after the car dealer formerly located in the 600 block of Madison; and the Car-X Tire & Auto building at 700 Madison.
Added to the development equation earlier this year was the plan to bend a portion of Madison Street – a proposal altogether separate from the “road diet” plan to narrow a portion of Madison to two lanes – to widen commercial lots on the corridor to make more room for Oak Park’s next large-scale development.
Now, the village is poised to release a request for proposals soliciting developers to put forth their vision for the corner. But trustees acknowledged at a meeting last week that the RFP, which had not been released as of press time, was tailored to the still-unnamed developer the village has negotiated with for over a year.
The RFP will be issued through the Oak Park Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-governmental entity paid by the village to attract and retain business in the village.
John Lynch, executive director of OPEDC, told the Village Board of Trustees at a meeting last week that he hoped to have the RFP released within a few days, but village staff still was working on the document as of Tuesday morning, according to Village Manager Cara Pavlicek.
Lynch said last week that the RFP his group is recommending, “be issued is purely for the village-owned lot at the northeast corner of Madison and Oak Park; we are suggesting that respondents – to the extent that they have the interest and particularly if they have the ability to control additional parcels – they are certainly welcome to propose those as part of their response.”
“But we are not, as part of this proposal, predetermining a bend or non-bend,” he said. “If a developer were to come in and say, ‘Hey, we have these other parcels under control, and as such we’d like to propose this development,’ we’re certainly more than willing to look at that and will do so.”
He said, however, that OPEDC would review all proposals submitted.
Lynch said the response time for the RFP would be about three weeks and then OPEDC would spend about two or three weeks picking a preferred developer for the project. The village would then negotiate development agreements with the chosen developer, locking in the project, before the end of 2016.
“Our hope is that a year from now that the parcel in question … could be transferred to the developer at that time,” he said, adding that construction could hopefully begin in late summer or early fall of 2017.
The short deadline for submitting proposals drew questions from some on the board.
Trustee Andrea Button-Ott asked whether the three-week response time was typical for such RFPs. “I do think that there is some concern in the community about the level of transparency …” she said.
Lynch said that the fact that the land is up for redevelopment is “not out of the blue” for those in the development community and three or four weeks is a customary timeframe for getting RFP responses.
Trustee Colette Lueck acknowledged the timeline for the RFP process but said it’s “fairly typical of how things go.”
She said the village has “made no secret” of the fact that they intend to develop the site, adding, “All that groundwork has been done ahead of time and with what I would feel is some level of transparency, but if you don’t know where to look and you don’t know where to listen and you just see an RFP is being issued, you might not understand the transparency.”
“I think that’s where some of the confusion comes up,” she said.
Mayor Abu-Taleb, who lives near Madison Street, lauded the announcement that the RFP would soon be released, noting, “This is a day I’ve been waiting for, for the last 30 years.”
He said a development of the surface-level parking lot would benefit the neighborhood and Oak Park overall.
CONTACT: tim@oakpark.com