Oak Park’s plan commission is set to review an application to build a major gas station at the long-vacant former Mohr concrete site.
QuikTrip, a nationwide gas station chain with regional offices in Naperville, is looking to redevelop the former H.J. Mohr & Sons Co. concrete site which sits along Maple Avenue, Harlem Avenue, Garfield Street and Lexington Street just south of the Eisenhower Exspressway in Oak Park. Their interest was first reported by Wednesday Journal in July.
The corporation’s proposal will be the subject of Oak Park’s Plan Commission’s next public meeting Thursday, Sept. 11 at 7 p.m. at village hall.
The Plan Commission holds public hearings concerning planned developments, rezoning, special uses and other development matters. QuikTrip’s nearly 400-page proposal for the site is available to the public ahead of the meeting.
The proposed site would include a 6,445 square foot convenience store building and 16 fueling positions for cars. There would be no diesel fueling for trucks on the proposed site, according to the proposal documents.
The corporation would have to demolish all the existing structures on the former industrial site.
The proposed site would have three entrances — one on Harlem Avenue, one on Garfield Street and one on Lexington Street. This design would require special approval as village ordinances typically only allow for two curb cuts at gas stations, according to proposal documents.
The potential gas station would also be subject to the village ordinance that requires gas station’s to close from midnight to 5 a.m.
While the Plan Commission will weigh in on the proposal this week, Oak Park’s village board will have the final say on the future of the project down the line.
The old concrete plant has sat rusting since the Mohr company closed its doors in 2018 amid financial woes. Once home to one of the longest running businesses in Chicagoland, the vacant site is among the only large plots of land available for development in and around Oak Park.
Last month, Oak Park’s assistant village manager for economic vitality John Melaniphy said that redeveloping the Mohr site is a major opportunity for the village.
“Certainly, the village would like to see that property redeveloped and returned to productive use,” he said.
As the proposal has moved forward in the permitting process, some south Oak Park neighbors and other community members have expressed a variety of concerns about the proposed gas station. A new gas station on the site could worsen traffic on an already congested Harlem Avenue, conflict with Oak Park’s sustainability goals and represent a loss of a potential mixed-use development opportunity for the village, critics have argued.
A Change.org petition asking village leaders to block the proposed development has over 1,000 signatures. Petition organizer Brooke Reavey — who lives a few hundred feet away from the former Mohr site — said that the village can afford to wait for a better redevelopment opportunity for the site.
“There’s just a better use of the space, it’s an entire city block and it doesn’t make sense to give it all up to a giant gas station,” Reavey said. “We have the opportunity to do so much with it. It’s not like we went fishing and we caught a bunch of fish and if we don’t sell them in a couple days, they’re going to go bad. We can wait around for it. We’re in such a populous area and somebody will develop this.”
In May, Wednesday Journal obtained documents related to the termination of former economic vitality administrator Brandon Crawford that mentioned a possible Tax Increment Financing zone surrounding the Mohr property. The documents, dated April 11, 2025, indicated that discussions about the potential TIF had begun a year earlier, but that work analyzing the prospect had “not progressed as expected,” according to the village documents.
Any sale and redevelopment of the property will happen in context of the foreclosure case involving KrohVan — the site’s last set of would-be developers — and the Mohr family.
Karen Richards, daughter of Dot and Bud Mohr, told Wednesday Journal that the case was still ongoing last month.
Last October, H.J. Mohr & Sons Co. filed a foreclosure suit against the developers, saying that KrohVan still owes on the parties’ mortgage loan agreement that matured last summer.
“The defendants have not paid the balance of the loan which matured on June 2, 2024,” the October filing said. “Current principal balance due on the note and mortgage is $4,026,830 plus interest, costs, advances for taxes, insurance and fees; and less any credits for payments received.”
H.J. Mohr & Sons Co. also claimed that the developers owed $157,241 in unpaid interest in their October foreclosure filing.
The parties had extended the mortgage’s maturity date twice. The developers were also hit with a Mechanic’s lien for more than $7,000 in unpaid contractor work last summer, according to the filing.