H.J. Mohr & Sons Co. is once again the owner of the dilapidated and long shuttered Oak Park concrete facility after the property was foreclosed under the ownership of KrohVan, a real estate development firm.
The site has been considered for redevelopment projects since before it closed permanently in 2018 due to financial troubles. It is one of the largest contiguous pieces of land available in the Village of Oak Park.
Most recently, a QuickTrip gas station was proposed, and denied, as many residents and village staff did not feel it was a good fit for the neighborhood. Hinsdale-based KrohVan went through a foreclosure lawsuit filed by the original owners, H.J. Mohr & Sons Co., which resolved just a couple of months ago putting ownership back with the Mohr family.
Karen Richards, daughter of Dot and Bud Mohr, said the plan is to still sell the property, and she would like to see it developed into something new.
“I wish [the village] would buy it since they’re the ones that said that we couldn’t put the gas station in,” said Richards. “My mom, she’s 95 years old, and it costs us a lot of money because her and me are the ones that have to come up with the money to pay the real estate taxes and everything.”
John Melaniphy, Oak Park’s lead development staffer, said the village has a “very vested interest” in seeing the property brought back to productive use in a way that best suits the area’s needs.
“The village could look at a variety of tools, one of which might be we’ve been talking to the RTA about a planning grant for the RTA to look at this as a transit-oriented development and bring in a panel of experts to determine the highest and best use of the property and create a vision and a kind of a roadmap of how this property could be redeveloped.”