Journal Reporter

It's real, folks. Park Ridge's Uptown redevelopment actually, truly is coming to reality.

The city's Uptown cruise ship, which has toured the oceans of planning and dreaming for six years, is finally approaching port.

It will "dock" at a PRC Partners-city ground-breaking on June 1, at 3:30 p.m. in the parking lot north of Summit Square Retirement Home.

That's where Mid-America Asset Management Inc., Edward R. James Homes LLC, and Valenti Builders Inc. plan to erect 23 rowhomes and townhomes as phase one of the Uptown redevelopment.

A reception will follow the ground-breaking.

It was almost nine years ago that this project began when the Bredemann family told the city it wanted to move its two auto dealerships out of the Meacham Avenue area of Uptown and relocate them to Dempster Street.

It has taken nearly nine years for the city to form a tax increment financing (TIF) district on Dempster and Greenwood for Bredemann's new auto mall, buy the Uptown Bredemann land, form a TIF district in Uptown, form a 26-member citizen task group and develop a master plan, conduct more than a dozen public meetings and hearings, generate statements of interest from 19 development teams, select one, negotiate a redevelopment agreement, negotiate TIF revenue-sharing agreements with school districts 64 and 207 and the park district and obtain all of the necessary city approvals of the project's architecture, zoning, parking, open space, streetscapes and site plans, etc.

Now called "The Residences and the Shops of Uptown Park Ridge," the $122 million project will bring 20 or more new businesses and nearly 200 residences to a five-acre site where the Bredemann businesses formerly stood and where the old central water reservoir and a parking lot now stand.

Tentative construction schedules call for completion of phase one in mid-2006, and completion of phases two and three by early 2008.