THE JOURNAL & TOPICS NEWSPAPERS | THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2008
Village Hopes To Copy Town & Country Success
Dealing with only one developer, returning to tradition, and creating a tax increment financing (TIF) district worked to rebuild Town & Country mall in Arlington Hts.
Village officials say these strategies allowed the project to be finished in three years instead of the 10 originally projected.
But these techniques may not work for the Southpoint Center across Rand Road, in the other half of the TIF district.
This "good news-bad news" scenario was the subject of a report to the village board last week by the village staff.
Town & Country, built in 1981, was floundering in the early part of this decade as an indoor mall. For more than a decade, the center thrived with an indoor theater complex, arcade, fast-food restaurants, and several small shops. But in the '90s, many of the interior stores closed, while those with exterior entrances, such as Best Buy, Old Counry Buffet, Marshall's, Dominick's, and Walgreen's, survived. These latter tenants were remodeled with new facades.
In 1999, Visconsi Companies of Pepper Pike, Ohio, bought the mall, gutted it, and rebuilt it as a traditional outdoor strip mall. In 2005, the village placed the mall in its fifth TIF district, providing financing for infrastructure improvements, demolition, and other improvements.
It cost $17 million to complete the renovation, and the village reimbursed the developed about $4 million from the increased property tax revenue generated by the upgrade, the staff reported.
Dick's Sporting Goods came aboard in 2006 as an anchor, and today, Town Country is a reborn, thriving center, with out lots occupied by a restaurant, bank, and a big-name apparel retailer.
The village now is turning its attention to Southpoint, which has been without an anchor for several years and is in need of serious upgrading. Southpoint offers a bigger challenge, village officials say, because most of its properties have different owners, as opposed to the single developer at Town & Country. Adding to the challenge is that these two centers are located amid a complex of centers at Rand and Arlington Hts. roads that includes the Annex, Plaza and Northpoint centers.