By: Crystal Yednak

April 13, 2004, Chicago Tribune

Along a six-lane stretch of road in West Chicago, amid fast-food restaurants, retail strips and an expanding Menards, is a boarded-up hulk of a building, surrounded by a parking lot absent of life.

Perplexing residents and officials who don't like the image it presents, the former Dominick's at Illinois Highways 59 and 64 has sat vacant for almost two years, since a round of Chicago-area store closings by the grocery chain.

Though there may be development around the site, the empty grocery sends the wrong image to potential developers. "The first thing they say is, `Boy, what happened?'" said Joanne Gugliotta, West Chicago's community development director.

In other suburbs where residents have stared too long at barren buildings in the wake of corporate decisions, Kmart buildings have been resurrected as churches, old Builders Square stores have been transformed into their competition and some groceries and big boxes have just sat empty.

Once a big box leaves town, filling that hole can be a complicated matter for the community, said Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar.

A few years ago, the Bolingbrook Village Board discussed an ordinance that would require the demolition of any big-box building that was dark for more than two years, he said. The idea was thrown out because it was considered anti-business.

"There's nothing worse than a shopping center with one building in the middle dark," Claar said.

In 1999, Builders Square announced the closing of many of its Chicago-area locations, including its site in south suburban Matteson.

Just recently, a developer bought the empty building, said Toni Ashmore, the village's economic development specialist. She hopes that the developer will take up a project similar to what the new owners of the vacated Kmart building did a few years back. That owner came in and subdivided the building so it's now home to a Sportmart, Linens 'n Things and Borders, she said.

Loss of dollars

Beyond the image problem it presents, the absence of a large store can also mean a loss of dollars to the municipalities.

In Broadview, the village is feeling the effects of the closing of a Super Kmart in a shopping center that also features a Marshalls, Sports Authority, Target and OfficeMax.

The Broadview Village Square, which housed the Super Kmart until April 2003, is in a tax increment financing district. The village issued bonds, part of which were to be paid back with property-tax revenue and portions of the sales-tax revenue from the Super Kmart, said Mayor Henry Vicenik. Some excess sales-tax revenue would go to the village to cover the cost of other services.

The store had been producing enough sales-tax revenue that the village could generally count on hundreds of thousands in excess revenue, Vicenik said.

But now without any sales, the village isn't getting that money. When village officials heard Kmart might close the site, they came up with another incentive package to rebate some of the sales-tax money to help Kmart but couldn't work out a deal with the ownership, Vicenik said.

The village is now in talks with a Sam's Club to possibly locate in the site.

"We feel pretty lucky that we could identify someone for that site. You see these stores sit for two or three years," Vicenik said.

Thomas Lys, a real estate management professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said that when big-box buildings or large groceries become vacant, the most natural use is for the competitor to come in.

"If this is a great location and it's just that Kmart was having financial troubles, then the Target will come," he said.

If there's a problem with access or traffic patterns, the community can improve those conditions, but the underlying economics of the situation often can't be changed, Lys said.

In some areas, residents mount attacks to rebuff attempts toward big-box development, but many other suburbs covet it, courting developers with incentives.

Claar said he hears from residents who say they don't like the big-box retailers or the giant groceries.

"But today's citizen wants to walk into a store and have 25 different kinds of toothpaste in front of them," he said.

Lombard is looking at an empty Menards building now. The company moved the store just down the road so it could own instead of lease its property, said David Hulseberg, Lombard's community development director.

"The challenge becomes what other big-box developers will be interested in it--Home Depot, Lowe's? Or is this the time for a good transition for another player who is not in the marketplace?" he said.

Like `a cancer'

Hulseberg expects it will take some time to locate a new tenant. Despite what may be happening development-wise in town, shuttered buildings can hurt the perception of the town.

"It's almost like it's a cancer. ... It's a perceived negative," he said.

In West Chicago, city officials say it's been difficult to get someone in the building at Illinois 59 and 64 because Dominick's continues to pay the lease on the property, removing some of the incentive for the owner, Inland Real Estate Corp., to get another tenant.

An Inland spokesman said that Dominick's holds the lease for another four or five years, but that the property is being actively marketed.

"Our hands are somewhat tied," said spokesman Rick Fox.

Because Dominick's still holds the lease, any new tenant would have to work out an agreement with Dominick's, Fox said. But there are no restrictions in the lease that say a grocery or other similar store can't locate in the building, which Dominick's emptied in August 2002, he said.

West Chicago Mayor Michael Fortner said Dominick's, the broker and the city are working together to solve the problem.

Around the Dominick's, other deals are under way for car dealerships, a gas station is being constructed, and an expansion is planned for the Menards across the street, Fortner said.

"It's a confusing message," he said. "[The vacancy] makes it hard to see the accurate picture."